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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.

...but what should my CV include?

  • 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 it's destination it could look a mess.

Related Pages:

  • How do you write a CV?
  • What types of CV are there?
  • Explaining gaps in employment
  • What should be left out of my CV?
  • Improve a CV with power verbs
  • Why was my CV rejected?
  • Common CV writing mistakes
  • CV personal profiles
  • Writing an entry level CV

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