Curriculum Vitae: an outline of a person's educational and professional history, usually prepared for job applications (L, lit.: the course of one's life).
A CV is the most flexible and convenient way to make applications. It can convey your personal details in the way that presents you in the best possible light and can be used to make multiple applications to employers in a specific career area. For this reason, many large graduate recruiters will not accept CVs and instead use their own application form.
An application form is designed to bring out the essential information and the personal qualities that the employer requires and does not allow you to gloss over your weaker points as a CV does. In addition, the time needed to fill out these forms is seen as a reflection of your commitment to the career and the company.
There is no "one best way" to construct a CV; it is your document and can be structured and presented as you wish within the basic
framework set out below. It can be set out on paper or on-line or even on a T-shirt (a
gimmicky approach that might work for "creative" jobs but is not generally
advised!).
Normally these would be your name, address, date of birth (although with age discrimination laws now in force this isn't essential), telephone number and email.
Education and qualifications
Your degree subject and university, plus A levels and GCSEs or equivalents. Mention grades unless poor!
Work experience
Use action words such as developed, planned and organised
Even work in a shop, bar or restaurant will involve working in a team, providing a quality service to customers, and dealing tactful with complaints. Don't mention the routine, non-people tasks (cleaning the tables) unless you are applying for a casual summer job in a restaurant or similar.
Try to relate the skills to the job. A finance job will involve numeracy, analytical and problem solving skills so focus on these whereas for a marketing role you would place a bit more more emphasis on persuading and negotiating skills.
Interests and achievements
Keep this section short and to the point.
Bullets can be used to separate interests into different types: sporting, creative etc.
Don't use the old boring cliches here: "socialising with friends".
Don't put too many passive, solitary hobbies (reading, watching TV, stamp collecting) or you may be perceived as lacking people skills.
Show a range of interests to avoid coming across as narrow : if everything centres around sport they may wonder if you could hold a conversation with a client who wasn't interested in sport.
Hobbies that are a little out of the ordinary can help you to stand out from the crowd: skydiving or mountaineering can show a sense of wanting to stretch yourself and an ability to rely on yourself in demanding situations
Any interests relevant to the job are worth mentioning: current affairs if you wish to be a journalist, a fantasy share portfolio such as Bullbearings if you want to work in finance.
Any evidence of leadership is important to mention: captain or coach of a sports team, course representative, chair of a student society, scout leader.
Anything showing evidence of employability skills such as teamworking, organising, planning, persuading, negotiating etc.
Skills
The usual ones to mention are languages (good conversational French, basic Spanish), computing (e.g. "good working knowledge of MS Access and Excel, plus basic web page design skills" and driving ("full current clean driving licence").
If you are a mature candidate or have lots of relevant skills to offer, a skills-based CV may work for you
Referees
Normally two referees are sufficient: one academic (perhaps your tutor or a project supervisor) and one from an employer (perhaps your last part-time or summer job). See our page on Choosing and Using Referees for more help with this.
The order in which you present these, and the emphasis which you give to
each one, will depend on what you are applying for and what you have to offer. For
example, the example media CV lists the candidate's relevant
work experience first.
If you are applying for more than one type of work, you should have a different
CV tailored to each career area, highlighting different aspects of your skills
and experience.
A personal profile at the start of the CV can sometimes be effective for jobs in competitive industries such as the media or advertising, to help you to stand out from the crowd. If used, it needs to be original and well written. Don’t just use the usual hackneyed expressions: “I am an excellent communicator who works well in a team…… “
There are no absolute rules but, in general, a new graduate's CV should cover no
more than two sides of A4 paper.
If you can summarise your career history
comfortably on a single side, this is fine and has advantages when you
are making speculative applications and need to put yourself across concisely. However, you should not leave out important items, or crowd your text too
closely together in order to fit it onto that single side. Academic and technical
CVs may be much longer: up to 4 or 5 sides.
