Your CV

A CV is a written summary of your skills, achievements and experiences which you use in the first stage of applying for jobs. It's your first chance to promote yourself to an employer and a well written, concise CV will secure you an interview. Use your CV to apply for advertised jobs or to introduce yourself to employers you’d like to work for. They may have vacancies that aren't advertised.

Key Points:

You should tailor your CV to suit the job description and the company you are applying to.

Consider how your key skills and experience match what the employer is looking for and document the information you’ll need including:

• Education and Qualifications
• Any previous career history and volunteering experience if applicable
• Evidence of any training courses you’ve completed

Contact Details

You’ll need to provide details of how employers can get in touch with you if they want to offer you an interview.

• Name at the top of the page
• Phone number which employers can reach you on during the working day
• Email address - always use a professional sounding email address
• You can also provide a link to your professional networking profile, like LinkedIn
• Do not include your age, date of birth, marital status or nationality.

Personal Profile

This should be a short paragraph summarising who you are, what you are about and what you are looking to do next. Think about the job you are aspiring towards, what the employer is looking for and build a profile which show cases you as the right person for that position.

Hobbies, Interests or Achievements

Showcase the skills you have through your hobbies and interests. Focus on examples that show you have relevant skills for the job. This section is particularly useful if you do not have much work history. Our best example of this is a position we filled for an Electronics related role. We were able to identify the successful candidate who was a Graduate with no work experience but who had featured his interest in Electronics from a young age as he had always enjoyed taking part computers and old television sets and re building them!

Interview Guidance:

You’ve been invited to an interview so this means your application has made a good impression. You now need to prepare yourself for the interview to make sure that you are successful. Our interview guide contains some very useful hints and tips on how to prepare and setting you up for the best chance of success.
Interview Preparation Competency questions make up a large part of most job interviews and from a company’s point of view they allow an objective assessment of a candidate’s experience, and the qualities that make them suitable for the job. Thankfully there’s a tried and tested technique that will help you to answer these tricky situations.

Download our full Interview Guide here: