Careers Advice

Making Your CV Work For You

At a time when fewer job opportunities are available many people are applying for the same vacancies. With this increased competition, it can be very disappointing to hear that perhaps you haven’t even been invited for an interview.

Submitting your Curriculum Vitae is now very often expected as part of the application process. First impressions are very important, and your application may be passed over if your CV fails to make the right impact.

Ambitions are very familiar with what a good CV looks like. Unfortunately some they receive do little for the applicant and often contain obvious errors. The document has often evolved as people change jobs, but what applicants fail to do is to remove the information that no longer serves them and is no longer relevant. The purpose of a CV is to generate enough interest to get you an interview, so keep it ‘punchy’ and to the point, - it doesn’t need to be your life story!

Some basic guidelines are:

• Keep it clearly written and concise
• Use a bullet point format and avoid too much blocked text
• Tailor the CV for each vacancy applied for
• Highlight particularly relevant skills and experience to reflect the vacancy
• Go back three jobs or ten years only
• When detailing career history always start with your most recent job first
• Triple check for spelling mistakes
• The finished document should be easy on the eye and easy to read
• Your CV should do you justice, so take enough space to ‘sell’ yourself
• Remember your CV may be the last one of the day – make it memorable
• Keep it clearly written and concise

Although Ambitions do not offer a CV writing service, we always review our candidate’s CV and discuss any amendments that may be recommended.