How to write a winning CV
Your CV is a sales pitch that tells a potential employer that your skills match their job criteria. It only has one purpose – to get you an interview. It has to be clear, concise, look good and sell your achievements. All in 20 seconds!
Daunted?
Feeling a bit daunted? If you’ve been out of the work place for several years bringing up children, or you’re thinking about a change of career, writing a new CV can seem a bit of an overwhelming task.
How do you explain several years out of the work place? How do you compete with candidates who haven’t left work?
The key to getting your CV into shape is spending time thinking carefully about your work skills as well as the experience you’ve gained during a career break to look after children.
Think of the things you’ve done during this period that are relevant to the job you’re applying for. If you’ve been helping out at a playgroup, this demonstrates organisational skills. If you’ve been a member of a school committee which raised money for new computers this demonstrates fundraising skills and team work.
If you’ve had a long career break you might want to write a functional CV which highlights your skill set, rather than the more standard, reverse chronological CV .
For templates of the two different CVs see functional CV and reverse chronolgical.
Your CV is not the place to be modest. State your achievements clearly and give examples of achievements or when your solved a problem.
Ideally a CV should be tailored to each job you apply for. It must be well laid out and easy to read. It should include contact details but does not need to include your age or marital status.
Below are some ideas on how to get started.
How long have you got to create the right impact?
A trained eye will take around 20 seconds to scan your CV. You must make an immediate impact because a potential employer may not get past the first half page.
What Makes A Good CV?
Imagine you’re the employer
Try to see your CV through the eyes of the employer. Make it relevant, easy to understand and interesting to read. Don’t be modest. Make it easy for an employer
Presentation
- Don’t waffle. The aim is two pages of quality information. Use the space wisely with plenty of white space for ease of reading and bullet points to keep it short and specific, avoiding cluttered text.
- If you have had a long career, concentrate on the last 10-15 years. Most employers aren’t too interested about what happened before this.
- Check your spelling!
Profile
Start with a profile and bring your CV to life by bringing out your personality and work ethic.
Style
Write the CV in the 3rd person. So say ‘self motivated’ rather than ‘I am self motivated’.
Achievements
- Focus on what you achieved in each job – don’t just give a bland job description. This is what employers want and shows initiative
- Highlight your key skills and attributes, either in each job held or as a separate heading to stand out.
Life experience
Highlight anything else that will put you in good light or shows that you have developed or demonstrated skills outside of the workplace e.g. voluntary work, outside interests and projects.
Qualifications
Highlight relevant work related training, qualifications and memberships of professional bodies in the CV.
With thanks to Steve Preston from SMP solutions.
SMP Solutions - helping you unlock your potential www.smp-solutions.co.uk
A quick guide to uploading your CV on Jobs4Mothers
When you upload your CV onto Jobs4Mothers.com, you can apply for the jobs listed on our site and our employers are able to view your CV and contact you about suitable roles. If it has been a while since you uploaded your CV we suggest you take 2 minutes to review your CV to check that it is exactly how you want it to be.
The process is quick and simple but here’s a short guide to help you.
1) log in
2) you will get to your account page :
- You are logged in as: yyy.xxx@gmail.com
- view the latest job offers matching my criteria
- browse the job offers
- browse the odd job offers
- edit my registration criteria
- edit my CV
- I am no longer looking for employment, remove my CV
- logout
- terms and conditions
3) If you want to edit your CV, click on 'edit my CV' which takes you to a new page
View your CV to see if you really want to change it.
If not press the 'no, I do not wish to change my cv, back to my account page'
If you do then us the browse button to locate the new document as a file on your computer (it needs to be a simple Word document .doc or a .pdf file)
4) Once you have found the document you wish to upload as your new CV,
press the 'upload new CV'.
5) Be patient and wait until you see this:
- Your CV has been uploaded successfully
- view my current CV
- back to my account page.
6) Double check that the correct document/version has been uploaded.
CV Review Service
Have your CV reviewed by the Harrow in Business team of experienced advisers. This service will include making recommendations for improving and sharpening up both the structure and the content of your CV in order to improve your chances of being called for an interview.
What you do
· Email your CV and, where available a job description of the vacancy you are applying for to info@hib.org.uk
· The cost of this service is only £24.99 incl VAT.
· Please also let us have your personal details i.e. name, address and telephone number and we will call you to acknowledge receipt of the e-mail and to take payment.
· Or send us a hard copy of the CV and job description to Harrow in Business, Enterprise House, 297 Pinner Road, Harrow HA1 4HS together with your cheque (payable to Harrow in Business) for £24.99.
What we do
We aim to reply to you by telephone, e-mail or post within three working days of receipt of the CV and payment with our comments and suggestions.
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