In my line of work I read an awful lot of CVs and many of them are very poorly written. Whilst it is not unheard of for a badly written CV to get the job it is extremely rare. In most cases they are immediately binned in favour of a better penned piece of work. There are a few key tips for writing a professional sample resume which I will cover at the start and then I will go into some more details after that. It’s worth reading it all, but at the very least take in my key tips.
- Check your spelling. Any piece of software you use these days will have a spellchecker so this is quite an easy take, however always remember that they are not error-free. They will mistake words like hear and here or there and their. Check and double check this. Ideally get your grammar right as well, but spelling is an absolute must. This leads me neatly to:
- Get someone else to read it after you think you’re done and ask them to be brutal with error spotting. They may notice errors mentioned above or will notice if it’s dull or if there is too much or too little. They will see things that you don’t notice because you are too close to it. Don’t be precious about this, you want the truth and the honest truth – remember it’s to get you a job.
- Usually keep it short. Unless you are going for a very technical job which requires a lot of detail try and keep it to one piece of paper – an employer will get probably hundreds if not thousands of applicants for a decent job – if there is a lot to read chances are they won’t look past the first page anyway – be concise, be precise and contain all the key information into the text they are going to read.
- Write a cover letter. There is absolutely no excuse not to write one. Most CVs are fairly bland, even if they have good information in them. A covering letter is your chance to introduce your personality a little more and to make an impact on the person reading it that a CV will not normally have.
- Finally for the short tips – make sure that you include a short personal statement at the beginning, a little bit about you to give the CV a little flavour.
Here are some more details to write a professional resume samples:
I would advise tailoring your Resume to each and every job you apply for. A lot of people spam their CV to hundreds of jobs and so send the same one to everything. If, however, you read the job requirements there are probably a number of skills specifically asked for – make sure that you have covered them in your CV, and related skills.
Include a section on outside interests apart from work. It gives you a little more ‘flavour’ and something to talk about in the interview. However the mistake I see a lot is people going overboard on this section – if it looks like you have too many hobbies I may start to question your dedication to the job.
Employment history is important – lay it out neatly, with key areas of responsibility, ideally related (even loosely) to what the employer has asked for in their job specifications – use this to show how your prior experience can inform you in the job you are applying for.
Make sure you include references (and make sure they know) – it always looks a little suspicious if they are not included.
Think about what the employer wants to see. Again bear in mind that they get a lot of CVs, so lay it out with key details very prominently. Make them easy to read, clearly presented – that shows you have an organised mind and one that can present well. Usually an employer only needs to know your highest grade of education, so be wary of putting too many lower grades on the form.
Lastly – most people exaggerate on their CV. When I read a CV I have an understanding that it is only showing the shining bright points about the candidate. However don’t go overboard. Make sure that you can back it up. Make sure that if you say you have the skill that you really do, because otherwise you are wasting the employers time potentially and also potentially getting yourself into difficulty if you got a job you can’t perform in.
Writing a CV is an art and if you can get feedback on your CV from any source then use that feedback, take criticism, edit your CV, keep it up to date (with dates and similar) and you will stand a much better chance than all of the many people who don’t bother. Good Luck with your applications.