Genuinely useful cv writing tips.

List your jobs (in bold) with dates and under each, put a couple of lines saying what responsibilities you had and what you got out of the job. Employers want you to be the person they need so show them you are.

Make sure there's plenty of white space on the page - don't try and fit too much on.

Don't have "skills and interests" as one section at the end - put "Interests" and list no more than,say, three (and be specific, e.g. don't put "cinema" or "reading", put "Italian cinema" or "contemporary fiction". Unless it's a bookish kind of job you're applying for, prefer sports to sedentary interests. (Don't put ilx, obv...) Employers seem to like 1. that you're active and 2. that you do things that have nothing to do with your job.
Then have another heading for "Skills" and put things like office software profiency if relevant to the job.

All rules are breakable under certain circumstances except this one: Do not have any spelling, punctuation or grammar errors. Get your CV proofed by as many erudite people as possible.

(Hi beanz!)

Here's an example functional CV. It's useful if you want a career change and have lots of the old transferrable skills but if you're going for the same kind of job it might look like you're trying to cover something up so use it wisely. http://www.alec.co.uk/cvtips/examfucv.htm

1) coloured ink
2) any kind of 'unusual' paper (cream would have been ok but nothing patterned, lined, brightly coloured, non-A4 etc)
3) handwriting
4) spelling/grammar errors (these were for teaching jobs after all)
5) non-standard font
6) lots of different fonts or text sizes
7) over three pages long
8) exclamation marks
9) big gaps in chronology/obvious lies

x-post - my wingdings CV might need a tweak, then?

(hi adam! glad you made it here and back ok)

tips for covering up the fact that I have quite a few jobs in a short space of time

Describe them as "projects" - would this work?

The big gaps in chronology is a bit less clear cut. My policy in the past was just to ask in interview if they made it far. The answer was usually: oh I was doing X, which wasn't relevant. Which is no problem, obv. CVs that went into great wibbling detail about every single irrelevant position the person had held were much more likely to get binned.

Mark C otm wrt profile. It's just more blah, and really belongs in the covering letter if anywhere.

also as to style, it's worth noting that the rules/preferences for CVs are likely to be different for different kinds of jobs (or even between different bosses in the same field). If the job is in the creative area then you can be slightly bolder with the layout etc. but if say it's for an investment bank you'd want it looking as "professional" as possible.

My whopping gap paragraph is brief and honest, something like "In January 2002 I was made redundant and I used the next three months to move to Glasgow and apply for new jobs" or something like that, I can't remember the exact wording. Well, at least they know I haven't been in prison and I wasn't sacked for using the internet in work time.

It has just occurred to me that, if my whopping gap paragraph was honest, it would include a month of non-stop GTA III. Ahem.

haha I was going to facetiously suggest 'mentor' too.

(also, the interview opened with "oh, our secretary has stuck a post-it note to your CV saying she doesn't think much of your secreterial skills. Luckily for you, she doesn't decide who gets the job.")

Is it ok to include posts I did for my blog under "publications"?

Maybe it depends on what you're interviewing for? If it's a writing-heavy job, I see a strong argument for having a writing-heavy resume.

two page limit doesn't apply in some fields. ask around in yours.

This next bit is debatable, but I don't put references on the CV itself, simply having the line 'References available on request' - that way I have control over who contacts my references. But opinion varies.

My opinion is that if you have an excellent reference name whose name will potentially blast open doors, put them down. Otherwise keep it to "References available on request" (mine says "Excellent references available on request", btw!), and leave the space to tell them more about who you are rather than who you know.

In the case of an internal job vacancy, it can really help sometimes, depending on the company.

it depends on what you're interviewing for?

graphic designer

in terms of a letter of application, these are so rare in my field that having to write one is weird for me. the main part i'm curious about is it asks to say my current salary and my expectations....is it bad to ask for more? the job is a small grade above what i'm doing now so i'd expect a few more k. but then i'd happily do it for the same money i'm on now too. what do people think?

US preference is almost universally one page. I know, it's crazy. All I can fit is my employment hist and major responsibilities at each. Maybe I shd say fuck it and go for two pages and move some of those "core competencies" to a special section at the top and thin out the history.

Worth going against the experts?

R, ask for a little more. If they want you, they're not going to rule you out for like 5K -- tho they may start with a low bid of course.

so resume's sent out for jobs in the US should be just one page? argh

should i excise menial retail jobs i've been doing in between actual office-based work, even if it leaves gaps in my employment history?

I think two pages is OK these days. There is no way I could do a one page resume at this point in my life. It shouldn't be more than 2 pages unless you're a PhD or something and have loads of publications.

yeah the other thing too is that if you ask for more, they're almost definitely not going to be like "you asked for a bit too much so you get ZERO" -- if they want you but can't pay you that much they'll let you know. this is an xpost to how much to ask for of course.

