Set out your stall

A CV has only one objective, and that is to get you through someone’s door for an interview. It must help the reader, who has approximately 30 seconds to make an initial decision. It is not a story of your entire life, but a picture of a strong entitlement to your next role. It should always tell the truth, nothing but the truth but never the whole truth.

Before a successful CV can be written, you must know what your next target job is to be and your CV must be aimed specifically at that role – that is to say, both you and your CV must be focused on your next objective. Your ideal target will be supported by only one CV.

Therefore, it is necessary to draw up a detailed inventory of skills, experiences and achievements in your career to date. You could consider:

• Skills: such as lateral thinking, leadership, communication, problem solving
• Experiences: e.g. Greenfield, international logistics, new development, specific financial markets, TMT specialisations
• Achievements: improving any situation by whatever means and to what quantified extent.

You should then assess and direct their relevance for the type of appointment that would best suit you, and finally define and play to your key areas of strength which are directly related to your career objective.

Your CV must capture and hold the interest of the reader in no more than thirty seconds.

It should:

• attract attention and arouse curiosity
• be well laid out, with plenty of space on the page and easy to read
• clearly define the product
• highlight key selling points
• be truthful and accurate in detail.

It should not:

• exceed two pages and preferably be one only
• leave the reader in doubt about the main thrust of your career or your entitlements;
• omit facts which are generally regarded as basic essentials for a CV – eg name, contact details or qualifications
• leave unexplained gaps in an otherwise continuous career outline
• puzzle the reader with technical terms or obscure abbreviations without explanation
• force or encourage the reader to perform mental arithmetic
• make the reader search for the information needed by poor formatting.

It should not be varied in response to different roles.

Choose your format

The two different formats you could use, depending upon your objectives, are either historical or functional.

The primary format is historical (in reverse chronological order) and is preferred by the great majority of people. It is well suited for those whose next role is to be the continuation or development of an existing career path. Whichever format is selected, it is essential to start the process by drawing up an historical CV and deriving the chosen format from it. It is virtually impossible to draw up a CV in any other format from scratch.

The functional format, which outlines your key transferrable skills, may be appropriate if you anticipate a significant change of direction from your past career

Your name, address and contact details should be at the top, and immediately below it should be your profile, not more than three lines long, which summarises your unique selling points and makes you stand out from others for the role. Leave this until you have written the body of your CV with your achievements and it will fall into place more easily.

Underneath, your previous roles and employers should be listed in reverse date order and one or two line sentences under each role should contain information on what you were asked to do, using action words. A number, not exceeding six, of quantified achievements should then be listed, indicating both how good you were at the job and your indirect entitlement to your profile, which in turn should indicate your entitlement to your next job objective.

In a block at the bottom, summarise factual details such as qualifications, memberships, languages and personal facts including marital status, number of dependants and flexibility. Do not mention hobbies, as this can be counterproductive and put unnecessary hurdles in the way. Neither salary requirements nor referees are relevant at this stage.

A good test of a CV achievement line is to ask, ”so what?” If the answer to that question is contained within a line, that is good. If it does not, then the objective is lost and more thought is needed.

The same achievement should not be repeated in different words. Chronological sequencing is highly desirable. The overall achievement should be put last, since the reader’s attention is at its lowest in the middle of a section.

When your CV is finished, read it through very carefully and consider exactly what message each word and phrase is conveying, ensuring there are no spelling mistakes, repetitive words, or exaggeration.

Kit Scott-Brown, is chief executive officer of InterExec, a career strategy and implementation agent