How to Write Your CV

A CV isn’t just a laundry list of the jobs you’ve done and companies you have worked for. It’s really your first chance to make an impact on the people making decisions about your career. We see a lot of CVs and cover letters every day, and very quickly we can gauge from them whether the person should progress in their application, and it’s not just based on skills and work experience.

The good news is, it’s not hard to pull together a strong CV and cover letter to score yourself a job interview. Like anything worthwhile, it just takes a bit of time.

It’s very easy for a recruiter or potential employer to see when you’ve gone a bit crazy on the ‘Apply Now’ button, copy and pasted names into your cover letter and used the same curriculum vitae to apply for multiple jobs- like a CV template. The effort you put into your application is very clear- if it looks like you don’t know anything about the role or the company and you haven’t tailored your cover letter and CV to the specific role, it’s unlikely you’ll get a job interview.

Make sure your cover letter addresses any criteria specifically mentioned by the potential employer in the job description, whether the job poster requests it or not- sometimes the reviewer won’t read both your cover letter and your CV, so ensure each tells them what they need to know.

Ask yourself- could the skills you’re listing apply to anyone or do they apply to you? Make sure you’re standing out from the crowd by making your skills very specific to yourself, so the reviewer knows exactly why you would be the right fit for the role, above anyone else. Your CV and cover letter is the first impression a potential employer will have of you.

Keep the length to 3-5 pages and ensure you include lots of white space so you’re not making the reviewer work hard to see the relevant information. There is the natural urge to include everything in your CV which can make it very long and cluttered and can mean that critical things the hiring manager is looking for can be missed.

List your roles in chronological order, with the most recent at the start, and link your achievements to specific roles. These achievements should be relevant and listed in bullet points, so they are very easy to read.

Don’t simply list your tasks for which you were responsible in each of your roles. Using the STAR framework, think about what you achieved in each of your roles as a result of doing the tasks- for example managing a stock inventory in a retail position may have been the task, but an achievement would be that you managed the inventory in a tight timeframe, under pressure, and had a result of +/- 0.5% variance (or whatever your results were- be specific), which was the best result the company had had in 5 years. Think about what the hiring manager is looking for (hint: they’ve told you in the job advertisement), and only include the achievements relevant to the role you’re applying for.

The cover letter and is your chance to really sell yourself, talk up your achievements and make yourself really stand out- because when you think about it, you have achieved great things in your career and there is absolutely no reason you shouldn’t proudly talk about this. If you’re a little self-conscious about talking up your achievements, write your CV as if you’re talking to your best friend, or get someone you trust to ask about your achievements and really probe to pull out the highlights.

Spelling and grammatical errors speak volumes about your attention to detail, and really your care factor about how you present yourself. If reviewers come across errors in your cover letter or CV it’s unlikely you’ll progress far. This one is very easy to prevent- look through your CV and cover letter with a fine-toothed comb. Get someone you trust to look through it as a second pair of eyes. Check again for every new job application- Microsoft Word can do evil things to your formatting without you even realising. This skill will come in handy in almost every job you can do.

It might be worth starting your CV from a blank sheet of paper so you can think about everything that goes in it. Once you have the format right you can then tailor it for each job going forward.