How To Create A Winning CV
For a recruiter or hiring manager to understand your CV, you need to include:
- Who you are
- What your professional background is
- What your skills and abilities are
- What you have achieved
- Why you are the best person for the job
Tailor your CV to the job offer.
The ultimate goal is to make it easy for the hiring manager to learn if you are a good fit for their organisation. Any experienced recruiter or hiring manager can decide within 30seconds. Therefore, your CV must be able to make an impact at first glance and tick all the boxes they are looking for.
Research key areas about the company and adapt your CV, giving the best impact and relevance to the role available.
Be concise.
Your CV is the key to an interview. So you need to be informative and straight to the point. Once you have secured an interview, then you can go into a lot more detail about your CV.
Pro tips:
- Only present experiences and skills that are relevant to the position
- Utilise grouped bullet points to list your skills and tasks.
- Write short and clear sentences.
- Do not go into loads of detail.
- We recommend a two page CV. But if you can provide skills and experiences that you know they’ll want to read, go for it, make it three pages!
Recheck it. Now recheck it again.
Recruiters or hiring managers can receive and read approximately 200-300 CV’s within one month. Having spelling or grammatically errors will mean your CV will be removed from consideration. It’s that tough!
Pro tips:
- Read and re-read your CV to correct all the mistakes. (Use Grammarly if you’re still not confident)
- Do not mix tenses.
- Look carefully at the language used in the job advert and use the same in your CV
- Make sure to send your CV as a PDF. Not only will it ensure that the CV is opened in the correct format, it looks a lot more professional.
Highlight your interests.
Employers love to see information that isn’t just about your professional career. They enjoy learning about your personality, hobbies and interests. It can determine whether you are a good culture fit for the company.
You never know, having a passion or interest similar to the recruiter or hiring manager could go a long way to secure an interview!
Pro tips:
- Express who you are by highlighting what’s important to you.
- Apply examples that you can relate to both your personal and professional life.
- Use your passions or interest to highlight what kind of person you are. For example, if you love sport, make that all about competitiveness. If you love reading, make it all about how analytical you are.
