CV advice

When you need good CV advice, we can help. Your resumé is a crucial part of getting a job - it represents you to potential employers, is the sales tool you need to get your foot in the door. With a good CV you'll get interviews, while a bad one can sink you before you even get to speak to anyone in person.

Our CV advice starts at the beginning - planning what you are going to write. Typically, people tend to have either too much or too little information to put on their resumé.

For those just starting out in the jobs market, the problem is typically that they don't have a whole lot of experience or qualifications to write about. If you've never had a job or don't have a degree, what do you write about?

The key piece of CV advice to bear in mind here is that what you are writing is a selling document, and it's selling you. So while you should never make anything up or tell lies - they will always come back to haunt you sooner or later - you do have to take what you have and use it in the best way possible.

If you are selling yourself, the first thing to be sure of is that your resumé isn't full of mistakes - spelling mistakes and grammatical errors suggest that you are sloppy and unprofessional so make sure you get the basics right. You'll also want to organize it properly - again, the way your resumé is structured and organized says a lot about you.

To ensure that your resumé presents you in the best possible light, make sure that it starts with your key skills and recent experience, and also includes your Profile, Achievements, Experience, Special Skills (e.g. languages, IT skills), and your Education and Training.

You'll also want to be sure that all information such as work experience and education and training is represented in reverse chronological order - that is, most recent first.

If you aren't sure how to do this, or what a good resum? looks like, you can either hire a rsumé company to produce a professional resumé for you, or go online and do some research.

You'll find plenty of sites offering free advice on writing a CV, and lots of example of samples, both good and bad. Use the resources available to you and you should be able to produce something that is an asset in your job hunt.

Additional information

Preparing your CV | CV tips | Sample CVs | Common CV mistakes