A best-in-class CV is essential to secure interviews with the best companies in your sector. In the current age, competition for jobs is significant, and the easiest way to differentiate yourself at the earliest stage is to prepare a quality document that highlights your skills and experience better than anyone elses.
1 - PICK A GREAT FORMAT
There are plenty of online resources you can use to pick a great format. Remember to tailor it to your sector - an Architects CV would look very different to an Insurance specialists. Make sure the nature of your CV fits in with your sector.
2 - KEEP IT BRIEF
A CV should highlight your skills, experience, and most importantly achievements. It should not go into significant detail about what you did every Monday afternoon. Stick to bullet points, and make sure you can expand on each point verbally at interview.
3 - NO PICTURES
In the UK, pictures on the CV usually have a negative impression.
4 - ELEVATOR PITCH
An 'Elevator Pitch' is a 30 second overview of you, your skills and what you do. You should be able to confidently say this at the drop of a hat, it also makes a great 'Personal Profile' for your CV. It should leave your audience in no doubt as to what you do, and what you can do for them.
5 - FOCUS ON RECENT ROLES
It is unlikely your interviewer wants to know significant detail about what you did 10+ years ago. The bulk of your 'Career History' section should be based around your current role, or last 2 roles if your current role is less than 2 years old.
6 - JOBS BEFORE EDUCATION
In most sectors, your work experience is far more interesting than your educational background.
7 - TALK ABOUT ACHIEVEMENTS
Your audience won't want to know what your daily duties were. They want to know what you achieved within your recent roles. Try to always focus on your successes, not your day to day duties. If you are interviewing with a competitor company, they will already know what your daily duties were, what they won't know is how well you did these duties.
8 - HOW DID YOU MAKE A DIFFERENCE
Try to focus on the difference you made within each role. For example, as a sales person, if you took sales from £1m to £3m per year, make sure that you mention that you increased sales by 200%, and always give time frames.
9 - DON'T BORE YOUR AUDIENCE
Do not go into too much detail with any job. Talk about achievements, numbers and time frames, as well as the noticable difference that you made. Do not talk about how you arranged the Christmas Party, or how you order paper for the Photo Copier.
10 - CAREFUL WITH HOBBIES
We usually suggest not to include hobbies. They can't really improve your chances of landing an interview but can hurt them. Certainly don't put hobbies down that aren't real, as we have many experiences of candidates being caught out at interview when they couldn't recall their fake generic 'hobbies'.
Take some time to really focus on putting together a quality piece of work that best explains your skills, without going into too much detail, remember - you want to be able to talk around the CV at interview.