In today’s competitive world a CV needs to stand out from the crowd and speak for itself. In fact it needs to shout from the rooftops about your skills and experience, and preferably in more than one language.

Presentation

In this age of personal computers and cheap home printers, there simply is no excuse for hand-written or dog-eared CV’s. Your CV should be word-processed, well laid out and crisply printed. Anything less will look like you can’t be bothered. There is some scope for those who are looking for work in the creative fields to get creative with their presentation, but don’t cross the line into pointlessly whacky and do make sure that the necessary basic information about your skills and experience is communicated.

Personal Profile

It has become fashionable to include a personal profile in a CV. It is your opening opportunity to hook a reader and get them interested in you. Call it your personal elevator pitch and whether or not you choose to include a personal profile, it is a good idea to try to draft one. It will focus your own ideas about who you are and where you want to get to.

Education

For anyone just leaving school or college, they may have a lot more to say about their education than they do about their work experience. Cover the basics: place of study, dates, subjects and results. Poor results can always be a tricky issue. Don’t lie and pretend to have got better results than you did. There’s usually a good reason behind bad results, so honesty is the best policy.

Experience

Again, the basics like who you worked for and when are vital, along with dates. Include voluntary work as well as paid work – it shows initiative and willing. Explain any gaps so it doesn’t look like you are hiding something. But concentrate on transferrable skills. These are skills you have learnt in one job and which may be useful in another. Before you despair about how your experience scrubbing out toilets could be relevant to that flashy IT job you saw advertised, think about the skills of humour, patience, and attention to detail that you learned.

Languages

But suppose you’ve not yet gained any work experience? Again, do not despair! We all learn valuable life skills when on holiday or studying abroad. If you study French in France then you show an admirable commitment to cultural understanding and real communication skills. So to learn French in France is most certainly experience that speaks for itself on your CV.