With less than 10 seconds to impress employers, your CV needs to work very hard.
Your CV is an opportunity to explain why you deserve the job because of the experience you have gained. It should be informative, truthful, concise and well-written. It should present who you are, what you do, and how effectively you do it.
How do you demonstrate that you’re the right candidate for the job? Here are five simple factors recruiters look for when reviewing your CV.
1. Contactable
Basics like name, email address and telephone number seem like a given, however it would surprise you how often recruiters cannot communicate effectively with candidates due to out of date information. Use your most frequently used email address to make sure you don’t miss out on opportunities and update your information if you move address or change your name.
2. Relevance
Is your summary relevant to the role you’re applying for? If not, you’re going to lose the reader’s interest immediately. Saying that you’re a team player who works well towards sales targets when you’re applying for a marketing role isn’t going to cut it! Make sure your summary highlights why your skills and experience match that of the job description.
3. Concise
Get to the point. Make it short and snappy, clearly laying out what you can bring to the table through your summary, work experience and education. It’s a nice touch if you can summarise in one sentence what you achieved during your time with an employer, but make sure it’s relevant to the role and plays to your strengths.
4. Accuracy
Don’t say attention to detail is one of your strong points, then make a spelling or grammar mistake. Similarly, your timeline is important as employers are interested in how long you spent at each organisation, so don’t be tempted to stretch the length of time you spent somewhere to cover a gap. If you took three months out to explore East Asia, explain this.
5. Neat & tidy
You want the reader to easily digest the information you are presenting to them, so using bullet points, paragraph spacing, and clean lines allows you to focus the eye on the important points. If you’re unsure how to do this, you can use free templates online to help you easily achieve the right layout.
You should also ensure that your CV is no longer than two pages, any longer and you’ll bore the reader.
For more CV tips, take a look at the top 10 mistakes to avoid in your CV. Follow these simple steps and you’ll be on your way to landing your next job with the help of s1jobs.