'professional' CVs can often be a lot longer tho of course (my legal CV is 5 pages)

(that was written and vetted by an agent and has a comprehensive breakdown of each of my jobs)

just copy this guy's
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/documents/2010/05/faisal-shahzads-resume.php?page=1

should i excise menial retail jobs i've been doing in between actual office-based work, even if it leaves gaps in my employment history?

― a cankle of rads (Gukbe), Monday, August 23, 2010 10:49 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

my feeling is yes, then change the heading for that section of your resume to something like Relevant Experience so that hopefully it's clear you're just highlighting the jobs that apply to the field you're trying to get into, not every single job you've ever had

^ Good idea.

Ronan, I would highlight that your salary was £X for a job doing whatever, and then say that for a role such as Y with x, y, z extra responsibility, coupled with the experience you can bring to the role from your current position, your expectation would be for a salary in the region of £X+5k or whatever figure you feel is appropriate. Make it clear that your anticipated higher salary isn't just you wanting more money, but that you have reasons for feeling you can command a higher salary than you were on previously.

Gukbe, I agree with n/a, I have the relevant jobs down as "Relevant Work Experience" and then at the bottom of that section I put in a tailored sentence or two saying that I have also undertaken a variety of temporary receptionist/clerical and whatever roles, and can provide further details if required. Shows I'm not hiding anything, just that I don't want to fill up my CV with full details of stuff that isn't relevant other than showing that I don't stay out of work if I can at all help it.

^yup co-sign n/a
xposts

thanks guys, good advice...

This may be obvious from the posts above, but just to spell it out ... in the US job market, resumes and curriculum vitae are two different things. A resume is very short (1-2 pages) and is preferred for most job applications. A CV is a longer, detailed summary of academic background, work experience, publications, presentations, awards, honors, affiliations, etc. As you get older and do more stuff, your CV generally gets longer, but you still want to keep your resume brief (perhaps editing it for relevance to the job you are applying for).

Good advice from Ailsa. In my recruiting experience an applicant who requests a increase in pay with confidence and reasonable justification(s) goes the furthest. Perhaps going in slightly on the high side to give a little negotiating room is possible.

Here's another question. When you guys are going for a job, I assume you tailor your CV to the individual job right? But THEN, what do you then call the CV? How do you store them all?

I have some that are sort of "general" and some that are quite specific but I don't want to send an employer a CV that says "GENERAL" at the end of it, and I guess I always do a tiny bit of tailoring. But for my own use I need to have some kind of idea what CV is what.

I rename them before I send them, always with "__tracerhand.pdf" (or whatever) at the end of the filename because the people receiving these CVs are most likely going to put them all in the same folder on their hard drive and half of them will just be "cv_FINAL.pdf" with no way to know whose it is.

So you have master copies named things that makes sense to you, and then you have a working folder with copies that are named things that are useful to them.

i just rename it every time, i think.

though i had a weird realisation the other day that a) no cv of mine has ever actually landed me a job, and b) for that matter neither has any job interview i've had. so don't mind me! i wonder how far i can get in life like this.

Yeah, same, I basically don't have one called firstname_lastname_CV, but I save a copy of the one I'm using as that before attaching it.

A few months ago I helped out a primary school to figure out if I wanted to be a teacher or not. I'm not sure I do now, so I'm looking for a normal job and sending my CV to some people. Do I mention the primary school thing? I'd have thought it'd illustrate some really good skills (responsible, trust-worthy, can work with others, etc), but I don't want them to think I'm indecisive or that I'm completely clueless about what I want to be when I grow up (even though I am).

Just been commissioned to do some freelance research/writing for the B33B, first time I've ever done any work for them. Slightly weird thing is they want to have a CV on file for me. I haven't had to create a CV in years, so will have to start one from scratch. Can anyone recommend any online templates etc. Doesn't have to be very fancy - I've already got the job, as it were - but could be something I could use again if I were jobhunting. Thanks.

I've used this one before; easy enough to use and if the results aren't what you're after, it should at least give you a starter template
http://cvmkr.com/

thanks cozen, looks just the ticket

Keep it to two pages, make sure it's readable at speed (bullet points help), any achievements you can quantify are good. Remember that no one really cares about your first couple of jobs, foreground the most recent/important stuff, as well as your education. Include interests at the bottom, keep them to one line but make them distinctive - I tend to assume that anyone who puts "Interests: socialising, music, cinema" isn't really that interested in anything.

