We recently published the article ‘Where to Look for Your First Job’, where we discussed having a good CV to give to employers. To really impress employers, you need to include the skills you can offer them, and make it clear how you can transfer these skills to their organisation.
If you see a job advert that includes a person specification (where the organisation states what they’re looking for in applicants), make sure you include what they ask for in your CV. This doesn’t mean lie (if they ask for a minimum of 3 years sales experience and you have none, don’t say that you have!), but it does mean you need to tailor your CV to each organisation you are applying to.
Tailoring your CV takes time unfortunately, but it does mean you will be more successful in your job search. Employers don’t want to see a CV that has been sent to 50 shops, cafes, bars and restaurants, they want to see you’ve done a bit of research on them and have the skills they’re looking for.
A few golden rules:
- Include all work experience. Worked for your aunt last summer? Do you volunteer at Scouts as a leader? Do you help at your dance school on Saturdays? Have you got a part time job in McDonalds? Have you organised an event at college? Do you play any sports / got any hobbies? Whatever you do / have done, include it in your CV.
- Make your CV easy to read by avoiding large paragraphs (use bullet points instead), use an easy to read font (Calibri, Arial or Times New Roman are good).
- Start your bullet points with verbs to describe what you’ve done (e.g. ‘planned’, ‘promoted’, ‘researched’, ‘achieved’, ‘developed’).
- Avoid large blank spaces on your CV – try to add more information or change your formatting (font size, margins, line spacing etc.) to use this space.
The following headings should be included in this order:
Personal Details
This should be short and take up as little space as possible. Your name should be the title of your CV (not ‘CV’ or ‘personal details’), in a large font. Underneath, ideally on one/two lines, include your contact details: address, telephone number, professional email address. sexyandIknowit@gmail.com is not a professional email address – use your name instead!
Age, date of birth, sex, ethnicity, nationality, health and marital status all do not need to be included.
Personal Profile
Consider adding a personal profile to summarise your key skills and experience at the start of your CV. Profiles are good as they provide a short introduction about you, to make the reader want to know more about you. A personal profile should be specific to the job you are applying for, with relevant skills and experience, plus your career aims (if you’re looking for part time work in a shop, you may write “looking for part time retail work to develop my customer service skills). Ideally a personal profile should be a maximum of four lines.
Education
List your most recent education first, going back to GCSEs. Qualifications should be set out in a clear format (see our example CV) and should include the following information:
- Name of school/institution
- Town (if this is not clear from the above name. Add the country if it is overseas.
- Dates you were there (month and year are sufficient, for example: 09/2015 – 07/2017)
- Your qualifications and grades (for example: ‘GCSE English (B)’)
Don’t forget to include what you’re currently doing, even if you have not completed it yet. If you know your predicted grades, you could include them.
Work Experience/History
Work experience should also start with the most recent first, including paid, voluntary, unpaid or shadowing experience. Information should include:
- Dates you were there (month and year)
- Job title and organisation
- A very brief outline of your responsibilities, achievements and skills gained, plus how these relate to the role you are applying for.
If you’ve had a few jobs, and want to highlight some experience over others, you could split this section into ‘Relevant Work Experience’ and ‘Other Work Experience’.
Additional Headings
Depending on the type of CV you are writing, you may want to include additional heading such as: Additional Skills, Language Skills etc.
IT Skills are important for many job roles, so you may have a section headed ‘IT Skills’, or combine this with any language skills for an ‘IT and Language Skills’ section.
Employers like to find out more about you so you may include an ‘Other Activities and Achievements’ section, to highlight any skills or knowledge gained outside of work or study, e.g. sports, music, societies, hobbies, interests.
References
A CV should end with references as a final heading. Make sure that you ask them first to check that they are willing and available to provide a reference for you.
You can either state ‘References available on request’ or include your referee’s details.
If you would like to use our template, download it here.
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