The one major thing you need to put in your CV.

 

If you are a job seeker your CV is the single most important document you need.

 

But how many of us have actually had any sort of teaching on how to write a GOOD one?

 

I see A LOT of CV’s. Some are good but many of them just look the same. A brief profile of what you are about followed by a list of your employers with your various duties underneath.

 

I’ll leave the profile section for another blog but a quick tip: don’t write that you ‘can work well individually or as part of a team’. I can’t tell you the amount of times we see that statement.

 

I’ll assume the reader has the basic understanding of how a CV is set out so, what is the major thing you need to be adding?

 

Achievements

 

Simple enough but so often missed. Think about these questions:

 

What have you achieved in your last role?

How have you saved your company time/money?

How have you made your company money?

Have you made your company/team more productive?

What have you done to reduce your company’s costs?

 

You need to write your CV with the hiring manager in mind. The above questions are just a few of the problems that they will want solving.

 

We British have a real problem when it comes to self-promotion. We shy away from shouting about our achievements because we see it as bragging.

 

Put yourself in the hiring managers shoes – they have two CV’s to choose from and one of them highlights areas where the candidate has saved their former boss time/money by doing X, Y, Z. They’ve made it real by providing examples.

 

Then they get to yours and simply find a list of ‘duties and responsibilities’.

 

You’ll then get an email thanking you for your application and good luck in your job search.

 

Ask yourself, so what?

 

When you are writing out the standard list of duties underneath your employment details, ask yourself ‘so what?’.

 

I lead a team of 5 – so what?

I deal with all production paperwork – so what?

 

I handle all the quality control matters for the business – so what?

 

The three examples above are what we will see on a standard CV. They don’t say anything about you or what you are capable of.

 

Contrast those with ‘I lead a team of 5 and through my individual training and development plans I have improved productivity which has resulted in a 45% increase in revenue’.

 

This is a very general example but you get the idea.

 

Highlight your achievements, give real-life examples and show them the figures.