What Makes a Good CV?

Follow these few steps to dramatically improve the quality of your CV:

Keep it simple, uncluttered and in an easy-to-read font (on plain white A4 paper).
Keep it free from unnecessary details (e.g.: don't write lines upon lines for your interests!)
Keep it free from spelling/grammatical errors - maybe ask someone to proof read it.
Check your personal details - sound obvious but it does happen (wrong phone number etc).
If you have a job spec - match your CV to this to ensure you have included relevant skills.
Believe it or not - there is no perfect CV. Just concentrate on making use of the kind of CV design that suits you best - chronological, functional or a combination of the two.

Education details - you don't need to include all your qualifications from 10 years ago. State your most recent qualifications and briefly cover older, less relevant ones
Work experience: most recent first and go backwards; unless using a functional CV
Key skills/areas of expertise: such as IT skills or languages
Extra-curricular activities if relevant to job being applied for!!
It would be ideal to include your mobile telephone number. There is a good chance you could miss a call if not at home. Also, and again, this sounds obvious - make sure you have a professional message on your answer phone - you never know who could call!
When emailing your CV, please take your email address into consideration. We regularly see CVs with email addresses along the lines of "lovedoctor@emailaddress.com" or "sexylady123@sillyemail.co.uk" - this will not help present a professional reflection of you. Consider obtaining a free email account from Hotmail or Yahoo and keep job application emails separate from personal email.
If you are sending your CV by post, ensure you use an A4 envelope and do not fold your CV - by the time it gets to its destination it could look a mess.

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