Hi Rupert, You're hired!
I used to see a lot of CVs in a previous role, and believe me, I've seen good, bad and everything in between!
CVs vary dramatically depending on the type of job you're looking for. I have a friend who is a university researcher, and my CV would never get me a look in at his place, whilst his would immediately be binned outside of academia!
The first big decision to make is whether you're going to use a chronological format (most recent experience goes first), or a skills-based one. In general, go for chronological if you want to show a career progression / climbing the greasy ladder over the years etc, but go for skills based if you have changed careers such that your new employers won't be interested in large sections of your previous employment, or if there are gaps in your employment history that you want to gloss over. Skills based is also very useful for where you want to tailor your CV to specific jobs.
As an aside, I once interviewed a chap for a job, who told me that he had been working "eh, offshore mate" for the past four years. When I quizzed him on his role during that time, it quickly became apparent that he didn't know one end of an oil rig from the other. I presume he'd probably been detained at Her Majesty's Pleasure somewhere, but didn't want to write that on his CV!
My own CV has a section called "Expertise", which is just bullet points of stuff I can do (stop expensive things from blowing up, size pumps, muck out chickens, tube lambs etc), which I tailor to each job. The second page then consists of "Key projects / assignments", and I have a bank of these that would cover a couple of pages if I included them all, but in reality I just pick the most relevant one page worth for each job I apply for (I've been working as a freelancer for the past decade, so there have been plenty!!). There is a very short chronology section, because I think people expect to see that. However, it's not given much prominence, purely because what I was doing fifteen years ago is not very relevant to the jobs I am applying for now.
Apart from that, the biggest thing I'd say is "don't tell me - show me!!". I had a bunch of CVs through a few months ago, and three of them said that the applicant "could work both independently and as part of a team", which I'm afraid is so cliche these days as to be utterly useless.
However, compare that with "For the past eight years, I have had sole responsibility for henhouse sanitation at Womble Smallholdings Ltd. This is an important job for animal welfare, which I undertook diligently once a week, working entirely unsupervised, whilst the boss had her Sunday morning lie-in". Then instead of just saying "I am reliable and can work as part of a team", how about "For the past five years, I have been Logistics Leader at Womble Smallholdings Ltd. Responsibilities included feed, water and anthelmintic provision for a team of up to thirty ORPs (Ovine Reproduction Professionals), plus childbirth assistance and seasonal shift-working when required. I was responsible for defining boundaries for the team, and for allocating fields of work to sub-groups, according to individual employee objectives and nutritional needs".
HTH!
P.S. Do get somebody else to double check your spelling etc. I saw a CV once which claimed "excellent attention to dettail", so you can guess where that ended up!
Topic: Writing a CV (Read 4147 times)
