cv writing

cv writing

Mastering the Art of CV Writing: A Comprehensive Guide

1. Introduction to CV Writing

Enter the compelling CV: first, since your CV is most people’s first impression of you, you want to present a confident, optimistic, and proactive version of yourself. Second, you also want a CV that is tailored to the job you are applying for, and one which emphasizes your strengths and catches a recruiter’s eye. Third, you want to provide clear evidence that supports your words so that headhunters can easily detect whether or not your experience level and your skill set match the vacant position. And finally, if you are already employed, your CV must, on top of the three objectives mentioned so far, be up to date and ready for use at any time. If a colleague announces that he is about to leave, and the employer suspects that you might also want to try something new and interesting, it is an advantage for you to be prepared.

Recruiters at leading companies get thousands of applications for each job. It is said, in fact, that a job posting on sites like LinkedIn can easily get 100 applications every hour, resulting in an average of 250 applications for each new online job. Yet, even at the highest end of the eschelon, the number of such applications that are “clearly impressive” are very few. The number of applications that make you sit up and take notice, because they seem different in a positive way, stand out for originality and genuine achievement—these are an extremely stingy portion. Our experience is that at elite firms, three to five out of a hundred, as a rule, are good. And if there are fifty or so particularly good ones, it is considered a bumper crop. So if you want to stand out from the crowd, even if your application is heading for the “maybe,” “probably,” or “definitely not” pile, you have to put in a lot of work.

2. Crafting an Effective CV Structure

The structure of your CV will of necessity be determined by the amount of information that an applicant has with which to differentiate their candidacy in competing with other outstanding candidates. It is therefore an excellent principle to list the good, solid data first. Your goal is to produce a polished, professional and non-cluttered CV that is as readable as possible by a potential employer.

– Personal details – Personal profile – Education and qualifications – Employment history (while recent graduates may bring this, field- and/or internship experience should be included) – Skills and competencies – Hobbies and interests – Personal references

The following typical structure is mostly used for a CV:

The ideal CV is concise, well-structured and informative. An effectively structured CV should mirror the way in which your potential employer is likely to read your CV, touching on the key ‘attractors’ or major selling-points before addressing the finer detail. Important to remember is that the top 1/3 of the first page of your CV is where you can facilitate a lasting impression using valuable spacing and eye-catching headings. This is the area in which your potential employer will discern whether your skills, talents and education are in line with the job requirements.

3. Highlighting Key Skills and Achievements

When thinking about key skills, it is important to reflect on what has been learned from your degree and other study. For example, a degree is not just academic learning, but also includes transferable skills. Graduates develop a wide range of these skills across different elements of their course. For example, practical and laboratory skills are part of ‘wet’ engineering courses. For an electronic engineering or physics graduate, these skills are obviously very relevant. However, graduates in other fields also develop practical skills on their courses, and it is always an advantage to demonstrate these on a CV.

Bullet points are the best way to summarize key skills on a CV. A bullet point list is more than suitable in this situation. Remember to be concise and succinct. In general, a bullet list should not exceed eight bullet points. If your list of key skills is quite extensive, perhaps considering categorizing them into main sub-headings. This would provide a clear summary of the employer, making the skills relevant to the job being sought even more evident. The space saved using bullets, compared to a written list, can enable more effort to be spent on other sections of the CV.

4. Tailoring Your CV to Specific Job Applications

The first area to focus on is your qualifications, as particularly with academic sectors, meeting their requirements can sometimes be crucial. When you tailor your education history to an employer, you may not have to change a great deal. You can mostly leave your recollected qualifications as they are. Try to pay close attention to any formal educational prerequisites of the job. Then simply re-prioritize/re-badge those current qualifications in favor of the higher quality education you have listed. Consider expanding your recent academic achievements, excluding your high school qualifications. Use any exam results, for example, as another key skill. And try to use any other achievement type to compliment this, examples being: attendance of particular clubs or positive feedback on term projects.

This is where your hard work becomes considerably easier to tackle. It’s a thoughtful process that can involve some hard graft, but it’s a process that’s significantly easier than having to redraft every single word on your CV. If you recall from Section 1, your CV is made up of skills, work experience, qualifications, achievements, and a personal profile. When you tailor your CV, you will work through each of your remaining classifications and tweak them to suit the ideal job you are applying for.

5. Utilizing Keywords and Formatting for Maximum Impact

Where should you source your keywords from? Start with the job advertisement. No seriously – start with the job advertisement. The chances are that the employer has written a very clear list of all their main requirements – including academic background, skills, and experience. These keywords should be included in your resume. This doesn’t mean that you should be lifting entire sentences verbatim off the job advertisement to include as part of your own, but the job itself will list out the main points, and these can be re-worded to fit into your own writing. This is particularly true of skill-specific and technical qualification keywords – a lot of employers will be searching by these terms, and the fact that you’ve included these discreetly into the relevant part of your resume is a great place to start.

But before you delve into those superlative descriptions of what a fantastic worker you are, nervous employers should just take a chance on, take a moment to consider the keywords. Many companies now use software to search for the most relevant resumes, selecting which ones they wish to read initially. So, when submitting applications, how can you ensure that your resume is included? Having the right keywords, of course.

5.1 – Choose and use your keywords carefully.