HOW TO COMPOSE AN EFFECTIVE CV
In the eyes of potential employers, your CV, or Curriculum Vitae, is your identity as a potential employee. As the collective of all your qualifications, it is easy to pack as much relevant information about yourself into the document as possible. It is important however, to note that because employers read through several of these a day, yours must stand out. Your CV must be easy to comprehend and must be a comprehensive yet concise brief of your true credentials.
To help give you a better idea of what would be best to have on your CV, and how to best present those details, it would be helpful to consider these tips.
Highlight Your Qualifications
When listing down your qualifications while composing your CV, a helpful tip would be to highlight them by using adjectives in the superlative degree when possible, should they fit the description, such as “best”, and “most efficient.” When using simple adjectives, terms such as “highly proficient”, and “accomplished” suggest to your reader that there is a high level of competence met by an adequate level of confidence in your CV.
List Down Your Personal Contributions
While your previous roles and responsibilities are always a plus on your CV, one helpful addition to this section is the listing of the specific contributions that you have made, as an individual. It is always helpful to briefly indicate how you performed these roles, and what you were able to accomplish for the benefit of your company in doing so.
Stay Relevant To Your Reader
Because your reader is your target employer, it important to keep them interested by way of staying relevant to what they are looking for. While it is true that your CV is a list of your credentials, it is important for you to discern what information should be kept on it, and what information can be disregarded depending on their relevance to the job application. Furthermore, it is helpful to make a simple, and obvious comparison between the information that you decide to keep and the necessary requirements and prerequisites needed for the job in order to further highlight your candidacy for the position.
Maintain A Reader-Friendly Layout
Where you decide to put your personal information, contact details, educational history, employment history, and credentials on your CV, and how all this information is composed and laid out is indicative of your work ethic and character, among other things.
While the layout is a simple part of any document, it is an effective visual tool, which can either keep things simple, or make things difficult for your reader. In most cases, the layout will be up to you, however typically, personal information and contact details are usual at the top, followed by formal education, and then by employment history, and credentials.
Proofread Your Work
As with all documents, it is always important to double-check your work. Spelling errors, grammatical errors, and sentence construction error are all avoidable by checking your own work after completion, or having a peer review your work for you. This includes checking for font inconsistency, and should there be the need for any major revisions, it is never a bad idea to rework the layout with the intention of better presenting your CV.
