It seems that everybody knows the answer but very often if you look at CVs, it is not so obvious.
A CV is our first contact with the recruiter or future employer. It is said that it must be visually attractive to make an impression on recruiters. In our opinion it is not quite true because a CV is first of all a document. Making a CV is a significant stage in the recruitment process, checking if you can present the most important information about you in a clear and appropriate way.
Thus, although it may be time consuming, creating a professional CV is really worthwhile.
Below there are some tips which can be useful:
The first and definitely the most important issue is keeping you CV up-to-date. It can happen, that having found an interesting job offer, we send our CV which we looked at 7 years ago. Most often it results in sending an outdated photo or inaccurately described tasks in our past positions, outdated skills and interests.
A professional CV should include:
Personal data – Make sure that your phone number and e-mail address are correct. A spelling mistake or a wrong digit may prevent contacting you. It is especially important if your e-mail address is not a standard and advocated one (name.surname@server’s name.pl).
- Professional career – It should be put at the very top of your CV and contain a few sentences describing your candidacy. Write who you are and in which areas you would like to develop yourself. Give examples of 2 – 3 professional achievements.
- Professional experience – This part is vital because recruiters pay their biggest attention to it. It must be described in details. Giving just names of companies and positions is not enough. Write what you were doing in a given position and mention your successes (using numbers and percentages is advocated).
- Education – If your professional experience is not very impressive, it would be better to start with your education. Remember to put dates.
- Skills – Specify your skills in sub-items and divide them into soft and hard skills. During the
interview you must prove that they are your strong points. - Foreign languages command – Knowing a foreign language is demanded or welcome nowadays and this fact makes some candidates declare a higher level of knowledge than in reality. Remember that it is not a good strategy as what you stated will be verified in the job interview.
- Interests – Write about your hobbies in one or two sentences. Remember to add a GDPR clause at the bottom of your CV.
At present it is more and more popular to create a CV on web portals, which are specially designed for it, e.g. Linkedin. It is possible to place links to our publications, various courses, projects and trainings on them. So, if our virtual CV is much more extensive, including a link to it in a traditional document is worth doing.
While creating a CV minimalism is advocated. You should avoid many colours, various fonts, underlines or bolds. Black and white will work best unless a particular position demands our creativity. Then, our CV may be a portfolio.
What is also important, it is assumed that an ideal CV should not exceed two A4 pages (preferably one, but sometimes it is difficult to achieve).
Apply the above tips to describe your skills and successes and always remember to match your CV to a job offer. Although it may take you 15-20 minutes more, you will get more invitations to job interviews. Good luck !
