- a clear goal;
- complete single mindedness in pursuing it;
- total efficiency - no waste of either time or energy;
- awareness of risks and a thorough understanding of how to avoid them;
- outright determination to eliminate the opposition;
- complete mastery of all the tools of the trade;
- total professionalism.
When applying these qualities to the preparation of a CV there are two aspects to consider - content and presentation. Good presentation will never make up for weak content, but it is all too easy to ruin strong content by poor presentation. That is why the first two stages in preparing your CV are all about what you are going to include - and what you are going to leave out.
Getting Started
The preparation of your CV involves several stages:
- gathering together the information;
- selecting those facts which will enable you to achieve your purpose;
- choosing a layout which is easy to assimilate and conveys a professional impression of you;
- finding words which get your message across in a vivid and individual manner;
- reviewing your draft;
- editing it;
- checking it.
The first stage, the assembling of the necessary facts, should involve comparatively little effort. You ought to have all of the information you need in the asset register you compiled right back at the beginning of your job search.
Stage two, on the other hand, is not nearly as straightforward. It is here that so many people start to go astray and, instead of producing a killer CV, end up by shooting themselves in the foot.
The first, and most common, error is to concentrate on the wrong person. Your CV may be about you but it is - or, rather, should be - written for the recipient. Busy recruiters and decision makers do not want to have to wade through your entire life history. Still less do they want to be told irrelevant details about your family and leisure interests. What they do want to know is how you are going to add value to their organization.
So, before you start to wade through your asset register, put yourself into the shoes of the kind of person to whom you are going to be sending your CV. Take a sheet of paper and write down at the top of it what that person will want to see in order to be persuaded to take the action you are after - calling you in for a meeting, for example. Then, keeping that sheet of paper in front of you all the time, start selecting the relevant facts.
You should find that your problem lies in being spoilt for choice. Be ruthless. Include only those skills, strengths, achievements and so on that really do make you stand out. This will not only ensure that you produce the best possible CV, but will also be valuable preparation for an ultimate meeting, helping you to concentrate your mind on your key assets and the ways in which they will benefit your prospective employer.
If, by any chance, you find that your problem is too little choice, rather than too much, there are two possible explanations. Either you are targeting the wrong kind of opportunity or you did not do your initial self-appraisal thoroughly enough.
CV Suicide
If you are to be ruthless in selecting only those assets which are going to ensure that your CV achieves its objective, then you must be even more ruthless in dealing with other matters which probably do not need to be mentioned at all, and in avoiding some of the more common risks and pitfalls. Here are some examples.
O Leisure interests should appear on your CV only if they positively strengthen your application - for example, active involvement in professional and trade associations, or pursuits which demonstrate qualities like fitness and tenacity. Any that are not directly relevant add nothing, except clutter. Oddball interests are a distinct liability - do not risk being labeled a weirdo.
O Political and religious affiliations are even more risky. Keep them to yourself, at least until you find out what your prospective employer's views are.
O Voluntary/community work falls into the same category as leisure interests, i.e. to be omitted unless directly relevant. While some potential employers may admire your public spiritedness, others may fear that you will always be running off to do good works instead of staying late in the office when you are needed.
O It is not necessary to provide references at this stage, except in the case of public sector applications.
O Addresses and telephone numbers of employers are also superfluous.
O Beware of jargon, and of abbreviations which - though universally recognized in your current environment - may be meaningless to the person reading your CV.
O If possible, avoid the risk of either over- or under pricing yourself by omitting details of your remuneration. Should it be specifically asked for, deal with it in your covering letter.
O Reasons for leaving jobs are a potential minefield. Let them wait for the interview.
O Career goals and ambitions are another dicey area. Unless you are sure they match both the specific job and the future prospects in the organization in question, leave them out.
O Once you have made a statement in your CV, you have invited the reader to ask you to justify it at interview, so do not include anything you cannot prove, if challenged to do so.
O Explain gaps between jobs, otherwise people may jump to an unfavorable conclusion.
O In particular, avoid lies. Be sparing with the truth, if you must, by omitting things completely, but do not risk getting caught in the act of trying to deceive - it will be the end of your chances of the job in question. Professional recruiters check, as a matter of routine, whether candidates actually have the qualifications they claim, while all sorts of other matters - such as dates of employment, and details of salary and benefits - are verified in the course of taking up references.
