How To Prepare a Resume / CV

"To be prepared is half the victory" - Miguel De Cervantes

The critical first step - How to prepare a Resume / CV.

Writing a CV can be a daunting prospect, especially if your confidence has been dented, or you haven't written a CV before, or for a long time.

However if you take a little time to prepare and follow the instruction here everything should soon fall into place.

The CV is a document (paper or electronic) that conveys your skills and experience in a way that compels the reader to interview you.

In other words it SELLS you honestly but firmly, leaving the reader no choice but to interview you.

Grab the reader's attention quickly.

Therefore you need to carefully interpret the job specification or advert, and list what you feel they are looking for in order of importance, and reflect that order in your CV layout.

In the case of a speculate approach to a company, you still need to research about the company to understand their objectives, interpret this into the skills they will be looking for, and prepare your CV around this research.

CV Headings / Content

Your CV is built of blocks of information all about you.

The way you order these information blocks is purely for the benefit of the reader, and this is VITAL!

You must give them what they want most - FIRST. Much has been written about a CV having to hit the readers target with 20 - 30 seconds of being read. So this is no time for subtlety or undersatement.

If for eample you are responding to an advert for a experienced SAP Project Manager, make sure that after your name, and prefered contact details, you lead with a summary, or profile, or executive statement, or objective (whichever you prefer).

That clearly states that you ARE a highly experienced, SAP Project Manager (providing this is true).

Don't be tempted to tell a long story of career progression, from software developing on leaving education, through technical design, finally ending up at Project Management, or you may loose their interest.

Give them what they want FAST.

Typically a CV or Resume will contain some of the following headings:-

• Your Name
• Personal Information - Address, Gender, Nationality, Drivers Licence, Marriage status, Dependants, Age. Note: It is your choice what personal information you wish to declare. Some regional employment law asks you to leave age and educational dates out of the CV / Resume.
• Contact Detail - Telephone numbers and email address - state your preference.
• Objective Summary - Your statement of what you are looking for.Note: Be very CAREFUL about using an Objective Summary. It is very powerful if your objective and the readers are aligned. But if your statement is misinterpreted or not exactly what the reader is looking for they will use it to rule you out. If in ANY doubt leave it out.
• Education / Qualifications
• Training / Certification / Licences
• Employment / Career History
• Voluntary work - Optional - Can be embedded in Career History or added at the end with or in place of Interests / Hobbies.
• Skills Summary
• Profile / Professional Summary
• Achievement Summary / Honors and Awards
• Thought leadership / Articles / Public Speaking
• Hobbies / Interests - Another be careful - If it / they can show some positive relevance to the role great - If not leave it out.
• References - Include References on request statement only - no detail.

Whatever you do on your CV dont lie!

Not all of these Headings / Categories need to be added, just the ones that promote you in the strongest terms for the role.

Hopefully you have your CV well organised in a folder on your computer, because you must tailor each CV to fit the role, and therefore you will need to organise different versions of your CV. You may need to cut and paste the order of the content, and the details for each peice of experience.

Don't simply keep adding experience, allowing your CV to get longer and longer over time, brutally edit give more copy space to information and experience that is going to interest the reader, minimise or remove experience of lesser interest to the reader.

If you find this information helpful, our free ebook "How to Prepare a Resume for Interview Success" will be of interest.