There are some common mistakes people make on their CV. Here, Kushal Karki from Inspiring Interns, lays out ten simple steps candidates can make to ensure they stand out from the competition
1. Write a punchy personal statement
Personal statements (the summary at the top of your CV) should be short, concise and punchy. It should emphasise your key skills within four-five lines. This can make the difference between a good CV and a bad one, as it gives employers a quick insight into your skills and personality. This will likely determine whether they decide to read the rest of your CV.
When writing a good personal statement, ensure to include who you are, what you can bring to the table and your next step goals. Use Google to look at samples for your sector.
2. Tailor your CV to the role
With high competition, a vague CV would do little to show you’re interested in the role. Here are some tips in how to ensure your CV is tailored to the role you’re applying for:
– Research the company – ensure you know what they do and what their industry is.
– Look at what they are asking for on the job spec and highlight your relevant skills and experiences. If the job spec asks for excellent written ability and you contributed to your university’s magazine, make sure that’s on your CV.
– Cut out irrelevant information. If you volunteered with animals but are applying for a marketing role, consider replacing this with a more relevant bit of experience.
– If you are struggling to include relevant experience on your CV, think about how the experience you have applies. For example, you worked as a retail assistant and are now going for a business development role. The experience you gained in customer service and speaking to members of the public is transferable for a job in business development.
3. Use action words
It is important to realise that your CV is a sales tool, you are trying to sell yourself to employers.
Too often applicants tend to use passive verbs, which list and describe the nature of past roles and experiences but does nothing to demonstrate an actionable skill.
Action verbs make your achievements loud and clear. Listing your measurable and concrete accomplishments is much more attractive than a list of tasks you have completed (passive), it establishes to the employers what you can bring to the company.
It is important to realise that your CV is a sales tool, you are trying to sell yourself to employers.
4. Double-check
Employers do check your CV. Some of the common mistakes people make are; spelling and grammar mistakes, missing dates, sending your CV to the wrong company and having a poorly formatted CV.
Ensure to double-check your CV, or have it read by a professional if you’re unsure, nowadays this can easily be done by the wealth of CV critique services available online. If you can’t afford a professional to look at your CV, allow a friend or family member to take a look. They will likely be more able to spot mistakes that you won’t have noticed.
5. Keep it to up-to-date
While you’re on your job hunt, it’s important to keep gaining new skills and experience as you search. These experiences can go on your CV and prevent a gap forming. This could be a volunteering job or a short course to enhance your skills
Keep updating your CV with any relevant skills you pick up, or courses you attend while job seeking. This will make your application more attractive and help avoid employment gaps.
6. Have more than one CV
To save yourself from having to keep editing CVs back and forth, having multiple CVs aimed at different roles is a good way to save time. For example, if you’re looking for marketing roles, you might have one more aimed around content, one around analytics and one more around communications.
Even though these CVs might be almost identical – those small differences could be what helps push your tailored CV to the forefront.
7. Choose an easy-to-read font
Some fonts are no-gos for your CV. Although you may want an artistic font to make your CV stand out, if it’s unclear to read, whoever is reading it will be put off.
Safe bets: Cambria, Calibri, Garamond.
Definitely not: Comic Sans, Times New Roman, Courier.
8. Don’t bunch up text
There are few things worse on a CV than one where the person has tried to cram as much onto one page as possible so text is bunched up tightly with narrow margins.
9. Keep it to 1.5 pages max.
A CV should be a summary of your most relevant skills and experience, therefore it should never be longer than a page and a half. This is particularly true if you are early on in your career.
Remove any irrelevant experience which detracts from the highlights of your CV or try and write about your experience more concisely. Sometimes this requires being ruthless. If you are struggling to remove words, get a friend to help you.
10. Don’t include a photo
What you look like should not make any difference on how qualified and suitable you are for a job, therefore it is best to not include a photo.
