A CV details your work experience, skills, education, qualifications and interests for a potential employer. You need to convince them that you are the right person for the job, and help you progress to the next stage of the recruitment process.

CV is short for ‘Curriculum Vitae’ – a Latin phrase meaning ‘the course of one’s life.’ It is a written document that details your work experience, skills, education, qualifications and interests for a potential employer. The job of a CV is to convince them that you are the right person for the job, and help you progress to the next stage of the recruitment process.

Did you know that most CVs are looked at for an average of just one minute?

That’s how long you have to grab the attention of the person recruiting and make them want to invite you to an interview. For this reason, it should ideally be no longer than two sides of A4, providing a brief professional overview of who you are.

There is no ‘right way’ to create a CV

Different sectors have different requirements; a lawyer’s CV will look very different from an advertising project manager’s CV, which will be entirely different to the academic CV of someone applying for a higher degree. You can research examples of different styles and types of CVs online, or by making contact with someone who works in the sector in which you are seeking employment.

It’s OK to have more than one CV

If you are at the start of your career, or if you have multiple roles, you might have several versions of your CV so that depending on what you are applying for, you only have the relevant information on that CV.

Include

Your name: make sure this is clear and the first thing the employer sees.

Your contact details: your phone number and email address. Your email address should be simple and professional. A home address isn’t essential.

Profile or personal statement: a short statement that highlights your key skills, experience and suitability for the job.

Work experience: detail any paid or voluntary work experience. Include your job title, company/employer’s name, start and end dates of that job, and a short summary of your responsibilities and achievements in that role.

Qualifications and training: include the type of qualification, the subject, and date you achieved the qualification. You don’t need to include all your qualifications, just the most recent or relevant.

Education: include the name of your secondary school, college and/or university, and the dates you attended.

Additional Skills: this can be a useful way to share experiences that don’t easily fit into the other sections. This might include IT skills, First Aid training, or other languages you speak.

Interests: a short overview of your interests, hobbies and passions. You might detail membership of organisations, sports teams or clubs and particular achievements.

References: the name, email address and phone number of two people who are willing to provide a professional reference for you. Always check your referee is happy to provide a reference each time. Alternatively, a simple statement like ‘References available on request,’ enables you to brief referees only when you know a potential employer wants your references.

Don’t include

The phrase Curriculum Vitae.

Subtitles like ‘Address’, ‘Personal Statement’ — it’s obvious what these things are, and you are using up valuable space that could be selling your talents.

Your nationality and date of birth: this is unnecessary information unless an employer specifically asks for it.

Photos of yourself – it’s common in acting to include headshots, but it isn’t necessary in most careers.

1. Start by creating mind maps for each section. Writing everything you can think of down on paper will give you options to choose from each time you put a CV together. You can download our handy mind map templates below.
2. Re-write your CV for each job, selecting the most relevant experience and skills to demonstrate how you meet the person specification and job description.
3. Keep a detailed long list of all your experience, qualifications and skills so that you can select the most appropriate elements to include in your CV for each job you apply for.
4. Use high impact action verbs to describe your experiences and emphasise important achievements; using a thesaurus can help you find energetic replacements for words such as ‘led’, ‘delivered’ or ‘organised’, or check out our handy high-impact verbs list below.
5. Check your spelling and grammar. The most brilliant CV won’t get you an interview if there is poor spelling and grammar – it suggests that you don’t have good attention to detail and aren’t thorough.
6. Keep your CV to a maximum of two sides of A4 when you are starting out.
7. Think about the most appropriate order of the information, the layout and font of your CV. Make it clear, consistent and easy to read. CVs that pack a lot of text together like a book are difficult to read. Those with a clear layout with defined sections, highlighting important information at a glance are the most helpful for the reader.
8. Save your CV as a PDF when sending it digitally. This will ensure that it looks exactly as you’d like, no matter who opens the document
9. Get someone else to proofread your CV. Ask them what three words they would use to describe you based on reading your CV for two minutes — does it have the impact you want?
10. Double-check your CV for content, spelling, grammar and layout one last time before you send it.

You can use your CV preparation to help you create your LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn is a professional social media network. There’s lots of advice and guidance online about developing a high impact LinkedIn profile, which is especially important if you are going into a commercial sector like banking or law.

Copy: Anne Langford and Simon Pollard