NEWS

When job hunting, arguably the most important tool in your kit is a good, strong CV. Your CV is the first impression an employer will have of you. Ensuring you have written it well can be your gateway to success. A strong CV will lead to an interview, and an interview will hopefully lead to employment, but it all begins with the CV. So here are our pointers for how to sculpt it perfectly. 

Research Roles 

Employers will be looking for a specific skill set and type of person for the role they are hiring for. Therefore, if you want your CV to impress, it is a good starting point to research the types of roles you may wish to apply for. What are the requirements for the role? What hard skills are they looking for? These are skills such as computer skills, languages, or management skills. Look at job listings in your industry, take note of what they are looking for and bear this in mind when you are writing your CV so that it is targeted toward the type of roles you are after. 

Structure and Format 

How you lay out your CV can make a difference in how well it is received. By ensuring that it is presented in a clean and sleek format, it will be easier for an employer to navigate their way through your CV and take in the information they need. 



It should be presented in a professional manner, don’t be tempted to use fancy fonts and colours; they won’t help your CV stand out but just make it harder to read. Use a basic crisp font, simple colours - black on white is best, and separate each section clearly with a bold header. Ideally, you should aim to keep it to two pages, and the sections that should be included are as follows:

Name and Contact Details 

These should be at the very top of the CV in the right-hand corner, which will ensure that they won’t be missed. Where relevant, you may wish to add a professional title beside your name, such as ‘management accountant’ or ‘English graduate’ - this will set the tone of the CV but should relate to the roles you are applying for. The only contact information that is needed is your name, number and email address. It may be worthwhile to add your location also. 

Personal Statement 

This is an introductory paragraph that should catch the reader’s attention. To write a successful statement, you should keep it short and sharp, somewhere between five to ten lines of text. It should be packed with in-demand skills and experience. This section should give the employer an overview of your industry-specific skills, types of companies you have experience in and any qualifications and benefits you will deliver to the company. It should grab their attention, excite them and draw them in to read the rest of the CV. 

Core Skills

A bullet-pointed list of your most valuable attributes split over two or three columns. This gives a snapshot of what you are offering as a potential candidate and can be taken in at a quick glance by busy recruiters and hiring managers. This list should be heavily tailored to target specific roles you are applying for and should include things like role-specific skills, qualifications, industry knowledge, languages and IT skills. This section can also be quickly and easily edited if you wish to tweak your CV slightly when applying for different roles. 

Work Experience

By providing examples of your work experience, you are demonstrating your abilities and how you are able to apply skills within the workplace, proving the impact you make on a team and what an asset you would be as an employee. This should be listed in reverse chronological order, giving most detail about your current and more recent roles and less for earlier employment. If you are new to the workforce and have no previous employment to list, you can instead give details of any voluntary roles, school/college/university work placements, part-time jobs or any other occasions where you have worked to support a company. Make sure you lay this section out in a way that is easy to read and process. Head each role with the name of the employer and the title you held, and give a brief outline of the company and the goal of your role. List your key responsibilities in short, concise bullet points, trying to showcase your full skillset and demonstrate how your actions impact your employer. Finish with a list of your achievements within the role; this is where you can impress an employer by showing how you have been of most benefit in previous roles. 

Education

In this section, list any qualifications and the dates you attained them. An experienced candidate may go light on the details as their work experience will give credibility to the skills, but a more junior candidate may need to elaborate on some of the qualifications in this section to ensure they are giving detail on all they are capable of. 

Hobbies and Interests

This section is not essential, but you may wish to add it if the hobbies you have are relevant to the application. For example, an employer will not need to know that you enjoy eating out or watching movies, but if you run your own blog in your spare time and are applying for a writing position, this may give you a further chance to showcase relevant skills. 

Curating a strong CV is vital during job searching, and hopefully, with this guidance, you will be able to do just that.