Your CV is the most important document to get you a new job. It should highlight your successes and achievements. It should demonstrate the impact you’ve had during your career. It’s the foundation for your interview, and any applications you make. In short, it’s super important. Get it right, and everything else will flow from it. Get it wrong and you’re not going to get a foot in the door to be interviewed. And not many people get a new job without being interviewed!
I’ve written this article based on my experience of helping people to improve their CV. It doesn’t replace the CV power hour, where you get coaching from me on your specific CV and career, but if you want to make a start or have questions about your CV then you should find the answers in here. My approach is to improve the CV you already have. I rarely see a CV that needs completely reworking, more likely you have an effective base with a lot of the right information, but you can make some changes to make it more powerful. That’s what we’re aiming to do.
Just a little point of clarification here. I’m talking about the general CV, employment history, a couple of pages long. If your industry requires you to have a specific format of CV then some of the below guidance won’t be right for you. But if that’s the case, you’ll know it anyway.
One more point of note for good measure. Lots of people have opinions about what makes a good CV. These are mine, based on my experience in the corporate world, recruiting to fill different roles over the past 20 years, and working with over a hundred people to enhance and improve their CV to help them get a new job. There are other opinions out there, it’s up to you to decide which to apply.
So, where to start? At the top of course. Most people have name, address, email, phone number. You don’t need to put your full address, you could just put geographical area, or simply a post code. Do make sure there is a way of contacting you quickly and easily, so if you don’t frequently check your emails, you might want to leave a phone number too. One little point on email addresses; if yours could in any way be deemed inappropriate then please find yourself a new one, they’re free and easy to set up so no excuses!
Profile
The next section I suggest you have is your personal profile. This needs to be a paragraph that covers your skills and strengths, qualifications, and any attributes that a potential employer is looking for. I suggest you write a great paragraph and then review it every time you apply for a role to make sure it fits with the job description.
For example, if a potential employer is looking for a qualified Project Manager (Prince2) with more than five years experience, then (assuming this is true, your CV should always be honest) your profile should say “Prince2 qualified Project Manager with seven years experience of leading and delivering projects to time, cost and quality metrics.” Or something along those lines. The key is to play back the words that the potential employer has used to show that you have what they’re looking for. These days there are automated tools that review CV’s against this key information to help filter out those applicants that don’t meet the criteria, so it’s really important that you do this accurately. Some people suggest you use both the acronym and type out the full phrase too. For example APMP (Association of Project Management Practitioner). I'd make a judgement call on this depending on what the acronym is and whether it's well known in your industry.
The next thing to think about in your profile is the attributes that someone recruiting for that role would be looking for. Again there are probably clues in the job description but if they’re looking for someone who has “Excellent attention to detail” then you want to make sure that, if this is something you’re good at, you call it out. Just take a few minutes to think about or google what someone would be looking for. It could be leadership, or negotiation skills, or influencing, or that you’re analytical. Make sure you’ve included that in your profile. Use powerful words here to make these areas stand out. Don’t say you have good analytical skills, say excellent. Don’t say you have experience, say extensive experience of, unless your experience is limited and then “experience” is the best way to describe it!
Some CV’s that I see have a specific Skills section. I suggest that any key skills are called out in your profile, rather than on a separate section, because I don’t feel that listing the skills you have is a good use of space, because it's just a list of the skills that you say you have. Showing results is much better and we'll come onto that shortly.
Speaking of space, you have a limited amount of it in your two page CV so we want every word in that profile to count. So we’re going to take out anything that’s a given. Motivated is a given. Being able to work independently or with others is also a given. If I were recruiting I’d just expect that both of those things were true.
The other words to take out at this point are the words that make your profile conversational. We want it to be straight to the point to get potential employers to read it.
Example
I am a very experienced project manager and I have worked on numerous projects over the past ten years.
Reworded
Experienced project manager (10 years+) with multiple successful deliveries
Or even better
Extensive experience of project management (10 years +), with proven track record of successful delivery
Writing in the third person allows you to be more succinct, more easily reflect the requirements of the role, and it’s more powerful. So go through your profile and change anything that starts with “I”.
We’re still on your profile but I promise we’re almost finished. The last thing I want you to do is just sense check it. You’ve probably made a few changes so you might want to move sentences around and make sure you’ve covered everything you wanted to cover. Ask someone you trust to read it and check it makes sense. They might notice something you didn’t or recognise you’ve left something out that’s important to mention. It’s always worth getting a second opinion.
Key Highlights and Achievements
Now that your profile is done, most CV’s move directly onto employment history and experience. I prefer to add a section before these that pulls out your Key Highlights and Achievements. The purpose of this is to showcase the results you’ve achieved, and the successes you’ve had.
The top section of the first page of your CV is the first part a potential employer will read, so you want to hook them in and make them want to find out more about you. Remember the old adage “what’s in it for me”? Well the potential employer wants results, and outcomes. By showing them what you’ve achieved you’re demonstrating your abilities really clearly and hopefully in a measurable way too. Finally, by having a section at the top, you can disassociate the achievements from each role. So if something was several years ago, that doesn’t matter, it’s still something great you achieved and it doesn’t get lost in your employment history.
People often forget their successes, maybe because we tend to downplay them in a very British way, so you might need to spend a few minutes going back through old appraisals and job applications to remind yourself of these. If you’re finding it difficult, look at your career history and try to come up with the one big thing you did for each role. Again if you can get someone to help remind you then that's always useful too.
