What is a CV? Not such a stupid question. CVs are called many things (like résumé in America) but what ever it is called (and you do not have to write - and in fact should not write - "curriculum vitae" on it any more than you write "letter" on the top of your letters) there are a few very simple rules that you ignore at your peril. A CV does one thing, and one thing only. It gets you an interview for a job. A CV is not a potted biography. It is not a record of every thing you have ever done. Think of it as a piece of highly-targeted direct mail. Direct to the one person who is going to put you on a short list. What should my CV contain? Only things that are germane for the job for which you are applying. You should produce a unique CV for every job for which you apply. A single general, one-size-fits-all CV will not do. That may sound like a lot of work, but an hours work to get a £75k+ return is not bad work. How long will a hiring manager look at my CV? Probably between 30 seconds and a minute. What that means is you must have maximum impact and present information - not opinions, not puff - in the most succinct, direct and easily digestible manner. The Golden rule of CVs If you pay no attention to anything else then remember this. Your CV should be no longer than 2-3 pages. Less is more. Two is much better than three unless you are a very senior director/CEO when it is just about acceptable to go to a third page. There are almost NO circumstances under which a CV should be longer than three pages. Several hundred CVs arrive at LMA Executive Search every week. Most of them contain information that is unnecessary, clutters up your CV and, for those who have paid attention to the two-page rule, has meant they have not included other, more important information. All directors/hiring managers/recruitment consultants have horror stories of the six, nine, ten, even 24 page CVs. Candidates with 5 page CVs will remain candidates for a long time. What is a hiring manager looking for? He or she will have a clear idea in their own head of the background and skills they are looking for. The first thing they will look at is the last employer you worked for and what job you were doing. If that experience is relevant, they will look deeper at your CV at what other experience you have. If the information is presented in a clear, immediately accessible way, you stand a much better chance of being selected for interview. If the information is buried deep in several pages of closely typed, poorly laid-out, badly spelt text, then no one is going to bother. How do I organise my CV ? There are two main types of CV. Time-based CV The traditional, and for most people, preferred layout. Arrange your career history with your current/most recent job first and work back. Make the job title and your employer clear. If your job title does not really explain what you did, then expand on it to provide enough detail. Jobs held more than 15 years ago should be very briefly dealt with. Skills-based CV Organised around your skills. May be more appropriate for some one who has moved jobs a lot or has significant experience gleaned from other areas, such as voluntary work. Also useful for candidates contemplating a major career switch so that previous experience needs to be put in context to make it relevant. Members of the Armed Forces may find it relevant. Commanding an aircraft carrier or drawing up plans to invade Iraq may need some interpretation for the civilian world. Not a popular format with recruiters. What to put in? Facts. And only facts. Whatever format you adopt, stick to the facts. Tell the consultant what you did, what your achievements were and provide the evidence for it. Avoid flannel. Use bullet points. Don't say you are a "world class leader" say "Head of 15-strong team in three locations worldwide. Implemented new training scheme that increased turnover by 35% in three years." Do not be tempted to lie. If you are found out, you can be dismissed, and it is unlikely that the recruitment consultant will deal with you again. There is no need, for example, to include details of exams you took, but failed. Things you can safely leave out . The following list is not definitive. And don't forget, this kind of information can be presented later in the application process if you make it to the interview list: - Marital status - Number/ages/names of children - Details of your primary school - Your O/GCSE level subjects and grades- Almost certainly your A level grades unless you a very recent graduate - Any exams/qualifications you failed Place of birth Nationality Hobbies and interests. If you have represented your country in the Olympics, have written a best-selling book, or hold the record for the largest stack of 2p pieces balanced on your nose while uni-cycling then you may include them. If your interests are gardening, DIY and golf, as most people's are, then leave it off. What should my CV look like? Above, we looked at the cardinal rule of CVs. Your CV should be no longer than 2-3 pages. Two is better than three. Unless you are a retired President of the United States, a former Secretary General of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union or the Director General of the BBC, there is no excuse for not getting it onto two sides. Why the obsession with two sides? Two reasons: It shows you understand what a CV is for, and can order your thoughts and structure them in such a way as to convey the image you wish and NO director/hiring manager/recruitment consultant has the time to wade through pages after page of your personal details. They want the facts and just the facts. Structure: Put the information the hiring manager needs first. That means your name and your employment history starting with your most recent position. Education and all the other information goes at the end. Until you have been selected for interview, your address is not needed. Layout For most people, unless you are going after a position in a creative industry, stick to a very simple, clear and