Photo Credit: www.open.ac.uk
Your CV is almost invariably the first point of contact when job hunting. Getting it right is more than making sure you’ve accurately and chronologically listed your education and employment history, and have the right references. Getting your CV right is about scrutinising every last detail and looking at what it all says about you as a person. Your CV represents not just your educational and professional past, but you as a whole. It can be a brutal world out there for a job-hunter so give yourself the best chance. Spending plenty of time making sure your CV is perfect down to the last detail is time very well spent. We, at CA Financial Appointments, have some salient advice based on our extensive experience with thousands upon thousands of CVs. Ignore at your own peril!
“Immediately available!”
Are you really? There are some people who believe that not being immediately available will seriously harm their chances at getting a job. Now you may well be immediately available, having already left your last job, and that’s fine, but make sure your CV reflects that. Too many times we see CVs that declare a candidate is immediately available yet their current job stint states that they are presently employed. Details such as this don’t get overlooked and they put your CV in a bad light for not being accurate. If your CV isn’t honest, are you likely to be?
If you are employed and not immediately available, it’s OK! Notice periods are normal and job hunts aren’t restricted to those currently without work. Any future employer will be prepared for you to work out your notice period. However, should you, for some reason, have a longer notice period than usual, do make that clear from the get-go.
Typing mistakes
We’ll keep hammering this point until we see no more grammatical, spelling, punctuation, typographical (do not use caps!) or copy-paste errors coming through with the CVs we receive. Always proof – multiple times! You could be the most perfect candidate for the role, but if your CV is littered with typos, it won’t look that way. Get someone else to proof if need be. There’s no reason to take it personally – even the best writers make mistakes.
Work duties
We’re aware that you are pushed for space on a CV in trying to keep it to 2 pages and no more, but we still need to know something about what you did at each job you’ve listed. It’s not enough to simply state the employer. A simple, succinct bulleted list will do and will keep it economical for space. Another point to mention here is the dreaded copy-paste. You may well have had multiple jobs in which you did the same things, but find a way to describe them differently. It does not look good to have carbon copies for each work duties section.
We need months as well as years!
This happens too much. We don’t need your specific start and finish dates to the day but we do need the months. We often get CVs that list timespans at companies by year only. How are we to tell if you were in a job for 2 years and 1 one month or 2 years and 11 months? It makes a difference!
When we, or any potential employers, pick up on a lack of attention to detail in a CV, it puts us off completely and can mean yours is taken no further. It’s a silly reason to not be considered for a job and one that is 100% in your own control. Do not underestimate the power you can both wield and lose when it comes to your CV. Put the effort in – it will pay off!