Advice & Tips for Preparing Your CV

Having worked in HR (Human Resources), Personnel & Training related roles for well over 15 years now and on top of that having been called upon by many relatives, friends and friends of friends to help them create their CVs from scratch or update their existing CVs, I thought, why not put some CV writing advice into my own words? WHAT IS A CV? The acronym CV is short for Curriculum Vitae also known as Resume (although the term CV is pretty much standard in the UK). It's a selling tool for individuals wishing to secure employment. It's a record of your academic and employment history, your key achievements and skills, as well as a chance to ...

I work for the UK's leading CV consultancy and this is the advice we give out: THE CV CV writing is a controversial subject - part art, part science. If you ask any two people their idea of the perfect CV, you are likely to get two different and rather subjective responses. However, there are a number of 'do's, 'don't's and common pitfalls, which most personnel professionals would agree on. If you bear these in mind when preparing your CV, you stand a much better chance of surviving the 'CV cull'! LENGTH Far too long - Probably the principal mistake people make when preparing their own CVs. We keep CVs brief and ...

I am approaching this from a slightly different angle as I used to be responsible for taking on new staff and so have seen hundreds of CV's. I can let you in to what employers are looking for, at least what I was looking for. I have probably appplied for around 30 jobs (in about 12 years) and had interviews for well over half of them so I think my CV writing skills are pretty good. Trivia time first then - CV stands for Curriculum Vitae which is latin for "The course of one's life", gripping stuff hey! It is known as a Resume in the USA. The CV should be seen as a tool to get you an interview for the job. No employer worth ...