If you have ever tried to put a CV of your own together or help a friend to write one then you know how difficult this can be. It is easy to fall into the trap of just listing your experience and qualifications without using any personality and this then comes across as boring to a prospective employer.
It is a fine balancing act to convey confidence whilst showcasing your best attributes in order to impress your future boss. However, creating a successful CV is not that easy.
These are the most commonly made mistakes in creating a CV:
Including references to your personal website, blog or facebook.
You may wonder why listing your personal website may be an error. You may have a sample of your design work on your website that you want your potential employer to see. It sounds a great idea in practice but you may have irrelevant information or even inappropriate photos on there that you had forgotten about. In other words, if the site you have is entirely for personal purposes, leave it off the CV.
The same advice goes for facebook - your friends may find you hilarious but a future employer may view you differently. Include a link to your web site if the pages are purely set up to disclose your professional portfolio, a copy of your CV, reference letters, presentations, photos taken for professional use, or your web development skills.
Using small fonts in order to get everything to fit on one page.
The general rule of CV writing is that it does not exceed more than two pages, however people tend to change jobs more often in this day and age so it is satisfactory to stretch to three pages if required. The worst thing you can do is to write your CV in a very small font as the reader will just discard it in preference to one that can be read more easily. Try making your description more concise and to the point to cut down on unnecessary words.
Lengthy paragraphs describing your experiences in every detail.
You are obviously proud of your achievement be they at school or in employment, but do not make the faux pas of writing a book about what you achieved or performed. Use bullet points that start with action verbs - i.e. developed, managed, etc. The potential employer will want to scan your CV first for the relevant points and then reread in more detail if it is presented in a concise manner.
Not checking for typing mistakes.
A winning CV is well written, concise and to the point with no typing mistakes. If you miss a spelling mistake it will give the wrong impression to the prospective employer and will probably result in your CV being dispatched to the bin. One good tip is to ask a friend or a parent to check it for you as you may be “CV blind” by now!
In conclusion, it is getting more difficult to obtain employment even with superb qualifications and a well written easy on the eye CV will only help you to win that dream job. The biggest problem for students is deciding what job best suits them and finding interesting ways to explore different careers options.
There is a wealth of knowledge all around us, your family and friends have all been around the ups and downs of the working world and they will be happy to share that information with you, you just need to interview your parents, grandparents, friends and neighbours and you would learn so much about them and working life very quickly.
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