Tips that will be useful for professional and personal development.
It's Monday and we want to start your week with our weekly series on #Tips on Writing a Good CV. Please like and share for others to benefit!
Today's tip talks about summarizing your roles in in the experience section of your CV..
Delving into the nitty gritty details of your roles without first setting the scene, can be confusing for readers.
Give your role descriptions some context by heading them up with a high level summary that explains what the employer does, where you sit within the organisation and how your role benefits or benefited the employer. This can be called an outline and you can have that in just two lines before your role description is enlisted.
Now the details of your roles will make a lot more sense to recruiters, because they will be able to see how your work feeds into the overall success of your employers.
Maximize the space on your CV. Do not include unnecessary personal details.
Details like your photo( if not requested) date of birth , religion , number of children and marital status are surplus to requirement on your CV and take up space unnecessarily.
The only details you need to include are your name, email address, phone number and address.You can also add a link to your LinkedIn profile if you feel it will benefit your application, sometimes there are certain details you want them to see but limited space to add on the CV. LinkedIn can save the day.
Include facts and figures
backing your achievements up with tangible details, figures are a great way to quantify your value to employers.
The examples below are the kind of figures that employers would like to see in order to gauge the level of impact you make.
* Managed a budget of One Hundred Million Leones (Le100,000,000)
* Led a team of 6 staff
* Increased revenue by 10%
* Worked across 5 locations
* Resolved 95% of complaints within 2 day guideline
Explain gaps in your employment
If you have taken time out to travel, study, complete a personal project, or even due to illness; be transparent and include it on your CV.
Leaving an unexplained gap will make recruiters suspicious, and trying to cover gaps by falsely extending other roles may land you in trouble when it comes to reference checks.
Time spent outside of work can often involve plenty of skills (for example travelling requires organisation, planning, social skills etc.) so you can always put a positive spin on a career break description.
List your roles in reverse chronological order
Employers are mostly interested in your recent work to assess your current capabilities, so start your CV with your most recent role to ensure it receives immediate attention.
Use bullet points in your roles section.
Use bullet points in your roles description to make them easy for recruiters to skim read.
Nobody wants to wade through a big chunk of unbroken text to find the information they want
Shorten older roles
If you are an experienced candidate with years of experience, there’s no need to write huge amounts of detail on your older roles.
Recruiters will be focusing on your recent work to understand your current capabilities, so shorten older roles down to brief summaries to give readers an idea of your career path.
Finally, use the technical language for your field where necessary and do not copy and paste your job descriptions to act as the list of roles.
Keep it professional!
#Smartstart SL LTD #Professionalismdefined