In 2012, the jobs market is an extremely tough and unforgiving place to be. With so many candidates going after every position, you won’t be granted any favours by employers if they deem your CV to not live up to the required standard. With this in mind, you need to spend a significant amount of time perfecting your CV – after all, it is the first impression an employer will have of you so it is vital it represents you in the best possible way.
The Essentials For Your CV
There aren’t too many hard and fast rules about CV presentation, but there are some details that are essential to include. These are:
- Your name and address – It helps for an employer to know who they’re dealing with, and if they want to correspond with you by post, they will need to have your address.
- Up-to-date contact details – You’re going to be wasting your time if you don’t include your most recent number or email address. The last thing you want is for an employer to be interested in you only to be unable to contact you because you listed your old details.
- Career history – This seems obvious, but people make obvious mistakes. It’s essential this is up-to-date, starting with your most recent job as well as the dates of each employment. Make sure you explain in your CV every gap in your employment as an employer is going to want to know what you were doing during this time. If you don’t have a particularly extensive job history then you can include any work experience, part-time or voluntary work you have undertaken.
Tailor Your CV for Every Application
Many people will make the mistake of recycling the same CV for every single job application, regardless of the job role or experience required. However, an employer experienced at looking over CVs will spot this a mile off, and it won’t look very good if you’ve not taken the time to craft your application for the specific role.
There are various aspects of your CV that you should tailor, and the first of these is your personal statement. This is just a short paragraph summarising your skills and qualities that you will expand upon in your covering letter, but you want to make sure that you emphasise abilities that will help you get an interview for the position you are actually applying for.
When it comes to your employment history, you need to make sure that you’re detailing your experiences and skills that you’ve gained during each job, and again you’ll want to emphasise the skills that are relevant in this instance.
Proof Read, Proof Read, and then Proof Read Some More
Even if you don’t think good spelling and grammar will play any part in the eventual job, poorly structured sentences and extensive misspelling will severely affect your chances of getting an interview. Don’t think you can rely on your computer’s spell checker to catch all of your mistakes either, as they will often miss things that are simply out of context or offer a correction that doesn’t actually make the sentence sound right.
When you apply for any job in today’s economic climate, you will be up against many other candidates. By revamping your CV and making sure it fully demonstrates your abilities, you will give yourself the best possible chance of standing out from the crowd. Regardless of your skills and experience, a poorly presented CV will not get you through to the next stage, so be sure to follow this advice to give yourself the advantage in the jobs market.
This guest blog was written by John Rooney on behalf of Morgan Hunt, one of the UK’s leading recruitment agencies.