Top 10 Tips for a great CV

10th Jul 2009

By Matt Craven, Owner of The CV & Interview Advisors.

Here are our top 10 tips:

1) Include a brief Personal Profile at the start of the CV. This should explain what you are, e.g. an experienced IT professional with extensive configuration management expertise; a brief description of your key skills; and an indication of the kind of role you are looking for.
The profile is your 5 seconds to get the readers attention and will bring the rest of your CV into context. Note: avoid clichés such as “working in a team” and "excellent communication skills”.

2) Focus on achievements! Employers want to see evidence that you are good at your job, for example, you could write: “Responsible for selling products to corporate clients.” An alternative and more powerful way of writing this would be: “Responsible for business development resulting in a 20% increase in corporate sales, exceeding annual sales targets by over £15,000.”

3) Within reason, don’t get too hung up on sticking to a certain number of pages. Up to three pages is fine for a more senior level person. Often candidates produce an overly short CV that fails to sell them because they were more worried about the length of their CV than they were about including their personal selling points.

4) Use powerful words and statements backed up with evidence rather than passive terminology. For example: “Through effective Issues Management, reduced a critical issues backlog from 289 queries to minimal levels within only two months.” How much more powerful is that opposed to “Responsible for reducing an issues back-log”?

5) Avoid using the word “I”. This will prevent you from sounding self-appreciating or boastful. If a CV is written in the third person, you can be far more robust in expressing achievements and skills. Typically, the reader will read the CV as if someone else has written it about you.

6) Don’t be too modest! A CV is a sales document and should be written in such a way. When writing your CV, view yourself as a product and consider your CV to be your glossy sales brochure that you will give to your customers. If you do this, you are more likely to include all your personal selling points that are going to appeal to your potential employer.

7) Don’t try to be too fancy with fonts or layout. If you do want something a little more eye-catching, contact a Professional CV Writer for their advice.

8) Approach an interview as a sales call, you are trying to sell yourself after all. Rather than discussing your strengths and weaknesses, sell your features and benefits. Make sure that you articulate to the interviewer what skills you have that are relevant to the role and how these skills will benefit their organisation.

9) When interviewing, make sure you use specific examples. This is probably the most important advice I can give. If, for example, you can give a specific example of when you had to deal with an unhappy customer and give evidence that you were able to rectify the problem, it proves you have customer service skills much more than merely pointing out that customer service was part of your role.

10) Close the sale! This may sound strange but as mentioned previously, an interview is a sales call. It is very common for an interviewer to finish an interview and have reservations about some part of the candidate’s experience. Tackle this while you have the chance and ask the interviewer if they have any reservations about your suitability for the job. It is amazing how many times the interviewer will raise a concern that can be easily cleared up in the interview itself.