Thanks Matt - a lot of my 'working life' has been as a freelance, so I guess I just cover that by naming/listing the most regular clients?

b-but those really are my interests (also comics, but I can't see that raising my employability)

if i saw someone's interests listed on a cv i would assume that (i) my giving them a job wasn't one of them (ii) they didn't have enough skills or experience to fill two pages

everyone puts interests on a cv. you want good people in offices.

do you put school education in matt? mine just has university, figure anything beyond that can be assumed.

You put interests on CVs because it shows you're a rounded human being, but just going "music, film, reading" etc illuminates nothing, it's fine to be a bit more specific.

Reckon you can get away with just your degree + any relevant post-grad qualifications including training courses etc. No harm in putting A-Levels on. People who are any older than their late 20s and still putting every GCSE grade on there are just weird.

crosses off O Level art from his CV

People who are any older than their late 20s and still putting every GCSE grade on there are just weird.

Now if only employers would stop asking for them on application forms

prioritize the information they are actually going to be interested in. if that's your current or more recent role, dive right into that. if it's overall experience have a concise section up front summarizing your relevant skills/experience and then refer back to these when you describe your previous roles. be deliberate in reflecting the skills and experience they ask for (if you have them). quantify if you can. if you had good experience with an organization they might not have heard of, a line describing that organization will help.

don't put any education before college/uni unless that's all you have (or if you went to somewhere with a name that you think will open doors i guess). put other qualifications/courses if they are really relevant or somehow interesting but don't go overboard with every mickey mouse course you ever attended.

putting interests is variable, most of the time i would say don't bother. it depends how confident you are that you will be interviewing with someone like you, people can be weirdly prejudicial about the most mundane stuff. however, if you are particularly interested in something unusual or very specific, interviewers will often pick up on something like that and that'll give you a few minutes of easier questioning and a chance to establish some kind of more personal connection.

length is totally about what you do and at what level. if you are in your 20s and have more than 2 pages, there would need to be a real good reason. if you are in your 40s with a decade plus of relevant experience, and/or going for a job against likely just a handful of ppl, don't miss relevant detail by trying to cram things into 2 pages.

I'm applying for a job which is a total career change, i.e. assistant at a writer's retreat centre, for which I am well qualified by my extra-curricular activities, but for which precisely NONE of my 18 yrs of actual work exp is relevant. Yet they have demanded an exhaustive CV, with detailed roles, responsibilities, achievements and reasons for leaving. They need me to be able to cook & be nice to people. They will likely not be able to follow my current CV, which says things like 'integrated Informix and Oracle data cubing'. I'm tearing my hair out here.

I'm in a similar boat with my job apps these days, Zora. My stopgap solution has been to leave my corporate experience on the 1st page of my resume and move all the arts/event/organizing experience to the back in one place with a header that says "Arts and Event Experience" or something.

Right now my job history has shortened bullet points of the "job description," that is, what tasks & projects I was responsible for, but I'm always looking for ways to convert "tasks" to "skills" without going full-on "skills based" with the whole thing.

I'm curious about "resume" vs. "CV" ... in my part of the world, a resume is a concise summary of experience and qualifications, preferably one page, while a CV is much more detailed and of whatever length is needed to describe your career. Most non-academic job applications call for a resume. Is this just US usage?

ya

Yeah I'll do sth like that in orbit, and hope that they'll dismiss my tech cv without prejudice.

Are there any tactics for dealing with a very long gap in employment (i.e approaching a decade, with a 6 month temp job etc. in the middle) due to mental health issues? It seems that I can't actually explain the gap without ruining my chances at the job. Even just mentioning 'health issues' over such a long period is a negative, no? I mean, in an ideal world it wouldn't be an issue, but I know it is.

What sort of work are you looking for? Can you do some temping or voluntary work in the meantime so that you can say that you've been out of the workplace for some time but look, now I'm back?

I'm looking to try to get back into some sort of 'proper' job, so probably full-time work, just office-y stuff. My psych and GP would like me to take it slower though, so probably part-time. I'm doing some voluntary work at the moment to test my ability to re-enter the workforce, seems to be going fine (mostly stuff for my church, ranging from admin stuff to cleaning the church itself).

I would just mention in your covering letter something like "having been absent from the workforce through ill health for some time, I have now made a full recovery and have been carrying out voluntary work as detailed in my CV" then use that voluntary work experience as a reason to say why they should give you this job.

Thanks, good advice! It's actually been putting me off applying for things, which is kind of stupid.

I'm in almost the same boat, so will be putting this into practice myself shortly :-(

Hey, is $30 an hour a reasonable rate to ask for in a temp research job? It won't include insurance or benefits so I went a little higher than I might have.