GUIDE
What should be on a CV?
- Your contact details, use a private email
- A brief introduction of yourself and an explanation of what you have to offer to a potential employer
- Your work history, detailing your achievements and key responsibilities in chronoligical order. Put this in reverse chronoloigcal order and don’t have any gaps.
- Professional Memberships & Associations
- Important Qualifications
What not to put on a CV
- Your age
- References (just say ‘references available upon request’)
- Reason for leaving a job
- Professional Memberships & Associations
- Marital Status
How to write a good CV
- Use the 3rd person and not ‘I’ or ‘my’.
- Be concise. Avoid superfluous detail and repetitions.
- Use a clear professional layout. Nice styling is great, but readability comes first.
- Match the style to the audience. For a formal industry, use a professional style font. For a creative industry, use your judgment.
- Avoid spelling and grammar mistakes – send it to us!
- Have it read by a trusted friend who is familiar with your background. They might spot things that you have forgotten.
- Have it read by someone unfamiliar with your background, they can offer an unbiased opinion as to how clearly it tells your ‘story’.
What are some common mistakes?
- Just listing your responsibilities straight from your job description.
- Including responsibilities that would be obvious. For example, if you were an analyst, there’s no point including general ‘research’ as one of your responsibilities.
- So, when you do list your responsibilities, make them specific. For example “responsible for a team of 15” or “responsible for a budget of $5m.”
How long should it be?
- As a general rule, two pages.
- If you’re approaching the middle stage of your career and have built up significant experience, then maybe consider a third page.
- Remember – If recruiters are especially busy, they may not even read beyond the first page – so make an impact there.
How should a CV look?
There are no hard and fast rules regarding how a CV has to look, as we said before, just try to tailor it to the audience. For some examples you can download our templates here CVs/Résumés Templates