CV / Resume Checkpoints

23 October 2008  

Competition for employment is tough. On average 200+ applications are made for each job advertisement, so your CV really needs to stand out from the rest.

Your Curriculum Vitae will usually receive approximately 30 seconds for initial consideration. In that time you need to make an impact.

A few checkpoints for your Curriculum Vitae

• Your Curriculum Vitae should be a well-written concise document.
• Always print your CV on a good quality paper.
• Check and re-check it is well presented and laid out, use lots of white space. Avoid complex formatting, shading, boxes and stylised fonts.
• Try not to use long paragraphs and sentences.
• Be honest and stick to facts.
• Be positive.
• Include a personal profile that sums up your relevant experience, skills, achievements and motivations. Ensure that a little of your personality is also conveyed.
• Employers are interested in how you can solve their problems! Focus any work experience on your achievements and accomplishments, highlight the benefits that your work has had for a company.
• Avoid misspellings or grammatical errors (use a spell checker).
• Avoid Salary details, this can knock you out of contention before you have even started.
• Unless it is applicable to the type of work you are involved in e.g. modelling, do not include photographs
• Never tell readers what you do not have or what you have not had the opportunity to do yet, state clearly and confidently your experiences.
• Ensure your Curriculum Vitae is reader friendly to as many people as possible.
• Marital Status, Religion, Nationality, Children etc. have no bearing on your ability to do the job (don't feel obliged to divulge this information).

 Show full list of articles