It
takes time to write a CV, addressing the issues and organizing the
information so that you sell yourself. The biggest error most people
make is throwing away a great chance by rushing a mediocre CV. Regard
your CV as work in progress and give it a polish every couple of months.
You never know when you will be asked for it.
As
a professional CV writer I have known people return to the same
agencies that had previously refused them, this time with a great
application that gets them noticed. The difference between managing your
career and just letting it happen can be more than the cost of your
home over the course of a lifetime. You need to take this task seriously
right from the start.
You do not
need to be headlining the trivial details of your life like your address
and what primary school you went to. You do not need to tell someone
that the document is a CV.
For each
occupation and each level of each occupation and for changes of career
and country there are key things you need to be saying that recruiters
want to hear. If you already know enough then spend some time listing
these key things before you ever start writing your application. If you
need more information, then start collecting it, start finding out what
buzzwords, concepts and competencies that will carry conviction.
A
boring format or copied job definition makes your resume dull to
recruiters who have to read lots of applications every day. You need to
reach these people where they get interested. The story of your career
needs to build up expectations that you are worth meeting. You need to
tell them the context in which your achievements have taken place and
let them know what value you offer for the future. Enter the page
content here.
Do not pepper your CV
with titles like PROFILE, CAREER OBJECTIVE and SKILLS like a template.
You can have an introduction to your CV but there's no need to label it.
All you really need is a few sensible headings such as PROFESSIONAL,
CAREER and PERSONAL - under which you can group your
skills/qualifications, narrative of achievements and necessary details.
Bulleted
paragraphs are a great way to save space and add impact but they need
to be congruent. They need to relate to the one before and the one after
in an intelligent way.
The medium
is in the message. If they have reached the third paragraph of your
letter and glanced at your CV, you have already shown them that you can
communicate. There is no need to tell them you are a GOOD COMMUNICATOR, a
SELF-STARTER or a GREAT TEAM PLAYER in so many words. It needs to be
implicit in your account of yourself, not stuffed under their nose as a
grandiose claim.
People cannot help
but be impressed by talented design and clever typesetting. Your choice
of fonts and styles, however, is somewhat limited by the restrictions of
email and online CV Builders. If you want to make a subtle and
sophisticated impression you need to use simple fonts and give bold and
cursive ones a miss.
Your letter
needs to sing, summarise, promise, capture the spirit of what's best
about you. Safe, boring, over-length, repetitive letters that
regurgitate your CV or try to match every single minor point in the job
definition will have one damaging effect on the reader - they will think
you are not very bright.
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