Ten ways to write a winning CV
Follow Swiftwork.com's guide for up-to-the-minute CV writing to ensure yours won't end up at the bottom of the pile.
Follow Swiftwork.com's guide for up-to-the-minute CV writing to ensure yours won't end up at the bottom of the pile.
While fashions in curriculum vitaes seem to change, there are some fundamental principles you should always apply when updating yours. Here’s a top ten.
1. Purpose of the CV
Golden Rule Number one is to remember that they don’t get you the job – you do that at a meeting. Like any marketing material its primary purpose is to make it easy for the person reading the CV to see that you could meet their needs. So it gets you the foot in the door. Treat it as a record of your working life.
2. Layout and Design
3. Order
4. Things to Avoid
5. Achievements
You need to illustrate your value to your future employer. Think about it – does Ford sell cars by their features? ‘Four wheels plus spare.’ They sell benefits: ‘a cool drive in the summer’ (air conditioning), ‘increased safety’ (air bags etc). This illustrates the difference between a feature and a benefit. A job description is a feature, your achievements are the benefits. Your value to an organisation is the benefit you can demonstrate. For example: ‘a marketer with a record of tripling people’s profits from my campaigns.’ Here the feature is the marketer and the benefit is the tripling profits.
6. Core CV and Tailoring
When you first write your CV include every achievement. The document you create will be your core CV, which is never sent to anyone. From your core CV you tailor for each audience by choosing only those pointers that will interest the receiver.
7. Language
8. The covering letter
Keep it brief and include only information which complements the CV (and doesn’t repeat any information in it), such as how your skills can be of interest to their business.
9. Other matters which make a difference
10. CV Maintenance
Most of us only start to write a CV when we need it. If you’re in this situation, you’ll be tearing your hair out remembering your achievements and dates. Your core CV should be a live document. Update it regularly so that you can immediately tailor it when you need to.
Nicola Carew is Business and career coach at CWL Development Coaching. This article first appeared on Swiftwork.com.