CV Tips and Guidelines
Your CV is a marketing tool. It is the first impression your potential employer will have of you so take time to get it right!
Your consultant at Chase Portland can advise you on designing your CV. However, any CV should generally follow these guidelines:
– Be as concise as possible. A CV between 2 – 3 pages long will focus the recruiting Partner’s attention and ensure that the reader maintains interest.
– Make it easy to understand, clearly laid out and split into clear sections such as Personal Details, Qualifications, Career History, Skills & Interests, Referees and Notice Period.
– Use bullet points rather than overly detailed sentences.
– Show your career in reverse chronological order.
– Provide full academic background and details of all relevant qualifications; Your educational history, academic achievements and work experiences should be listed in reverse order.
– Explain each role you have held and the responsibilities involved, naming each employer and the dates you worked there.
– List any achievements for each role you’ve had. Don’t just summarise your responsibilities.
– If you are able to include quantitative information, for example figures billed, range of value
of transactions and in more senior cases, following, then do include such extra detail.
– Explain any career gaps as it is highly likely you will be questioned about these in an interview. Do not leave this to chance. Employers tend to fear the worst when they see a career gap.
– Be Truthful. Never lie on your CV! At interview, or even at offer stage, shortcomings of your knowledge, experience, skills, personal details and qualifications are likely to be found out. It is really not worth the embarrassment or the very serious consequences of the discovery of false information on a CV.
– Show your interests in full and the benefits you have received from them (if any) but keep this section short.
– Run a spell check over the CV and then ask a friend or relative to double check the document for any grammatical and/or spelling errors.