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Your CV is your sales brochure. Jeremy Davies explains how to make sure it paints you in the best possible light

Monday October 6, 2003

You may be such a seasoned jobseeker that you rewrite your CV as often as most people sign cheques - or you may have been in the same job for so long that it's languishing in a drawer somewhere, next to your O-level certificates. Either way, chances are it could do with a makeover.
"Your CV is your sales brochure," explains Harry Freedman, chief executive of career consultancy Career Energy. "It needs to change as your career grows, and in line with the kind of posts you're aspiring to."
Especially when you have been working for a while, it can be tempting to cram as much as you can into your CV - which could, if you let it, stretch to huge lengths. But careers experts advise two pages as the maximum, and some even suggest that one is ideal.
"Make your CV as concise, but meaningful, as you can. Don't think of it as a life history which will be marked for accuracy - its purpose is to get you an interview, so try to make the recruiter stop and think," says Mr Freedman.
Traditionally, CVs began with contact details and then went straight into a chronological history of your career where you started with your present or most recent job and worked backwards, giving names of companies, job title, dates of service and a list of your main duties.
These days recruitment professionals advise kicking off, after the basic personal details like name, address and contact information, with a one or two sentence 'mission statement' that acts as a headline for the rest of the CV. This should explain succinctly what qualifies you for the job and how it would fit into your career.
"All the evidence suggests that recruiters are lazy, which is hardly surprising if they're having to sift through hundreds of CVs. You need to do their work for them, and one way of doing that is to start off with a clear statement of who you are and why they should be talking to you," says Julie Unite, consultant psychologist with careers consultancy Career Psychology.
Underneath the mission statement you should list your key skills - but keep it brief. A handful of bullet points, perhaps followed by two or three key achievements, should suffice; the aim being to draw out your most important attributes from your professional experience.
The rest of the opening page of your CV should include an outline of your most recent or relevant work experience - again, bullet points have more immediate impact. You may do this chronologically as in traditional CVs; or take a more functional approach, picking up themes relevant to the job - management, technical skills or communication, for example - and sell your work experience that way. This can be especially good if you have had a more varied career history or are making a complete career change.
The second page should cover the rest of your career history, or other functional sections; briefly outline your most recent and relevant qualifications; and, if there is space, highlight any aspects of your personal life that may contribute to a better understanding of your suitability - for example relevant interests or membership of societies.
Include active rather than passive verbs throughout, avoid negativity, and from knowledge of the sector you work in, use 'desirable' phrases that will be seized on by recruiters. But, warns Mr. Freedman, remember that there is a fine line between using words you know look good in your area of work and jargon.
Give your CV a simple layout, a plain font, simple formatting and plenty of white space to enhance readability; and write it in a standard word processing package like Microsoft Word. Minor tweaks and a well written covering letter should tailor your CV to the particular job in question.
If you are emailing your CV, check whether the company prefers to receive applications as attachments or pasted into an email message - some simply delete unsolicited attachments as an anti-virus measure.
You may want to consider registering a general CV with one of the growing number of CV databases, says Joe Slavin, managing director of recruitment website monster.co.uk. "More and more companies are accessing CV databases to fill positions - if you're at Deloitte & Touche and you only want a PricewaterhouseCoopers person, why bother advertising more widely when you can search a database and find people that way?"
And if all this sounds like a job in itself, you might think about paying to have your CV written professionally - either through a do-it-yourself CV writing website, or through an consultancy. Costs range from less than £100 for CV compilation on the basis of an email questionnaire, to around £400 for more in-depth face-to-face consultations.

to aspire to – aspirować do
concise - zwięzły
to cram – upychać
enhance – podnieść, poprawić
languish – marnieć
makeover – a set of changes in order to make something more attractive
seasoned - wytrawny
to seize – uchwycić
sift through – segregować, przebijać się
succinctly – zwięźle
a tweak – a small change to make something correct or suitable


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