CV Writing

How a few good CV writing habits starting NOW will hold you in great stead for the rest of your career...

Preparation is critical; the best Resume builder in the world would not build a house without a blueprint and land survey, not if they wanted to stay in business.

Your CV is a vital career building document that done well will reward your upfront effort to the tune of many, many, hundreds of thousands of pounds or dollars over the course of your career.

The intention of this page is to help your CV writing by embedding some simple good habits and discipline that will pay you back BIG!

These break down into some very simple organisational plans that will make it simple for you to tailor your CV, quickly, and effectively.

You may think that you will skip CV writing completely and simply hire a pro CV writer to do it for you.

But you will still need to provide them the basic information, from which they canweave their magic.

So let's get this organised, once it's done you will continue to add information into it throughout your career, but the basic organisation is done FOREVER.

What you want to do is build a simple folder and file structure on your PC or Mac, if you don't have a one borrow a friend's and keep your CV folder on a disk, which you can then use on any PC or Mac anywhere.

1. Create a folder and name it My CV or whatever reminds you.

2. Then add a page for each of the headings listed below

• Address and preferred contact details (phone and email).
• Personal Information, gender, nationality, driver license, marriage status
• Education / Qualification
• Training and certification details.
• Career history covering the companies, roles / title, dates and roles and responsibilities, achievements.
• Any other areas of responsibility, for example voluntary work, or team captain, head boy or girl at university or college.
• Any thought leadership examples, articles published, public speaking.
• Any honours' or achievements.
• Hobbies and interests
• Positive personality and behavioural traits you have get friends, family or colleagues to help if needed.
• Membership / Associations

Note: You may feel that you will never need a page for Other Responsibilities, Awards, Published Article or Testimonials, but I urge you to keep them, and add content to one or more of these pages as it WILL set you apart from your competitors.

Top Tip: Testimonials - It's very easy to get a testimonial from somebody you have done a good job for.

Clearly you must have done a better than average job for them.

Confirm with them that they liked your work and ask them to drop you an email or letter to that effect.

This is a GREAT habit to get into. I cannot stress this strongly enough, and if you get into the habit of asking, it's really easy to do.

Why bother adding testimonials?

When writing your CV you can add testimonials to both your CV and also cover letters.

Imagine you have done your research and you are applying for your dream role.

For example a project management role.

You've got a good CV, and you have identified through your research that the role demands previous experience in a high pressured customer focused project environments.

You start your CV with a punchy profile statement or summary statement (it doesn't matter what you call it), for example,

"Ambitious, successful, project manager, delivers against time, commercial and client relationship objectives; proven within complex and challenging projects ".

You have just given your reader exactly what they are looking for immediately on starting your CV. Will they carry on reading... you bet they will....?

However they may harbour thoughts along the lines of

"It's all very well writing it on a CV, can this person really prove these statements".

Now imagine the same scenario this time after your profile statement you have a concise testimonial, in the example given this would be very powerful coming from your boss, but maybe even more powerful coming from the customer?

"Jane was a pleasure to work with, not only delivering the project to strict targets, but keeping us informed throughout - An outstanding achievement." signed with the customers full name, company and position (this will need to be reference able).

Wow! Now even the most sceptical of readers would be hard pressed not to pick up the phone and invite you to interview right then and there.

This is a really powerful and very rarely used tactic, that achieves fantastic results.

A few cautionary words over its use.

• Don't over fill your CV with Testimonial's, my view is that up to 5 is maximum, dependent on how much experience you have.
• Only use them to emphasize points which are critical to the reader.
• They must be reference able - Don't make them up.

Record your experience and achievement in business terms

I suggest using the STAR Method for answering tough interview questions; use the same formula to record your experience in business terms.

What I mean here is that whatever role you had was in some way vital to the business, no matter how junior. They would not have employed you otherwise.

Therefore record your work experience in terms of the objectives of the role and how these objectives supported the overall business strategy, any measurements used, what skills or methodology you used to perform your role, what you learnt and achieved.

Use tangible precise values wherever possible. For example in sales it's about number of sales, targets, pipeline, key customers, for customer service it may be around customer satisfaction figures.

If you can convey through your CV that whatever role you undertake you never lose sight of the overall business objective of the company, no matter how minor your role, you will be in a very, very small percentage.

Embed these good habits now, and I promise you, you will never look back.