CV Writing Advice
CV Writing Advice
Below our CV Consultants with CV KNOWHOW's CV Writing Service have advised what information they include within a Professional CV and why. This is aimed at ensuring that you have all the information you need before securing our services.
Name (full name is required here no need to include title)
address: (full address, including postcode)
email: (please provide your email address, if you have one)
telephone (home & mobile): (You can include both telephone numbers or just the one you use the most)Professional Profile
This section replaces the old Skills Section, which is no longer required by prospective employers. Some of the information within your prepared CV will be included in here in addition to other skills you may have, such as team working, communication and organisation, to name a few. This immediately gives the recipient an idea as to what kind of person you are and what attributes you possess.
Objective
This section is intended to give a prospective employer some idea of what kind of role you are looking for e.g. Managerial Role, Team Leader, Shop Assistant etc. If you send your CV out on spec, then this is extremely helpful and if you are sending your CV in response to a specific job advertisement, then this section can be tailored to match the job you are applying for.
Career Summary
This section speaks for itself. Your career will be listed, the most recent role first, and should ideally cover the last 10 years. Any roles before this time will still be included on the CV under additional roles, but we will only require duties and responsibilities for positions held in the last 10 years. If you are a school/university leaver, this title may change to work experience and we also include a separate section to include any unpaid roles, entitled Voluntary Work. It is extremely important to include all working experiences and if you have any gaps within your employment, to go travelling or to raise a family, this must also be mentioned. In order to disguise any gaps from any unemployment as much as we can, we will only include the years, not the months, of when you carried out your roles.
Education
This is where you can showcase your academic background. It is best to include all qualifications gained going back to Secondary School education, but if you have a degree, then it is possible that these won't be included. Marks and grades are not included within this section, unless it adds something beneficial to your CV. So if you have a 1st Class honours degree or 11 A*s at GCSE, then we will include these. Any qualifications gained whilst working will be listed under a separate section entitled Professional Development and any training courses attended will be listed under Professional Training. It is advisable to include all of this information to give a wide overview of all your knowledge and experiences.
IT Skills
Most prospective employers need to know what kind of computer experience you have, so in this section we include a list of any applications that you may use in your current role, or indeed have used in the past, such as Word, Excel, Matlab, Publisher etc. We include anything that you have utilised and we don't need to indicate at what level, e.g. basic or intermediate, unless it benefits your CV and relates to the job you are applying for. If you are applying for a technical role and have expert skills in this particular area, then this section will be moved to a more prominent position within the CV and will usually be entitled Areas of Expertise.
Other Details
Under this section we advise whether you have a full, clean, driving licence, whether you speak any languages and to what level, e.g. Fluent English & Spanish (mother tongue) & Basic French and if you are qualified in first aid etc.
We also like to include what interests and hobbies you have. Although this isn't a compulsory section, some prospective employers like to see this section as it means an interview can be ended on a lighthearted note with some personal, rather than professional, information to talk about.
We will basically look through all the information you provide us with and will draft a Professional CV utilising the same. There are further points to be aware of:-
A Professional CV should not exceed the maximum preferred two pages and often it will only run to one page; exceptions to this rule include medical professionals, solicitors and technical CVs.
Your CV will be written in the third person and in the present tense, which is preferred by prospective employers.
Only the most important information from your existing CV or details provided will be included within your Professional CV.
We will utilise either Arial or Times New Roman Fonts, unless you provide us with your preferred font when placing your order.