How to Present Yourself
You should present your CV the same way you would present yourself for an interview: smart, positive, professional - conveying an image of efficiency but not going over the top by being flashy or too smooth. The following specific points need to be kept in mind.
O Length - A couple of pages should be enough, three at the outside. If you need to list out technical information (this may apply, for example, to IT people, academics or scientists), do so in an appendix attached to the back of your CV. Do not enclose photocopies of reference letters, detailed job descriptions or certificates relating to professional qualifications.
O Spacing - Do not, however, sacrifice legibility on the altar of brevity. Three well-spaced pages, using bullets, indents, clear margins and so on, will produce a more favorable impression on a tired-eyed recruiter than two cramped ones. This is why a one-page CV, for all its apparent advantages, is not generally to be recommended for a mid to senior level executive.
o Priority - Assuming, then, that you are going to have to rely on gaining sufficient interest from your reader to ensure that they do turn the page, remember to put first things first.
First provide only the absolutely necessary personal details (name, address, telephone number, professional qualifications, relevant educational details and any foreign languages spoken), and then go straight into your most relevant experience and achievements.
Typography - Stick to a single typeface. Mixing them creates a messy effect. Choose a clean, businesslike typeface like Times New Roman and use a size that will not cause eye strain - 12 point is ideal. Achieve variety by the use of capitalization, emboldening and - discerningly - variations in typeface. Italic is best avoided, so is underlining.
Be verbally Lean
Presentation is not just about layout. It is also about the words you use - or, rather, not just the words you do use, but also the ones you do not. The first rule is that every single word you employ in your CV must earn its keep, otherwise it has no business being there.
Start at the beginning. What are you going to put at the top? 'Curriculum Vitae'? Does anyone really need telling that? So why put it there? Why not just head the sheet with your name?
Economize on space, as well as words. You want your reader to get to the important stuff as quickly as possible. Your address need take up only one line. Do not forget the post code - its omission is likely to be considered either careless or un business like. Another single line will be enough for home and, if applicable, office telephone numbers. Recipients of CVs do like to have your business number and will very rarely fail to be discreet in its use, but there is clearly no point in including it if you cannot talk freely from your office.
Avoid, by the way, taking economy with words to the extreme of omitting contact information completely on the grounds that your address and telephone number are on your covering letter. The two documents can, and often do, become separated.
'Age'? No, use 'Date of Birth' instead. There is no more certain way of making a CV look tired than by forgetting to update it when you have a birthday.
Marital status and numbers of children are optional. Include them only if they help. Many employers prefer the impression of stability which is given by someone who is married with two-point-four children. On the other hand, if a job involves a lot of travel away from home, it could be an advantage to state that you are single.
Then, after dealing with qualifications, education and languages, you come to your most recent job - or, if you are really convinced it is going to do you more good than harm, your personal profile. Either way, you need to be aware of a couple more words which should be avoided at all costs: T and 'me'. Once you start using them, you have to go on doing so, and there is no easier way of making yourself sound nauseatingly egocentric. Remember who the CV is for? It is supposed to be a reader-centered document, not a you-centered one.
The way to avoid those two pronouns, by the way, is not to put the whole thing in the third person. Recruiters loathe the kind of CV which has apparently been written by someone other than the subject, e.g. 'Smith spent 10 years with XYZ Co.'. The correct method is to eliminate not only T and 'me', but also a lot of other unnecessary little words like 'a', 'an' and 'the' by scrapping full grammatical English and using note form. Compare the following examples for snappiness and impact:
O Installed, a fully computerized accounting system which resulted in a reduction in the amount of time it took to produce the monthly reporting package from thirteen days to seven days.
O Installed fully computerized accounting system, reducing time taken to produce monthly reporting package from 13 days to 7.
Writing in note form also ensures that you avoid two more pet hates of people who read a lot of CVs - long sentences and heavy wedges of solid text.
The clearest way to set out your career history is to put dates to the left (months are not necessary, just years are sufficient), and indent the text. State your job title and, unless the company is a household name, indicate its size and what it does. Rather than detailing duties, which are often largely self-evident from the job title, list achievements. Give some thought to why the company was better off for your contribution and get this across in a succinct but striking manner.
Unless an earlier job is particularly relevant to your current application, go into more detail on your current or most recent position and progressively less as you work backwards. If you had several short periods of employment right at the beginning of what is now a lengthy career, you can summarize them rather than listing them individually.