Your CV should be carefully and clearly laid out - not too cramped but
not with large empty spaces either. Use bold and italic typefaces for headings and
important information
Never back a CV - each page should be on a separate sheet of paper.
It's a good idea to put your name in the footer area so that it appears on each sheet.
Be concise - a CV is an appetiser and should not give the reader
indigestion. Don't feel that you have to list every exam you have ever taken, or every
activity you have ever been involved in - consider which are the most relevant and/or
impressive.
Be positive - put yourself over confidently and highlight your strong
points. For example, when listing your A-levels, put your highest grade first.
Be honest - although a CV does allow you to omit details (such as exam
resits) which you would prefer the employer not to know about, you should never give
inaccurate or misleading information.
The sweet spot of a CV is the area selectors tend to pay most attention to: this is typically around the upper middle of the first page, so make sure that this area contains essential information.
If you are posting your CV, don't fold it - put it in a full-size A4
envelope so that it doesn't arrive creased.
Research by forum3 (recruitment and volunteering for the not-for-profit sector) suggested:
Graduates sent out 25 letters per interview gained.
The average graduate will send out about 70 CVs when looking for their first graduate job. Of these, the average number of responses will be 7 including 3 to 4 polite rejections and the remainder inviting the graduate to interview or further contact.
There was a direct link between the number of CVs sent out and the number of interviews gained: the more CVs you send out the more interviews you will get.
Applicants who included a covering letter with their CV were 10% more likely to get a reply.
60% of CVs are mailed to the wrong person: usually the managing director. Applicants who addressed their application to the correct named person were 15% more likely to get a letter of acknowledgement and 5% more likely to get an interview
Applicants sending CVs and letters without spelling mistakes are 61% more likely to get a reply and 26% more likely to get an interview. "In the age of the spell checker, there is no excuse for spelling mistakes". The most common mistakes to not show up in a spell check were: fro instead of for, grate instead of great, liased instead of liaised and stationary instead of stationery.
Other turn-offs include:
misspelling the name of the company or the addressee,
not having a reply address on the CV
trying to be amusing.
Why you need to use a spell checker
I am a prefectionist
Proven ability to track down and correct erors.
I have good writen comunication skills.
Lurnt Word Perfect computor and spreadsheet pogroms.
Develop an annual operating expense fudget…
And why you must read it carefully as well
Extra Circular Activities
At secondary school I was a prefix
In my spare time I enjoy hiding my horse
I hope to hear from you shorty
I am a conscious individual.
Reason for leaving last job: maturity leave
I have a desire to work with commuters
Dear Madman (instead of Madam)
My hobbits include - instead of 'hobbies'
I am sicking and entry-level position
Oversight of an entire department
Restaurant skills: Severing customers
In charge of sock control - instead of 'stock control'
I’m an accurate and rabid typist
Abilty to meet deadlines while maintaining my composer
Instrumental in ruining an entire operation for a chain operator
Received a plague for salesman of the year."
Suspected to graduate early next year
For a PR job: I have a long term interest in pubic relations
I want experience in a big sex practice
Vox pox for BBC Radio, which enhanced my ability to analyse and synthesise information
A ' full shit system’ instead of ‘a full shift system’
Enthusiasm was needed in order to communicate information in an interesting manor.
I own and maintain a volts wagon beetle.
On an application to work with teenagers – I am experienced in teaching marital arts
Relevant work experience’: followed by ‘Irrelevant work experience’
My role included typing in details of accounts, customer liaison and money-laundering duties.
Fonts
Times New Roman is the
standard windows "serif" font. A safe bet - law firms seem to like it!A more interesting serif font might be Georgia.
Arial is the standard windows "sans" font. Sans fonts don't have the curly bits on letters. As you can see
it's cleaner and more modern than Times and also looks larger in the same
"point" size (the point size is simply how big the letters are on the page.)
However Arial and Times Roman are so common that they're a little boring to the eye.
A more classy choice might be Verdana or Geneva - these are both common
sans fonts.
