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5 Ways to Improve Your CV Today
When the time comes to apply for a new role, the last thing you want to be doing is scrambling around trying to update your CV and attempting to remember important facts. How can you remember what sales figures you achieved in Q4 2015? Who was the HR contact at the role you had in the job before last?
Checking in and updating your CV once a month will enable you to stay on top of your experience, activities and responsibilities. Doing this will make sure you don’t miss out any great transferrable skills you have, or your correct dates of employment in a certain role.
Open that document and let’s update that CV with you now:
Step 1- Tidy the layout
Improving the layout of your CV is the quickest way to make an impact on readers. To make it easy, start with the font styling. Calibri, Cambria or Times New Roman should be the only fonts you use, sticking to a size of 11 or 12. These fonts have been optimized to read on and off-screen.
Next up is the structure. Use the 'Heading' feature in your word processing software to assist you in making sure your information is well structured and easy to comprehend. At each level of the document, use the right heading format.
Step 2- Is it needed?
Rule no.1 in CV readability is to use bullet points instead of paragraphs. Bullet points provide the reader with the key information in the quickest way possible. After that, removing filler-text and unneeded proverbs will help to make your CV readable. Then ask yourself ‘would this be relevant to the job I am applying for?’ If you are the slightest bit hesitant, then remove it!
Step 3- Achievements by numbers
An employer is only interested in how you are going to affect their company. What was your average customer satisfaction rate? What was your customer retention rate? The interview is the opportunity to go through exactly how you achieved it, your CV is only to capture the interest.
Step 4- Update any new experience
People can stay at a company for many years, in various roles. Having to think back 24 months to recall what your exact responsibilities were in a different role can be quite time consuming. When carrying out your monthly CV check-up, keep a track of your recent experience and activities. Even if there is no room on your CV, it is still a great habit to keep them all somewhere. Don’t lose out due to poor memory!
Step 5- Get some feedback!
Sometimes reviewing yourself and your own achievements can be a difficult job. Ask a friend or family member to have a read of your CV. You don’t have to make every change they suggest, but often they’ll pick up things that you won’t. Doing this regularly, with different people, will help you get an all-round perspective.
There you have it. A tidy, effective and comprehendible CV that will leave you standing above the competition in any role you are going to apply for. Go and schedule a monthly event in your calendar to make sure you stay on top of your CV!
