Over 40s Self Employment Study Blog News Links Jobseekers Success Kit Home

How to Write a CV

If you don't know how to write a CV, your chances of getting a job interview are greatly reduced. For those of you who are just stepping out into the job market, writing your CV may see like a daunting task. First of all, what the heck is a CV? CV is short for curriculum vitae, and that simply means "the course of your life" . A CV is the document which you send out to prospective employers, giving them information about your education, qualifications, work experience and skills.

If you live in the US, what we in the UK call a CV is known as a résumé, except if you are applying for an academic post, in which case it's also called a CV. There is very little difference between the two documents, as UK practice gets closer to the US formats. In this article, a resume is considered to be the same as a CV.

You probably didn't learn how to write a CV at school, but it is one of the most important things you need to know when you start looking for a job.

A good CV will get you a job interview, a poorly written CV will end up filed in the bin. These days as many as 400 graduates are applying for some jobs, so it is absolutely crucial that your résumé stands out amongst the crowd. This is how it usually works: employers will scan CVs to decide who goes through to the next round, where the "winners" will be read properly and then a few lucky people will be short-listed for interview.

That first round of scanning involves looking at each application for 10 - 20 seconds. If the employer doesn't see what she's looking for, yours is toast. So you can see that résumé writing is an important skill and one that you should learn thoroughly!

So how do you create a CV? You can use a professional résumé writer or CV writing service, but these can be expensive. And there is a problem - you need to target every application for the job in question. So it needs to be slightly different every time you send it out. The thing is, professional CV writers know what they are doing and exactly how to write a great résumé, but they don't know you or the job for which you are applying. And your CV is about you and your ability to do that job.

So unless you actually spend time with the person writing your CV and they study the job description it's to be aimed at, your CV will not be properly targeted. Of course, some professional résumé writers do offer that service, but it will come with a very high price ticket. So if that's not within your budget, the best thing you can do is to learn how to write your CV yourself.

At the other end of the scale, you can copy a free résumé from a book or the internet, but this will be even less likely to succeed, as it has been written about someone else and simply substituting your details won't give an accurate picture of your skills and experience. On the other hand, looking critically at sample résumés is a good idea as it will give you ideas and inspiration. Just don't copy huge chunks of it and then try to pass it off as your own! But don't worry, resume writing is an art which can be learned and you'll find some good CV tips in this article.

You should start by creating a reference CV, which will have everything you've ever done relating to work or education on it. But you never send this out - it contains way too much information, some of which will be irrelevant to the job in question. What you have to do is this: extract relevant information and use it to customize your CV for each application. This may seem like a lot of work, but you'll get faster as you practise and this will greatly increase your chances of getting that interview.

Read the rest of this article

Islington, London - N1 -Tel: 020 7713 5944