As a student in sixth form, one of the many things that myself and my fellow students stress about is making a CV for the first time, or improving on the last one. It can be a difficult process trying to show your worth on a piece of paper, so I’ve traipsed the internet to compile some top tips to help you out…
Summarise skills
Don’t be harsh on yourself, even if you’re in the process of improving a skill, add it in! To create a top CV, in order for the employer to get a detailed idea of the person they’re considering, add both professional and personal skills. Professional skills are like first aid, safeguarding, file management, etc. Whereas, to find out more about the person behind the professional, you may want to list personal attributes, for example being highly adaptive, patient, empathetic or having incredible communication skills. You have to make sure you match the CV you’ve written, if you don’t, they may prefer your CV persona over who it’s really based off of!
Add partial qualifications
For those of you still in any form of education, whether still in school or developing your understanding and qualifications in another area, make sure you list those partial qualifications. It shows you’re still developing skills and learning essential knowledge, even if you don’t have it in the official sense yet. You should make it clear that you haven’t completed it, what level you are at and when you are likely to finish.
Use keywords
Companies get so many CVs so many use word searches to pick out the ones that use the words they are most interested in. To help your CV be picked out of the bunch, check what words the company uses to describe itself and use some of them on your CV this way you can appeal to what they see as an ideal employee. Some examples can be: improved, led, trained, implemented, accomplished, resolved or planned. These can act as evidence like work experience you may have to back up your skills e.g. ‘resolved’ could suggest problem-solving skills.
Highlight relevant experience
Certain jobs are going to look for certain common experiences for new employees, so highlight any significant work experience you’ve had. They could be less direct connections too. You may wish to highlight a job that helped honed a specific area of skills and gave experience in a similar area that you need to start at a new place. For example, if you worked at a restaurant, you could link your people skills to the job you’re applying to that may require communication skills.
Forms of contact
Make sure you only list forms of contact that are best for you. There’s no sense in listing an email as your primary contact, if you rarely check or respond to email. Even if you think, say, email is more professional, if you don’t respond to an offer for an interview, or respond days later, that’s even more unprofessional! Instead, you could list your posting address, mobile or your LinkedIn account for them to contact you at, whatever’s best for you. Or even better, list all of the above.
About the author
Alyssa Mears is a sixth form student studying sociology, religious studies and history. She spent a week with WomenInDefence.Careers team doing work experience and building her CV!