We’re looking for four or five bullet points in this section, focusing on an outcome you achieved and ideally some metrics to go with it.
Example
Led the implementation of new system for handling queries and reduced average call time by 2.5 minutes, saving £90k p/a
The first word should be a powerful action word such as:
Led
Reduced
Implemented
Increased
Delivered
Achieved
These need to be results you’ve achieved, so if it’s something you’ve been part of, focus specifically on the results you delivered.
Rather than:
Participated in project delivering £10m savings
Talk about your results:
Led the delivery of process workstream for £10m project, achieving 100% adherence ahead of schedule, and ensuring quality standards maintained throughout delivery period
If you’re responsible for achieving targets then make sure you talk about these here too. If the numbers are sensitive you could use a percentage as an alternative, or talk about the year on year increases delivered.
Example:
Exceeded sales targets for 5 consecutive years, delivering year on year growth of c.30%
Now you’ve got your key successes listed, what I want you to do is check the order of them. Which is best to go first? Make sure you put another strong example at the end too. You might want to re-order these depending on the roles you're applying for and what potential employers are looking for.
Employment History
Your most recent couple of roles should have the most information in, reducing down to a couple of bullets and then finally to just a list (with company and role) if it was more than 10-15 years ago.
For each role I usually show the company, job title, and dates from and to. You shouldn’t need to explain the company and what it does. as a potential employer will be able to google them and find out whatever they need to.
Sum up what you do in one or two sentences. For example: Responsible for all aspects of X including Y and Z.
If you can add in some information to show the breadth of your role the do so. For example: ...across more than 100 restaurants.
This is your opportunity to show more of your highlights and successes. Don’t repeat what you've already pulled out, but if you can add another specific achievement then do so. Following on from the above bullet point you might add something like “Implemented new ways of working across the business to drive efficiencies and deliver cost savings of £X per month.” Don’t forget to make sure it’s true again.
For each role in your (recent) employment history, go through the above steps. Remember the key here is to talk broadly about your responsibilities but specifically about your results and achievements.
If you have more than 5/6 previous roles than you can list them out, just the role and company, and I’d put the dates from and to in there too.
Gaps in Employment History
If you have any gaps in your employment history my preference is to address these directly and positively. For example, I resigned from one job to go travelling for a year and I say this in my CV and list some of the more unusual places I visited, such as China.
I also was lucky enough to take a few years off when I had children, and so I call this out too. If you’ve had time off because you were made redundant then add a section for that and say that redundancy afforded you the opportunity to take a break and spend time with family or learn a new skill. Show that you have dealt with it positively and it’s been of benefit to you.
Education and Qualifications
Once you’re through employment history then there’s usually a section on education and qualifications. Again this is usually an area you can summarise. If you’re educated to degree level for example, note your degree, the classification, and dates if you’re happy to show them. Then summarise earlier education (4 A’levels and 10 GCSE’s including Maths and English A-C) to show the relevant information.
You’ll also want to add in any relevant qualifications too. If you have a full clean driving licence I would say this here too. Don't be afraid of mentioning a qualification here and also in your profile section, particularly if it's relevant for the role in question.
Personal Interests
Finally, people often have a section at the end that talks about their personal interests. If you’re struggling for space then this is the least important in my view, so take it out. Where it might be useful is to help you build rapport with a potential employer, for example if you’re a junior football referee and their kids play football, it could spark a conversation and break the ice. Adding something interesting about how you spend your time also shows you are well rounded.
FAQ
These are answers to some of the questions I’m often asked. Again, this is my opinion, there are other opinions out there so please decide for yourself which to apply!
Should I remove jobs from my employment history so my age is less apparent?
In my opinion if you do then you’re not presenting a full employment history, and it could be interpreted as trying to hide the truth. Your CV is the first part of a process that will include an interview. Unless you’ve aged very well (and thank goodness for Botox these days!) it will be apparent when you meet a potential employer face to face. They shouldn’t be concerned about age but let’s be honest, if they are, getting an interview because you’ve tried not to show yours is going to waste your time and energy. In the event you do get through the process, if the screening picks up that you’ve not been entirely truthful on your CV, well that’s not a good start to the relationship with your new employer either. Personally I don’t think it’s worth it. Someone out there is looking for someone like you so show your best self on your CV and they will find you.
Can my CV be longer than two pages?
My view is that getting your CV onto two pages shows you can concisely and succinctly communicate key information, which is a skill that a lot of employers are looking for. As someone who has read a fair few CV's, if you have a pile to review you want them to be short and sharp and sell themselves in the first couple of paragraphs. Those are the CV’s that will usually be more successful. Less is more. I’ve rarely seen an excellent CV that’s longer than a couple of pages. I have seen a couple of outstanding examples but these were appropriate for the industry and role that was sought.
Do I need to update my CV every time I apply for a new job?
Ideally yes. I suggest you have one core (or master) CV and then tweak it when you apply for different roles. Employers make it really easy in most cases, they tell you exactly what they’re looking for. So tell them you have what they’re looking for (assuming you do of course). Use the words they have used in the job advert or description to make it really easy for them to see you’re a good match.
Next steps
I hope you’ve found this article useful. If you’d like some 1:2:1 support in improving your CV I offer a power hour where I coach you through the process and help you articulate your skills, achievements, and employment history in the most powerful way. The session is recorded and I send you the recording so you can play it back and update your CV in your own time. Drop me a message if you’d like to book, and let me take this opportunity to wish you all the very best for the future.
Photo credit to the fabulous Sam@Inspire Images