Everybody has different ideas about what constitutes the perfect CV format but here are the main pointers that most recruiters agree with.
| 1. |
Keep it short. The main body of the CV should be no more than 3 pages. More than this will probably not be read, but make sure it contains sufficient detail for the reader to understand clearly what it is you have been doing. |
| 2. |
Start with your personal details including contact information (address and telephone number) age or date of birth, and marital status (e.g. married, 2 children aged 5 and 7). Details about your education should be limited to the most advanced qualifications obtained. e.g. your degree or number of A levels/ GCSEs etc. You will not need to list the schools you attended or each individual GCSE with its grade. |
| 3. |
Details about your family, pets, pastimes should appear at the end of the CV. These are generally used as discussion points in an interview. |
| 4. |
You may like to summarise the sort of work animal you are at the top of the CV as in "A Multi-media design artist with particular expertise in Photoshop and Web Authoring" but do not make this more than 3 lines and avoid telling everyone how wonderful you are: it is the recruiter's job to assess your ability, not yours. |
| 5. |
Detail your work experience in "reverse chronological order". This means putting your most recent experience first. We are interested mainly in what you can do for an employer now, not what you were doing 10 years ago. You should reduce the amount of detail you provide about previous jobs as you work back through your employment history time. |
| 6. |
For each position provide (in bold ) a job title, the name of the employer, and the dates you were (are) employed there. You should then provide details of the daily tasks you performed, and any major successes or achievements which you want to draw to the reader's attention. This is often best done using a succession of bullet points. |
| 7. |
Avoid making your CV too complicated in layout and design. Many agencies and employers feed CV information into a database using scanners and Optical Character Recognition programs which may fail to interpret complicated formatting and small fonts. |
| 8. |
Do not put everything in capitals. It is difficult to read and can be very annoying. Always use mixed case headings and text. |
| 9. |
When sending a CV, include a covering note which explains the geographical areas you are prepared to work in, the distance you can commute, details of your present salary and the sort of work you are looking for. If you are looking for a particular type of work then you should also explain what this is. You should also include a day-time telephone number where you can be contacted if possible. Recruitment consultants are trained to contact candidates with a maximum of discretion. |
| 10. |
It is a good idea to attach a "skills summary" to the end of your CV or else include a section on the first page (as long as this is not too long). This should detail any technical accreditations you have obtained, key technology strengths, and the various packages and hardware you are familiar with. Do not waste your time by including the names of packages you know nothing about. Show the degree of proficiency you have acquired or the amount of experience you have of each item. |
