Resume Advice
Your CV is a powerful sales tool and should be written to take into account that this in fact the First Interview with any prospective client. If we don't correctly and efficiently describe our experience and skills effectively here, the chances are we won't be selected for a face to face interview at a later stage
Maybe when you are writing your resume you might take the following points into account.
- Present your resume with your Name & contact details at the top.
- Keep your resume to a reasonable length, but don't get tied up with the two pages only concept. If you have 10 years of experience or more, then just 2 pages will not do you justice. However when we start to move over the five page mark we might like to be more concise in our description of the roles that we had when we first started work. We should also be realistic in expecting concentration and interest levels to fall when readers pass the fourth or fifth page. A happy balance is what is required and this will be different from person to person.
- Begin with your most recent role and then work back chronologically
- Put as much detail into each role as possible detailing skills used and how you applied them in that particular role.
- Always, always check for spelling errors and grammatical mistakes in your resume. We only have one chance here to make a good first impression and any errors here might reflect unfairly upon yourself.
- Do include your hobbies on your resume, clients like to see what you get up to at the weekend, this small section gives them some valuable insight to you as a person and makes you a three dimensional person with outside interests.
- Include a list of all the skills that you are familiar with along with any appropriate versions. Then ensure that you include these skills in the descriptions of the projects that you did for each individual company.
- Use fonts that are clearly readable and avoid any spacings or formatting which might distort upon another's machine if you are sending an electronic copy. In short, 'Keep it simple'.
