How to Write a Great CV

Make sure your CV does it’s job!

When writing your CV you need to put yourself firmly in the hiring managers shoes, what do they want to see. No one likes a long, boring, bland CV. It needs to represent your personality and get across your skills and experience in a pragmatic way.

Take the CV below, if she needs any introduction, this is  Marissa Mayer – current CEO @ Yahoo. She has vasts amounts of incredible experience, but amazingly has it all in one page as well as getting across her personality too. If she can do it in one page, we all can!

There is plenty of CV advice available, but you can follow these key tips to help you brush up on your skills right now:

1. Headline. Your CV should grab someone’s attention and within 2-3 lines max demonstrate your unique blend of skills and experience. The idea being that a hiring manager should want to read on. 
2. Keep it simple. 2 pages max! Your choice of font and layout are key to making sure a would-be employer carries on reading your CV. Simple formats work best. Fonts like Calibre in 11 is ideal for this. 
3. Tailor your CV. Work out who or which industry sector your CV is destined for and tailor it to highlight the right aspects of your experience for them. In theory each cv you send should be different depending on the skills required for the role you are submitting for. That 10-15 minute of changes drastically increase your chance of interview selection
4. Use Examples. As well as writing your skills and experience, make sure your back this up with examples of where you have shown that in your recent experience. Project sizes, clients, contracts won, % saved, all this good stuff hiring managers like to see. 
5. Check and check again. Avoid errors at all costs. This means spelling mistakes, dates which conflict with one another and incorrect email address and phone number. The document is supposed to represent you and your work. 
6. Use references as an additional document. The use of references is so powerful in backing up your achievements, add them as a separate document with your application, this will act as a big rubber stamp