A Couple Of Tips When Writing Your CV*

*This is a collaborative post*

The Dreaded Job Search: Is Your CV Up To Scratch?

While working as a recruitment consultant in London a few years ago I had to process thousands of applications. A huge part of this entailed looking through people's CVs and deciding whether or not they were what we were looking for. Most of the roles I was recruiting for were graduate-level sales jobs based predominantly in the Greater London area. The reason I mention that we recruited for quite a specific sector of the market is because we were looking for a certain type of person with a particular type of qualification and background. Half of the applications would fail basic criteria at first glance, honestly you'd be surprised how many people have spelling mistakes and glaring errors on their CV. It is so easy to overlook such issues. It is also fairly evident that many people have never ever looked at a CV template as an example of how to layout and format their working life's story.

There all kinds of ways to format, layout and write a CV so for those of you who might be unsure it can do no harm in looking online at some examples. If you have access to the internet, make use of it's resources. As well as finding all kinds of great information and advice from professionals across all industries, there are also firms which operate within this field on a professional basis. TMI Resourcing are actually running a campaign at the moment all about the best CV tips out there for people currently in need of help with their CV. Click here to also read more about their vacancies.

One of the best pieces of advice I received regarding CV writing was to avoid the clichéd terms which everyone else uses, for example, please refrain from saying things like; 'I have excellent time management skills', 'I am hard-working', 'I have great interpersonal skills' etc. It is much better if you can include your selling points within the text. So you might be better off saying; 'I worked 40 hours a week in a local supermarket, as well as 30 hours blogging for clients online, as well as this I play football with my local club side twice a week and I do 5 gym sessions per week as well as raising 10 children and 12 foster children'. Obviously this is just an example, but you can see how anyone reading such a description would easily begin to deduce that you are indeed hard-working, time-efficient and the team sports hints that you would most likely have a decent level of inter-personal communication skills etc.

You Can't Handle The Truth!? (Sorry, I Couldn't Resist A Little Jack Nicholson Reference)

You might think this is a bit of a daft one, but I am sure we are all guilty of embellishing our CV at some point, I know I have. However, I would also say, try not to veer from the truth too much, if you tell blatant lies you will - more often than not - be caught out at some point. Usually, if you have told some porky pies on your CV, you will be found out at the interview stage as recruiters have a special way of finding out the truth of a person's history and can tell when things just don't add up. In such cases a couple of well directed questions can leave you flustered, flummoxed, turning a deeper shade of crimson and with a feeling that you'd like the ground to open up and swallow you.

Obviously the job market is highly competitive but in my opinion it is best to tell the truth. One of my best friends a few years ago secured a job with a financial firm in London and survived for the best part of a year before losing a couple hundred thousand dollars of the company's money on a bad day at the London Stock Exchange. This prompted an investigation and it was soon discovered that he had lied on his CV about his degree classification among other things. He was swiftly elbowed out of the company. If you have any queries related to any part of the job search you can also find a tremendous amount of free information online.

*Post written by Michael David of A Classic Gent. *Images via Pixabay. 

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