There is no such thing as a standard example of a good CV. A CV is only “good” if it works…if it fulfils its purpose of marketing your skills and expertise. If you are receiving calls and emails because recruiters/employers have seen your CV, then you have a good CV that works for you.
A CV should provide a summary of your expertise and evidence of your achievements. The reader wants to understand what you have to offer a future employer and this should leap off the page. Too often recruiters are presented with exhaustive bullet-pointed lists of everything a candidate has ever done in their career. Or a list of responsibilities cut and pasted from a job description. In order to be filtered through to interview stage, applicants are expected to focus on their relevant achievements and expertise. CVs don’t even include the words “curriculum vitae” (which means “courses of life”) on the first line of the document anymore; now the candidate’s name is the title for the document.
We asked leading career coach and CV expert Zena Everett, of Second Careers, for her advice on what should be in the CV that works…
Congratulations! You are reading this on a job board so obviously understand that this is a digital age with high volumes of applications to compete against. CVs have to be optimised with key words. They must be relevant to the jobs you are applying for, not generic documents. This is one of the major weaknesses in unsuccessful applications.
So, before you start drafting your CV, find some suitable jobs to apply for. Ask yourself “if I was filtering through applications for these roles what would my screening criteria be?” Highlight the key words and phrases that the recruiter is asking for. Now draft your CV as described below, incorporating the same or very similar key words and phrases. Go into specific detail only about skills that are relevant to the role and provide examples of where you have successfully used these skills in the past. This is explained in more detail in the career history section, below. First, let’s look at the overall design of the document. Continue reading “How to Write a CV That Works” »
One of the most frustrating elements when job hunting is the complete lack of control you often feel when applying for jobs. Applications just seem to disappear in to a job search abyss never to be mentioned again.
It’s not always easy to know what to do on these situations so we asked career coach and ex-recruiter Michelle Baker for her top insider tips for taking back control of your job search and improving your chances of getting feedback, whilst building relationships with recruiters:
Let us do the hard work for you and take the hassle out of job hunting.
