Your
CV is basically a marketing tool and initially, is your ONLY
way to to make an impression to a potential employer when combined
with your
Covering Letter of course!. Picture your
CV as being in effect a brochure that advertises the list of
services you offer and explaining why you are very good at providing
these services. The service is of course your skills within
the workplace unless you are applying for professions such as
the legal profession (a lawyer for example) when the 'services'
you specialise in and 'advertise' will actually be the services
you have qualified in and are hopefully an expert in!
There
are a few basic points to remember when writing your CV:
The first
one being, 'would I want to meet 'me' after reading this CV'?
Ok, now think rationally here! people are naturally biased towards
themselves, but you have to view your CV objectively. For the
average Non Academic CV, try and limit your CV to 2 or 3 pages
Maximum. The reason for this is because employers are usually
very busy people...they want to take a look at the FIRST PAGE
of your CV, skim over it, and decide whether you are worth pursuing
or filing to section B (the BIN!).
Another
key factor is a Professional CV layout:
Being the
nice people we are here at Jobstopia, we have created a fantastic
CV
Template Library with a very wide range of ultra
professional FREE CV templates for you to create your CV with!
We strongly suggest you pick the most suitable template and
use it, because an amateur looking CV, no matter how good the
information within it, will usually get discarded by employers
before they even get past the first few lines....
Also, BE
TRUTHFUl on your CV!
This cannot
be emphasised enough. But there are a lot of ticking timebomb
CV's within current workplaces...DONT make your's one of them!
If you do land the job, and have lied on your CV, the consequences
could be disastrous if you do get found out. If you feel there
is an area you are weak in, try and improve it (night courses,
distance learning for example). If you've got some dubious gaps
in your CV, then visit the Jobstopia 'Good Reasons and Excuses
For Past Problems' page and work out the best way to explain
these timegaps!
It really
is a bad way to start off with a new employer and many people
get caught out at interview when they are questioned in depth
about their 'past acheivements'! It is much easier to answer
under pressure about things you actually HAVE DONE, rather than
things you would LIKED TO HAVE DONE! So make it easy for yourself
and be truthful throughout your CV!
Dressing
your CV up, or customising your skills to suit the job you are
going for, is perfectly acceptable, provided you keep within
the bounds of truthfulness and don't exagerate too heavily!
Once you
hopefully get to interview stage, you can expand on any points
in your CV that you feel you could add to (but didnt have space
as you kept it under 3 pages right?!), and can then begin the
next part of selling yourself to your prospective employer.
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