CV Template & CV Example
How to write a great CV
Your CV is your agent, it will open job interview doors for you.
Your CV is the first impression an employer will get so it needs to be well thought out and demonstrate your skills and work experience against the job they are hiring for. Don’t have a CV? Our CV template can help start writing your own. Before you write your CV consider the following:
§ What kind of job are you looking for? Is it a banking role or a management job? Do you want contract work or are you looking for a part time job?
§ What do you have experience in? Are you looking for job in the public sector, marketing jobs or jobs in IT?
§ Where are you looking to work? Are you happy to relocate? Are you only interested in jobs in London, jobs in the South East or jobs in the North West?
§ How can you sell yourself? What skills do you have? How many years of experience? What are your strengths?
§ What have you accomplished in your most recent role?
Make a list of your skills (things you’ve learned), abilities (things you can do naturally) and experiences (what you’ve done). So you might be a graduate, a problem solver and have done some volunteering at university. Great! Now to order the information.
You want the information you give to be no longer than two sides of typed A4. You can order the information into bullet points which will make it easier for the person looking at it to scan through. Make sure you include your successes and include a short breakdown of what you did in each role. Don’t leave any time periods unaccounted for.
The main sections to include in your CV:
Personal details:
The usual - name, address, phone number and email address if you have one. Make sure this is professional enough - not an embarrassing nickname!
Career profile:
This is an increasingly common section to add into your CV. Use a few lines to detail what work you’ve done so far in your career, and where you hope to go. If you’re not sure where you want to go with any certainty you can talk about the area in which you hope to work - in human resources, being a team leader or simply gaining more skills.
Employment history:
Start from your current job (if you’re in employment, most recent if not) and work backwards. List your job title, dates you were there and then add two to four bullet points of your duties. Also include any successes –
“Undertook a project to get a website designed and built for the company at a very competitive rate. Currently manage the website’s content and deliver training to colleagues in how to add content.”
Education and skills:
List these in reverse chronological order and also put in any training you’ve had - for example Health and Safety or even things like time management training. You don’t have to go as far back as your SATs or Richmond Test results, just think about what is relevant to the type of job you are going for. You could say “7 GSCEs grade A-C” for example, which is much shorter than listing them all.
Referees: Choose two people who know you well and who will talk about you positively. Ideally this should be a current boss (or a recent one will do) and someone else who knows you in a professional capacity - perhaps a former colleague or a tutor from school/college/university.
Make sure you check through the CV a few times to weed out any spelling mistakes. In fact, it’s usually best to ask a friend or parent to do this as it can be hard to spot them when you’ve been working on it for a while.
And finally, please don’t be tempted to bend the truth or exaggerate. Suspiciously impressive statements will attract attention for the wrong reasons!
Use our CV Template to start creating your own CV
