CV Tips
The best CV’s are simple, clear, uncluttered and concise. Keeping it to two pages is a myth if you are at a senior level and have decent work experience to portray. If it’s an interesting read and it’s in a clear format it won’t matter if it continues to three or even four pages, but always keep a record of any project work, events managed, or creative work on a separate addendum or portfolio.
Profile: This should be an overview of your skills, competencies, and experience in brief – not a long list of what words describe you best. If you only had this profile to summarise your experience and what you are capable of what would you say.
Qualifications: Nowadays education is usually at the end of the CV. List your academic qualifications and grades in chronological order and your non-academic too. You can always state your graduate or any other professional status in your profile summary.
Employment History: Always start with your current or most recent role; include the job title and employer, employment from and to dates, a brief introduction of your position, your main responsibilities and principal achievements and ideally a reason for leaving.
Responsibilities:These are your day to day working responsibilities. List them in order of importance and be commercial.
Principal Achievements: Your day to day responsibilites are what you do, and what is expected of you. They do not set you out from the crowd, especially in this competitive market. You need to make a list of career achievements. Numbers are important as words here and if you can be commercial and display cost savings, or sales successes when you not a sales person this is where you can really shine.
Referees: It is not expected for these to be listed on your CV.
Interests: Detail any other relevant information, including your personal interests and achievements, i.e. Captain of Rugby Team, London Marathon, Charity Volunteer etc.
Addendums: This is a great way to display event/project management experience in chronological order and in a consistent fashion making quick referencing easing for the reader >>contact Royall Appointments for a sample event addendum template.
Portfolio/links: If applying for a creative role most employers expect to see examples of creative work, either online or in a hardcopy portfolio, try and always keep detailed and concise examples of what you have done in the past.
