This week's guest blog is from
Ruadhri McGarry from
MyNewCv.ie and he has written a blog post outlining the basics of presenting potential employers with a winning CV. So here goes:
CV Advice: The Basics
The most important thing to remember when writing your new CV is to realise exactly what it is, and what it is for. It is s a sales document for your personal brand, and its purpose, once in front of the right audience is to get you an interview, and to be a guide for that interview.
That means you control how you are perceived.
So, assuming you have name, contact details, education and reverse chronology of work experience, what must you have in the document?
No spelling mistakes or syntax errors
All word processing tools will point issues out, so use the technology. But proof read your document, better still have a third party proof it for you!
Put the phrase "Human Resources Manger" into a search engine and see how often simple mistakes are made and not spotted.
Benefits, not just Features
Don't just say that you worked at a given company, with a given job title pressing buttons. Be diligent in pointing out the benefits to the employer of each of your responsibilities.
"Led a team of Sales Agents.." is all very well, but is it as good as
"Led a team of Sales Agents to increased turnover and productivity within a three month period, expanding the team and exceeding all predefined targets"?
Less is More
Any more than three pages for almost any CV is a mistake unless you can justify it with Appendices or Matrices. A two page document is ideal for the majority of candidates, but don't let a job description 'bleed' from one page to another. Print out the document and pretend you're being interviewed. Does the interviewer have to flick between the bottom of one page and the top of the next? If so, you need to address this.
Look and Feel
Be simple, use a font such as Times or Arial, but don't use anything unusual as it may put the reader off. If the role requires creativity, it may be an opportunity to show off, but otherwise always play it safe.
Success Stories
Of late we've had a number of interesting successes with our clients. One client needed a CV updated to win an interview for the television show, The Apprentice. We tightened up the document, but we needed something spicy and different to make sure we got the interview, so we recreated The Apprentice Logo in the name of the candidate! Sure enough, the call was made and our client got the interview, one of tens from thousands of applicants.
About
mynewcv.ie is a Dublin based firm who use extensive recruitment and desktop publishing experience to create and/or improve jobseekers' CVs. For more information, please feel free to contact us by
email.
Updates
