CV Advice

Being Honest on Your CV is the Best Policy

The winner of the BBC's reality programme "The Apprentice" faced a barrage of
criticism after he was hired by Sir Alan Sugar despite lying on his CV. Lee
McQueen beat 15 other high-flying candidates to land the £100,000 a year job
with the multi-millionaire business tycoon after a 12 week selection process.

Five Quick Tips to Improving Your CV

Five Ways to Improve Your CV

Need a pick-me-up to remind yourself how good you are, or are you simply keeping
all your options open and considering looking for a new job soon? Then it's time
to get your CV into shape. But what makes a good CV and how can you make sure
that yours is good enough to get you that all important interview?

Words to avoid in your CV

Creating a winning CV is a feat of strategy involving focus, wording, design,
and content selection. To achieve a career marketing document that wins
interviews, all areas of the strategy must be spot-on and consciously used in
the most effective manner. One of the most common mistakes job candidates make
when writing their CVs is the mistake of not paying attention to strategy and
word selection.

Five Tips for CV Writing

CV writing is usually not a job that people enjoy, as they perceive it to be difficult, but it doesn't have to be. Follow these top five CV writing tips and you'll find that it is a much easier task than you had anticipated.

1.Write your own CV. There are plenty of professional CV writers who will do a good job and by all means use them. But use the CV written by a professional as a generic CV from which to create your own targeted CV for each job.

CV Writing for Graduates

The most important part of a CV for school leavers and graduates is academic achievement. However, the points below are influential on whether you get selected for interview.

Presentation

Tailored CV's

Does it ever feel like, even though you send your glowing CV to recruiters and
employers by the dozen, with the expectation of getting a response but nothing
ever happens?

You have detailed all of your work experience and skills, attached certificates
and reference letters to accompany your application and still not a hint of
interest from a recruiter or employer alike.

How can I keep my CV up-to-date?

How often have you tried to put together a CV and had difficulty remembering the details of previous jobs? It's not just the dates of employment that you'll forget – tasks, projects and courses you were involved with are easily overlooked.

You obviously don't want to be redesigning your CV to incorporate every minor thing you do, but adding a quick bullet point when you think you're done something impressive or developed a new skill will allow you to retain the important information easily.

What are the classic CV mistakes to avoid?

It's deceptively easy to make mistakes on your CV and exceptionally difficult to
repair the damage once an employer gets it. Prevention is critical, so here are
the most common pitfalls, and how you can avoid them.

How can I tailor my CV to an audience?

For many job seekers, it's not uncommon to find 20 or so positions you'd like to apply for when conducting an online job search.

It may sound like a time consuming process, but making the effort to tailor your CV to suit the requirements of each particular job that you are applying for can greatly increase your chances of securing an interview. The following are the main areas of your CV that should be adapted to meet the exact requirements.

Personal Statement

What makes a good CV design and layout?

There are a few schools of thought suggesting you should shy away from an arty or funky design that may distract employers from the content of your CV in favour of a more conservative and clean format. But, you can have both, albeit with a bias to the conservative style.

Employers spend around 20 to 30 seconds scanning your CV so it needs to remain clutter-free and easy to read. The last thing a recruiter wants to do is to go hunting for the information that they are looking for and struggle to find it amongst the array of elaborate graphics.

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