straight forward design. Always keep in mind that your CV is going to be scanned. It will be a very key discipline to keeping it clear and readable, and should discourage you from the excesses of Microsoft Word's layout tools. Typeface Chose a clear, straight forward font. On the PC, Arial and Times New Roman are a good choice. You can use both — perhaps using Arial as your headline font, and Verdana as the body text. Do not use more than two font families in a document — although with careful use you can make use of Arial Black and Arial Condensed. Type size Fonts should never be used at less than 10pt - a typical broadsheet newspaper uses 10pt type - anything less than that and first the OCR will not pick it up, and secondly you are not going to make the person reading it terribly happy. Type styles Although there is no problem in using bold fonts, be sparing in the use of italic. OCR software can be fooled by italics. Avoid underlining for the same reason, and under no circumstances use black - or indeed any other colour - boxes with white text in them. The OCR will almost certainly fail to read the text. The same goes for shadow, outline and any other of those bizarre typestyles that Word allows you to use. That typographic disaster zone "Word Art" — which allows you to make you name appear to be shaped like a ball — is best left to publishers of the village newsletter and the corporate sport and social club, where it is much admired. White space Allow your text some space to breathe. Do not be tempted to set 1cm margins on the basis you can get more on the page. It will look cramped and unprofessional. Consistency Devise a style sheet and stick to it. Think about the hierarchy of headings: Profile, if you have to have one, career and achievements, education, other information; then how are you going to present your job titles (dates, job title, company name). This is where the use of different fonts can help. Use differing weights and font sizes to help the reader pick out the key information. Perhaps 14 point Arial for the main sections headings, then 12 point Arial bold for the second level headings, with 10 point Verdana for the main body text. Language Use bullet points. Keep sentences short, active not passive verbs, stick to facts, not opinions. Use standard job titles, not company specific ones. This will increase your chances of your CV being found in a key word search. Other points: If you work on the basis that a recruitment consultant may scan 200 CVs in a day, and yours is the 197th consider what would that person want to see. Something simple, easy to read, clear, which shows a clarity of thought and the ability to present the most salient facts concisely. Layout, which will be covered in another article, is very important. Make your statement easy to read, in a simple, clear font (Times Roman or Arial or Verdana are good solid fonts that scan well) at a reasonable size (nothing less than 10 point, nothing more than 12pt). No shading, no boxes. Short sentences with good use of white space. Covering letter Many applicants idea of a covering email is, if they have even thought that far, to cite the job reference and a single line along the lines "Here is my CV". And that is that. This is a mistake. What should a covering letter do? Help you to stand out from the crowd. How? Consider that your application, especially in these difficult days, is very likely to be one of possibly hundreds of applicants. Just for a moment put yourself in the recruiter's shoes. He or she knows what they are looking for. They have a pile of al hundred CVs to wade through. It is getting on for 7pm, the time spent on each CV has dropped from about two minutes to under a minute. A CV comes with a letter, a short letter, succinctly highlighting the applicant's relevant details and expanding on some of the information in the attached CV. The letter explains why they are the right person for the job. It is all there, in a few, tight paragraphs. It can make the difference between getting "Please can you contact us to arrange an interview...." letter and getting the "thank you for your recent application, however...." letter. What should it contain? An opening paragraph that explains why you are writing. Use it to get across your key message. What you have to offer them. This is the hard sell. You have to sell your proposition in just a couple of paragraphs. It is not about repeating your CV but about explaining your unique proposition. What you do, who you do it for, how long you have been doing it. Anything on your CV that might need explaining. There is no stigma to being made redundant, but you might need to explain a long period, particularly if you have been undertaking freelance work. You might want to avoid salary details on your CV, in which case put them on the covering letter. It might also be worth mentioning your notice details. Each covering letter, like the CV it goes with, is unique to that application. It has to be. How could you produce an effective sell if it is not tailored to the audience. A one-size-fits-all covering letter has as much style as a one-size-fits-all coat. Go through the advertisement or specification with a red pen, and underline the skills and experience they are looking for. Sell yourself in response to these, highlighting the features that show you are right for the job. Style As with everything to do with CVs, it needs to be brief and to the point. Factual - not opinion. Make sure everything you say is backed up by your CV. Avoid any quasi-management waffle. Nobody ever "leveraged their core competencies." EVER. Tone In a way think of your covering letter almost as a press release, in as much as it has to cover the same ground. It needs to answer the same questions: who, why, what, where, when and how. Don't, however, be tempted to go to far and turn the ending into some over-the-top paean of self-indulgent praise. Stick to the facts. I trust this helps……happy hunting !!! Luke MarshallLMA Executive Search http://www.linkedin.com/in/lukemarshall
