Your CV is an important part in the jobseeking and recruitment process. It's the first chance that you have in impressing prospective employers with your skills and experience.
On average, recruiters and potential employers will spend around 8 seconds scanning a CV for information that they are looking for, so it's important to get the immediate maximum impact!
The following top tips will give you a good idea on how to get that maximum impact:
1. Keep it short and sharp - keep it concise!
It is a known fact that recruiters have to shift through mountains of CVs and don't have a lot of time or patience to carefully read through a CV full of irrelevant gibberish. To help recruiters pick out your CV, make it short, sharp and to the point. Make it no more than 2 sides of A4 and leave the real details for your interview.
2. Make your CV "Tailor made"
Try to adjust your CV so that it matches each individual job that you apply for. Study the job ad and it's company to pull out what they are looking for. Link and highlight your skills and experiences to the requirements of the role.
3. "Please mind the gap..."
Don't leave any gaps in your employment or education. Gaps are bad because they invite the reader to guess what you were up to and allows them make their own assumptions. Update your CV regularly, even if you are not actively job seeking, to avoid having to recall what you did in a distant point in your career. If you took time out from employment, then just put down what you did: travel, took a course, spent time developing a skill, etc. Don't let them make their own assumptions.
4. Error free
Errors are easy to pick out and are used by recruiters to filter out the weaker candidates. Having spelling, typo or grammatical errors in your CV is like having an invitation card to wait outside the interview room while others are being picked to go in.
Before distributing your CV, make sure you check it with a computer spell checker and also get some to read through it.
5. Tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth
Only highlighting the good point about yourself in your CV is one thing, but telling lies is another. It's a very bad idea to lie! There is a high possibility that you will be caught out and have your application rejected. Today, many companies tend to check the facts that is given on their potential employees's CVs. Any good interviewer will be able to spot any inconsistency in your story. It could be very embarrassing in your interview and could lead to a rejection.
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