A CV is your personal marketing document, designed to ‘sell’ your skills and abilities to a potential employer. With so many CVs making it to your potential employer, though, how do you make yourself stand out? These tips will help you snag that dream job.
Focus on achievements
Highlighting key responsibilities is important, but don’t just list your daily workload. Your CV should focus on the unique accomplishments that make you stand out. Show how you contributed to the organisation; did you save money or time, exceed targets, solve problems, improve processes, or attract new customers? Where possible, quantify how you added value with numbers, percentages or amounts.
Market your experience; customise your response
Think of your CV as a marketing brochure rather than an autobiography.
- Show that you’ve read the job description.
- Tailor your presentation to suit the job opening.
- A scattershot approach of firing off the same generic resume to multiple jobs will not do the trick.
Make sure you proofread
You can the perfect experience and skills, but if there’re errors in your spelling and grammar, your CV is getting tossed. Proofreading is essential. If you’re not confident of your own skills, professional custom writing services can proofread and edit your CV for you.
Compelling reading
The tone of your CV should be enthusiastic, upbeat and professional. Put your strongest and most relevant points first, using action words such as ‘completed,’ ‘developed’ and ‘managed,’ and superlatives such as ‘first,’ ‘best’ and ‘highest.’ Presenting your accomplishments honestly but confidently using high impact words will help them stand out and make your CV more compelling.
Accent the positive
Leave off negatives and irrelevant points. If you feel your date of graduation will subject you to age discrimination, leave the date off your CV. If you do some duties in your current job that don’t support your job search objective, leave them off your CV. Focus on the duties that do support your objective. Leave off irrelevant personal information like your height and weight.
The thought of writing a CV intimidates almost anyone. It’s difficult to know where to start or what to include. It can seem like an insurmountable task. These tips to help you not only tackle the task, but also write a winning resume.
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