CV Services Blog

*Name* (followed by any designations after your name such as MBA or MSc)
Town/City of residence (no need to include your full address)
Home Telephone Number (only if you are easy to reach on that number)
Mobile Number
Email address

Do:
·    Check and re-check the numbers and email address you have listed.  Nothing says unreliable like a mobile number that doesn’t work.

Don’t:
·    Write ‘Curriculum Vitae’, ‘Resume’ or ‘Mobile Number:’ to alert people as what each piece of information is.  A number starting 07 is quite clearly for a mobile phone.

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*Relevant Experience*

5 bullet points or less on your experience relating directly to the job description

For more information on this wait a few days for our article on ” Targeting your Compliance CV for better interview results”

Do:
·    Make sure you spend some time on this section and make each sentence short and specific by including numbers and timeframes (e.g. 800 transactions over a 3 month period)

Don’t:
·    Write more than 4 or 5 bullet points – the list will lose its strength as an introduction to you

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*Career Background*

Position (e.g. Compliance Manager)                       Dates of Employment (e.g. Sep 07 – Present)
Employer (e.g. Citigroup), Employer Location (Canary Wharf, London)

·    Achievement on recent project or piece of work goes first
·    List responsibilities
·    Include any knowledge you gained on financial products or sourcebooks
·    Include any technological knowledge you gained on different IT systems
·    How many people did you work with? Or how many people reported to you? – Include this as it’s often used to determine your fit into another organisation.

Repeat above format for each separate job from the most recent job to the least recent job in reverse chronological order.

Do:
·    Make sentences short and specific by including numbers and dates

Don’t:
·    Write large chunks of text in a story format.  Busy people just don’t have the time to read this type of CV.  Interviews are the right forum for more lengthy explanations.

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*Education & Qualifications*

Course Result (e.g. 2:1), Course Name (e.g. Economics), University/Institution (e.g. London School of Economics and Political Science)

Do:
·    Include all relevant training courses that have lasted 1 day or more

Don’t:
·    List training that is irrelevant to the position you are going for.  The Elementary Food Hygiene Certificate isn’t going to be useful in investment banking.

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*Memberships*

Membership Level (e.g. Fellowship – FCSI), Institution (e.g. Chartered Institute for Securities and Investment)

Do:
·    Ensure that if there is nothing for you to fill out here, you should consider joining a reputable professional organisation that proves your commitment to career development.

Don’t:
·    Include your membership of non-professional, non-work related organisations unless you think it will greatly improve your chances of getting an interview.

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*References*

Available on request

Do:
·    At least include that referee details are available on request.

Don’t:
·    Write your referees contact details or name in here unless you have their position.  Generally we wouldn’t recommend you include names and contact details for referees because their information can then become easily available in a CV database, and therefore be used for marketing purposes.

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*Other Info*

·    Do you have the right to work in the country you are applying to work in?
·    You can include hobbies and personal interests but generally it’s not that important to a hiring manager or recruiter if you collect stamps or bungee jump from bridges.

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General Do’s:
·    Explain gaps in your CV – recruiters and hiring managers will ask
·    Keep your CV to 2 pages if possible, but no more than 3 pages under any circumstance – if you can’t sell yourself within 3 pages, then you are disobeying a golden rule of marketing (you know the rule - keep it punchy!)
·    Use at least a typeface of 11 points with a recognised font such as Arial or Times New Roman.  Jazzy fonts don’t help make you ‘different’ from other CVs they just irritate readers.
·    Explain any acronyms or TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms) you use
·    Get a friend to read your CV for mistakes or grammatical errors.  Then get another friend to check your CV afterwards, and just for really good measure get someone else to read it and check it.  Ask them to be brutally honest with you on the quality of your CV too; a very good technique which can increase the success rate of your job applications.

General Don’ts:
·    Don’t include your date of birth, martial status or your health status – protect your identity here.  Employers don’t need to know your date of birth at this stage, marital status is irrelevant to how you perform your job and no-one is going to write ‘health: poor’ on their CV so don’t include ‘health: good’ because it’s an opinion and won’t be account for when offering you an interview.
·    Don’t take all of this advice then wonder why your job applications aren’t being successful.  Sometimes getting another job takes a long time and if you applying to jobs that are outside of your general realm of experience then it might take quite a number of applications before you are invited to interview.

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