what makes a good cv

what makes a good CV

Curriculum Vitae an outline of a person's educational and professional history, usually prepared for job applications.

One that attracts a recruiter’s attention in the shortest amount of time and makes them really want to meet you. The average recruiter only spends about 20 to 30 seconds glancing at a CV, which means that you have to grab their attention very quickly indeed.

You should therefore highlight what you have to offer at the start of your CV, rather than hiding your main attractions at the end. An attention grabbing summary and a list of major achievements at the start of the CV should help stir a recruiter’s interest in you and make them really want to meet you.

A brief guideline while writing your CV

• Keep it simple, uncluttered and in an easy-to-read font. Font Times new Roman, Arial or Verdana may be a good font.
• Keep it free from unnecessary details, e.g. don't write lines upon lines for your interests.
• Keep it free from spelling/grammatical errors, maybe ask someone to proof read it.
• Check your personal details. It may sound obvious but it does happen like wrong phone number etc.
• If you have a job spec match your CV to this to ensure you have included relevant skills.

what should a CV include?

• Education details - you don't need to include all your qualifications from 10 years ago. State your most recent qualifications and briefly cover older, less relevant ones
• Work experience: most recent first and go backwards
• Key skills/areas of expertise: such as IT skills or languages
• Extra-curricular activities if relevant to job being applied for
• It would be ideal to include your mobile telephone number.
• When emailing your CV, please take your email address into consideration. It is very often seen that CVs with email addresses along the lines of "lovedoctor@emailaddress.com" or "sexylady123@sillyemail.co.uk" - this will not help present a professional reflection of you.
• If you are sending your CV by post, ensure you use an A4 envelope and do not fold your CV - by the time it gets to it's destination it could look a mess.
   

References: http://www.e4s.co.uk, http://www.kent.ac.uk, http://www.naukri.com/, http://www.thecvstore.net