Finding Fresh Words
If eliminating words that do not earn their keep is one half of the job, then making those words you do use earn not only their keep, but also a handsome bonus, is the other half. The English language is an exceptionally rich one, with many alternative terms for any one noun or verb, adjective or adverb. Do not be lazy. Avoid serving up the same tired old words that everyone else is using. Take the trouble to find the words that precisely describe what you want to convey, words which express the individualism that makes you unique, rather than just another faceless candidate, desperate for a job.
Your word processing package probably incorporates a thesaurus. If not, you can buy one in book form. Each time you want to describe something, consider all the alternatives. Select the one that sits comfortably on your shoulders, like a well-fitting jacket. Avoid using outlandish terms just to be different - you can achieve a striking impact simply by careful thought and accurate choice.
To take one or two examples of how to make your personal qualities shine through, here are a couple which impressed recruiters.
o A recruitment consultant who was trying to fill a vacancy for an auditor to work for a large European financial institution - not exactly the sort of job that has the majority of people jumping up and down with excitement - was struck by a CV which said, 'Particularly enjoyed audits of international organizations in finance sector'. The applicant had not only drawn attention to relevant experience, but had also personalized that statement.
O Another candidate, working in a business where security was vital, said, 'Regarded by my boss as the safest pair of hands in the whole company'. This applicant had correctly identified the fact that reliability was what the reader of the CV would place at the top of the person specification for the Job in question, not executive Rambo qualities like being dynamic and results orientated.
Reviews and Wraps
In any professional organization, a draft report always gets reviewed carefully before dispatch, whether it is being presented to a committee or board, or being sent off to clients. This review process usually involves someone other than the writer taking a look at the draft. A fresh pair of eyes often spots things the writer, who has been too closely immersed in it for too long, may no longer have the objectivity to notice.
So, when you have had a first go at reviewing and editing, and have tried to anticipate - and answer - the questions you think the reader might want answered, ask someone else to have a look at your draft. Find someone qualified to pass a reasonably expert judgment. While colleagues or friends may be able to help, you could kill two birds with one stone and actually use your CV to do a bit of networking, especially if you are sounding out a new area you wish to move into.
Get more than one view if possible. Each person will have his or her own quirks, and you will never please everyone 100 per cent, but listen for the consensus. Try asking the question, 'If you were ploughing through two or three hundred CVs, would mine stand out?'
And when, finally, you really do have the best effort you can possibly produce - and have run your word processor's spell-check over it - take care not to let yourself down with your printing and stationery. The aim here should be for a crisp, professional appearance without going over the top. An excessively glossy presentation will turn recruiters off just as quickly as a tatty, amateurish one, probably because it smacks of a factory produced bulk mail shot.
You do not, therefore, have to spend a fortune on a laser printer. Bubble jet or daisy wheel will do just as well - but not the dot matrix that came with your seven-year-old child's toy computer, and certainly not that old typewriter with its uneven print and the odd letter that keeps trying to jump up above all the others.
Having taken the trouble to achieve high quality printing, avoid - if at all possible - faxing your CV. The print always lacks crispness, and the paper creates a distinctly tacky impression.
The same need for a balanced approach applies to stationery as it does to print quality. Fancy folders are not appreciated, at least not in the UK, but do print out on a decent quality white paper, even when you are running your CV through a photocopier. White? Yes. Although cream, buff or pale blue are generally acceptable, a main board director of a highly regarded merchant bank was recently seen to cast a CV abruptly aside with the comment, 'Blue paper! No way am I going to employ someone who sends in a CV on blue paper!'
You may not be able to predict all the whims of the people you are targeting, but there is no point in taking avoidable risks. Keep the presentation professional and then let the carefully chosen content do the rest.
International Aspects
The first point that needs to be made is that you need to translate your CV into the language in question or, in some cases, languages - plural. In Belgium it is customary to have a CV available in French, Flemish and, if you are dealing with subsidiaries of UK or US corporations, English too.
Custom and practice varies enormously from one country to another. In America you never mention age or date of birth (age discrimination is illegal), and you omit details of marital status, children, religion and nationality. You also print your resume on an American paper size, not on A4. In Germany you give greater prominence to qualifications. In France it used to be the norm to attach a photograph, but is now becoming less so.
What it all adds up to is the fact that you just have to have local knowledge, gained either through previous personal experience of working in the country in question or through obtaining advice and guidance from people who do have that knowledge.
"What you need to do is whet the reader's appetite, not cause indigestion."
