Story of your life

YOUR curriculum vitae is your most critical selling document. If you get it right it will land you the interviews you want; get it wrong and your hard-earned work experience could be consigned to the waste bin.

As it is the only thing that you can fully control in the job selection process, it is vital that your CV should put across everything you want to say about yourself in the most impressive way. It must highlight your value to the potential employer, as well as leave the interviewer with a clear reminder of what you could do for them. Not only that, if it gets you on the short list, it will help provide a structure for the interview and encourage your interviewer to focus on your achievements.

YOUR aim is to make it as easy as possible for your potential employer to select you, so ensure that your skills, abilities and experience literally shout out from the page. Keep it brief but full of substance, so that they can see at a glance that you would be capable of the job.

Most critical is that you write for the reader. Identify what it is that your potential employer is looking for, so that your CV focuses on their needs. Ideally, you should tailor your CV for each job. Keep sentences short; they are easier to read and have greater impact. Examine each word that you have used to describe yourself to see if a more powerful one could be used. Avoid jargon.

Write your CV in the third person, rather than the first, so that you can give yourself proper credit without appearing brash.

KEEP your CV up to date. The interviewer is more interested in what you are doing now and the pertinence of your current skills and experience than in what you were doing ten years ago. Headhunters nowadays advise that your career and corresponding achievements are highlighted up front. So after your name and address and contact number at the top, go straight into details about your employment history, followed by your education and qualifications, finishing with your personal details.

Always put your most recent job first and then work back in chronological order. As people read from left to right, put the most important things on the left side of the page, so state the title of the job you had first, then for whom you did it and finally when you did it. Give a brief description of the scale and scope of the company you worked for. You cannot assume your reader will have heard of it. Under each particular job you mention, your own achievements are more important than your responsibilities. Quantify and qualify what you actually did in your role, using hard facts to demonstrate the tangible benefits you brought.

IF you have been in a career for a long time, you do not need to include your early education and qualifications. Write the information in reverse order and put the qualifications you achieved, then where you achieved them, followed by the date. Include any appropriate training courses you have been on.

Apart from your name, address and contact numbers, which should go at the top of your CV, all other personal details, including your date of birth, marital status and interests should be left to the end.

Interests are an important part of your CV. They can really bring you alive, say something about you as a person, and differentiate you from the rest. Make sure what you put down adds value.

HAVING worked on the content, make sure the layout does not let you down. It must look professional and be clear and easy to read. Use headings to help the reader to scan the document and bullet points to focus on key information. Print it on quality paper to ensure a quality impression.

IDEALLY, you should customise your CV for each job you are going for, but this may not be practical if you are going for dozens of jobs at a time. What differs fundamentally about the CV you produce is whether it is built around your present job or aimed at a change in your career. CVs appropriate for a change in career will need to pull out relevant transferable skills and this can be done by having a skills and experience section ahead of the career summary. These four to five key skills will match what is on the job specification.

At the end of the day, your CV is all about packaging. If you can't sell yourself, how will you be able to promote the company you are working for? And you must feel comfortable with what you have written, and confident you can back it up.

<== попередня сторінка	\|	наступна сторінка ==>
Note down what you think is right and what is wrong with J. Henderson’s letter.	\|	Ex.8. Give the layout of a standard CV by referring to the above article.

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