If an employer is reading your CV, you've already made a good impression with your covering letter. You have demonstrated a degree of relevance for the advertised role and, more importantly, you've engaged the reader enough to think that they can expect to find more to recommend you. It is crucial that your CV develops and reinforces the groundwork you have laid in your covering letter, but it must do this quickly. Employers take only a few seconds to decide whether or not you keep your CV, so you have to convince them quickly.
There are six key elements to good CV writing that you should incorporate into your resume: Personal details; work experience; education; skills; interests and references. Work experience and education should be detailed in reverse chronological order, and unless you have just graduated and are applying for your first job, your education should come after your career history. Structuring your experience under a series of skills headings is becoming more common in the UK but be careful if you are writing your CV in this way, that you don't miss out important elements of your career history.
CV Style - be brief, concise and clear and don't go over 2 sides of A4. You don't need to write in complete sentences - bullet points are fine - but make sure each point demonstrates one specific skill, and back this up with numbers or other evidence wherever possible eg:
Use “strong” words to introduce your skills such as: “Initiated”; “Improved”, “Grew”, “Led” and avoid using the present tense (unless referring to your current role), to reinforce the impression of achievement.
CV Layout - Bold, underline and use bullet points to create a clear, clean and logical format. Create as much white space as possible - text heavy documents can overwhelm the reader and encourage them to give up prematurely. Use a clear, plain font and don't be tempted to attach photographs or create clutter with elaborate backgrounds.
Contact details - Include your name, address, phone numbers and email address. You can include information about your nationality, age and driving licence but these are not essential and avoid going into any further detail as this will be superfluous and only serve to clutter your CV.
Career gaps - If you've had gaps in your career, make sure you explain them either in the covering letter or in your CV. Employers and recruiters will immediately pick up on any inconsistencies in your history and are likely to want to find out what you were doing during this time. You're much better off pre-empting their assumptions with a summary of what you have been up to. Even in time out of employment you can develop soft skills such as teamwork, communication or project management. Career gaps won't get you into any difficulty as long as you can explain them.
Spelling and factual information - Always get someone else to read over your CV and check it for spelling (don't rely entirely on spell check), typos and other inaccuracies. By the time you have finished writing and reviewing it, you're less likely to pick up on errors that others will see straight away. Always check the spellings of organisations, towns, cities etc.
Keep it real - There's nothing wrong with highlighting the positives in your career and personal history but telling blatant lies will only get you into difficulty further down the line and could be immediately apparent to a potential employer. Try to imagine you are talking through your CV in an interview - if you are not comfortable with what is written down it will come across straight away in your voice, facial expression and gestures. Lack of confidence will not sell you.
Tailor it - Having spent hours perfecting your CV, the last thing you'll probably want to do is change it, but simply adapting the order of your skills and achievements to fit the role you're applying for will make a huge difference to your chances of an interview. As with the covering letter, keep referring to the job description to make sure your most relevant skills are highlighted. Don't copy standard CV samples - it will be immediately obvious and prevent your personality from coming through.
Interests - Keep these relatively brief if you choose to include them and try to use activities where you can demonstrate leadership, responsibility or creativity. Avoid verbs like “socialising”.
Don't mention salary - The interview is the time for financial disclosure and negotiation.
Set the scene - Always accompany with a good covering letter.
Tips for Filling in Application Forms | Covering Letters that Work
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