CV

[Jock42]

Anyone on here good at writing CVs? Never had to write one before but need to submit one this week.

[Sandstorm]

Globus knows a guy.

[Jock42]

Ah, I'll struggle on by myself in that case.

[Enzedder]

I am a vocational consultant but I don't really know your market that well, so not sure what your employers like to see.

Golden rules here are no more than 3 pages (unless you are applying for professional roles that call for specific qualifications and experience); show in your work experience the skills that the employer of the new role is looking for, and the information should be compiled in a functional CV (skills and quals based) for us oldies and chronological for the youngsters. Take your pick in the middle ground.

Write your CV for the role each time - don't lie in it but emphasise the relevant skills and quals.

PM me if you want me to critique it.

[Jock42]

Cheers I appreciate it. Whilst its paramedic based, I'm applying for funding through the Reserves for my BSc if that makes a difference to how I should format it or what to include?

[Wyndham Upalot]

Used one of those online CV writing services almost 18 yrs ago, £199 or whatever. Gained chartered manager and fellowship status without even realising I was qualified ... You're ex-mil yes ? So was I. It's truly enlightening seeing how they translate and transform you quals and experience into something recognisable to the normal world - money well spent on my part, but realise its quite a leap of faith for anyone.

[Jock42]

Used one of those online CV writing services almost 18 yrs ago, £199 or whatever. Gained chartered manager and fellowship status without even realising I was qualified ... You're ex-mil yes ? So was I. It's truly enlightening seeing how they translate and transform you quals and experience into something recognisable to the normal world - money well spent on my part, but realise its quite a leap of faith for anyone.

Yeah ex reg now a stab. I may fork out at a later date but its a one off thing I need at the moment so a bit much for what I need.

[Wyndham Upalot]

Best of fella, and that comes from a useless ex-crab ! Never, ever undersell yourself. You undoubtedly have both hard and soft skills that very few people can present.

[Jock42]

Cheers

[Sandstorm]

I wonder do you put running, reading or NPR as your favourite hobby?

[CrazyIslander]

Used one of those online CV writing services almost 18 yrs ago, £199 or whatever. Gained chartered manager and fellowship status without even realising I was qualified ... You're ex-mil yes ? So was I. It's truly enlightening seeing how they translate and transform you quals and experience into something recognisable to the normal world - money well spent on my part, but realise its quite a leap of faith for anyone.

#Me Too.
Definitely under sold myself doing it on my own. I didn't have the language skills to articulate either. Worth the money.

[mat the expat]

LinkedIn has lots of how to's.

Also, if you load your CV into the latest version of Word, it automatically detects it's a CV and has a LinkedIn assistance plugin (MS Own LinkedIn)

[Mr Bungle]

I thought 1 page was the go these days. No on wants to see all your crappy certificates.

[Caley_Red]

Hey OJ,

I recently re-did my CV in Latex instead of word, the website (from which you create it) has loads of good layouts: https://www.overleaf.com/gallery/tagged/cv

Also, Latex looks far sexier than word and the website makes it extremely easy to format it.

[mat the expat]

I thought 1 page was the go these days. No on wants to see all your crappy certificates.

It depends on the industry/role

[Enzedder]

I thought 1 page was the go these days. No on wants to see all your crappy certificates.

In a functional CV, I would suggest personal skills on the first page and work history plus quals on the second / and third if needed. I bet that employers still want to see this.

[Chrysoprase]

Hey OJ,

I recently re-did my CV in Latex instead of word, the website (from which you create it) has loads of good layouts: https://www.overleaf.com/gallery/tagged/cv

Also, Latex looks far sexier than word and the website makes it extremely easy to format it.

Latex can produce great looking stuff but it's a total pain in the hole to use. Did you manually enter all of the markup or is there now some sexy GUI that does it for you?

[Caley_Red]

Hey OJ,

I recently re-did my CV in Latex instead of word, the website (from which you create it) has loads of good layouts: https://www.overleaf.com/gallery/tagged/cv

Also, Latex looks far sexier than word and the website makes it extremely easy to format it.

Latex can produce great looking stuff but it's a total pain in the hole to use. Did you manually enter all of the markup or is there now some sexy GUI that does it for you?

There's an interface embedded in the website in which you can edit an existing template, probably took me 20 to 30 minutes to transpose my Word CV into Latex (sans the picture of course )

[Mr Bungle]

I thought 1 page was the go these days. No on wants to see all your crappy certificates.

In a functional CV, I would suggest personal skills on the first page and work history plus quals on the second / and third if needed. I bet that employers still want to see this.

It does depend on the role, as Mat says, and experience. But there has been a big shift to well formatted single page CV’s.

I think a well formatted one pager will have everything that people fill two with.

[Jock42]

Cheers for the advice guys

[Yeeb]

I thought 1 page was the go these days. No on wants to see all your crappy certificates.

In a functional CV, I would suggest personal skills on the first page and work history plus quals on the second / and third if needed. I bet that employers still want to see this.

It does depend on the role, as Mat says, and experience. But there has been a big shift to well formatted single page CV’s.

I think a well formatted one pager will have everything that people fill two with.

That is weird, but the cv on the right would be the one I would bin, due to the health bar showing soft skills compassion = expert - just looks wanky

Great attitude = advanced ? I’ve never seen a CV or LinkedIn profile self proclaimed such tosh. Where is the ‘nice = expert’ ?

Having a name you pronounce is also good, as we’d often toss names that we had no idea how to pronounce.

[Mr Bungle]

Posted for the layout, not the made up content.

[Yeeb]

Posted for the layout, not the made up content.

Cool - the stuff to the right of the shading is nice and clear, the dark stripe effect though I’m not so sure of. I’m lucky in that 95% of the cvs i’ve seen have come via recruiters who put everything in their format already, and the ones sent in direct were nearly always fine - in other words I don’t recall a candidate ever getting zapped or unnoticed due to format.

Best cv fail was a colleague who had been an Olympian canoeist or something , invited some 2nd jobber in because he had it listed on his activities - turned out the lad had been on a canoe once and got busted for writing bullshit (which if he’d have attempted to laugh off, would probably have worked with my colleague who liked people with some front)

[Wild Beef]

I don’t like either. Serious lack of white space and using the entire page (no margins) looks bad.

Personal opinion. I’m no expert.

[ASMO]

Or you can just toss half of the CV's you get in the bin on the premise that you don't employ unlucky people.

[Gumboot]

[Yeeb]

Or you can just toss half of the CV's you get in the bin on the premise that you don't employ unlucky people.

In finance at least, the name pronouncer thing achieved a similar result - although usually you just stop when you’ve found someone . Trying to schedule more than 3 interviews a day is a nightmare, does anyone ever get hired from an afternoon interview ? When I’ve been the other side of the desk, it’s very demoralising going someplace you’ve boned up on, and the interviewer is tired and uninterested from the start.