FONT SIZE is normally 12 points for the normal font with larger sizes
for subheadings and headings.
or 10 points. My favourite CV font is 10 point Verdana with 12 or 14 points for sub headings.
14 points is too big - wastes space and looks crude.
and 8 or 9 points too small to be
easily readable by everyone,especially in Times New Roman.
Although many people use 12 points, some research on this suggested
that smaller point size CVs were perceived as more intellectual!
Chronological - outlining your career history in date
order, normally beginning with the most recent items (reverse chronological) . This is the
"conventional" approach and the easiest to prepare. It is detailed,
comprehensive and biographical and usually works well for "traditional" students
with a good all-round mixture of education and work experience. Mature students, however,
may not benefit from this approach, which does emphasise your age, any career breaks and
work experience which has little surface relevance to the posts you are applying for now. See an example chronological CV here
Skills-based: highly-focused CVs which relate your skills
and abilities to a specific job or career area by highlighting these skills and
your major achievements. The factual, chronological details of your education and
work history are subordinate. These work well for mature graduates and
for anybody whose degree subject and work experience is not directly relevant to their
application. Skills-based CVs should be closely targeted to a specific job. See an example skills-based CV here
If you are applying for posts outside the UK, remember
that employers in other countries are likely to have different expectations of what a CV
should include and how it should be laid out. The "Global Resume and CV
Handbook" (available from Reception) and the Prospects
website will help you prepare CVs for overseas employment. See our work abroad page.
If your CV is to be sent to an individual employer which
has requested applications in this format, you should research the organisation and the
position carefully.
If your CV is to be used for speculative applications, it
is still important to target it - at the very least, on the general career area in which
you want to work. Use the Careers Information Room or general careers websites such as
www.prospects.ac.uk to get an idea of what the work involves and what skills and personal
qualities are needed to do it successfully. This will enable you to tailor the CV to the
work and to bring out your own relevant experience.
Even if you are using the same CV for a number of employers, you should personalise
the covering letter - e.g. by putting in a paragraph on why you want to work for
that organisation.
For example CVs, application forms and covering letters see www.kent.ac.uk/careers/cv/cvexamples.htm with notes
highlighting points relating to the content and style.
Many employers who accept applications in CV format are happy for you to send your CV as
an attachment to an email.
Put your covering letter as the body of your
email. It's probably wise to format it as plain text (use the format heading on
Outlook Express to do this), as then it can be read by any email reader.
Your CV is then sent as an attachment. This is normally in MS Word (.doc) format, but
Rich Text Format (.rtf) and html (web page format) are acceptable alternatives. Also say you'll send a
printed CV if required. PDF (portable document format) also quite widely used and you can download a pdf converter such as Cute pdf www.cutepdf.com/Products/CutePDF/writer.asp for free: you install it and then "print" the document to a folder on your PC. If in doubt send your CV in several formats.
Email it back to yourself first to check it.
Web CVs and Electronically Scanned CVs
Web CVs use HTML format. You can include the web address
in an email or letter to an employer. They have the advantage that you can easily use
graphics, colour, hyperlinks and even sound, animation and video. The basic rules still
apply however - make it look professional. They can be very effective if you are going for
multimedia, web design or computer games jobs where they can demonstrate your
technical skills along with your portfolio.
Electronically scanned CVs have been used by Nortel, Ford
and others. Resumix is the main package used for this. The system has artificial
intelligence which reads the text and extracts important information such as work,
education, skills. For more information on this see www.kent.ac.uk/careers/onlineapps.htm
The credit company Iprofile recommended that CVs posted on-line should not contain your date of birth, place of birth, marital status, address and phone number as they can allow fraudsters to carry out identity theft and perhaps open bank accounts or apply for credit cards in your name.
When emailing your CV to a potential employer it's probably wise to leave out your date of birth, place of birth and marital status if you have any doubts about the validity of the organisation you are applying to. Due to age discrimination legislation in the UK you no longer have to disclose your age on a CV but if you wish to, you could give this rather than your date of birth.
