How to write a CV | Essential Tips

Writing a suitable CV is one of the most important things you can do when applying for opportunities. At Bauhaus we have compiled some of our tips of best practice to help provide some guidance.

CV stands for Curriculum Vitae. It is an important document that people use when applying for jobs. Writing an excellent CV is crucial if you want to demonstrate your talents and experience in the right way and land yourself the right position. If you believe that you are perfectly experienced for a particular position but you are not getting interviews, it may mean that your CV does not highlight your attributes in the right way and may need to rethink your approach.

Choose the Best Format

The first and foremost essential tip while writing a CV is to choose the best CV format. In a competitive job market, employers receive a huge amount of CVs for any particular position and many spend very little time reviewing any particular CV so it is key for your experience and suitability to stand out.

Begin by creating an outline for your CV. Key sections should include:

• Name, Location, Contact details
• Profile
• Key Skills/Accreditations
• Work History
• Education

To make your CV easy to read and to the point we recommend: 

• Make sure that there is consistency in the layout of your CV. Make all the headings bold.
• Use a legible font size of 11 to 12 pt.
• Keep every sentence brief and to the point and use bullet points for your skills and responsibilities
• Avoid large paragraphs of texts where possible.
• Never use text boxes

Profile

The key to a good profile is to keep it reasonably short, factual and appropriate for the job which you are applying. Briefly summarize your qualities and experience and how this relates to the role.

Key Skills/Accreditation

Many candidates, particularly those in engineering, have huge skill sets and accreditations but many do not list these on their CV. Saving space here is not a requirement so do your best to include all of your skills and abilities. Many believe their skills to be obvious based on their experience but is not always the case. Often it can be HR departments who are reviewing your CV and they do not always understand the nuances involved in your experience. To give a more comprehensive view be as thorough as possible here.

Work History

Listing your work experience may be the most important aspect of CV writing. It allows hiring managers the opportunity to see exactly what experience you have and if possible, you should list your full work history but this would be a huge task for some contractors. If this is the case for yourself try to list all the long term works you have done, any specialist jobs that may apply.

Your experience should be listed in reverse chronological order with your most recent position at the top. You should list the name of the company you worked for, your job title and as accurately as possible you must list the time periods in which you worked. Then it would be preferable to see a short couple of sentences briefly outlining the job itself and then bullet points of your responsibilities and tasks undertaken.

Education

This should be a fairly straight forward part of the process. You should approach this in the same vain as your work history section and include the educational body/school/college/university, the name of your qualifications and your grades.

All our guidance here is general and based on our cumulative experience. Some companies and clients may have different requirements and if applying via Bauhaus we will work together with you to create a CV the shows your experience in a suitable way.

If you have further queries regarding your CV or would like us to take a look at it please send it in to info@bauhausrecruitment.com and give us call. We would be happy to help