Give me feedback on my CV!

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TREMAiNE

Original Poster:

3,918 posts

150 months

Tuesday 30th June 2015
quotequote all
As per title!

I'd be really grateful if someone could read over my CV and give me some feedback on it as I'm going to start job hunting this week!

I'm looking to move back into a sales/sales support role so have tried to tailor my CV to suit that role where possible!

Formatting is obviously off - looks much neater on PDF


PROFILE

I am a hard working individual with the ambition and drive to always want to improve and better my abilities. Whether I’m selling to customers or getting better pricing out of suppliers I always maximise margins where possible and deliver the best, most professional service I can. I am proud to have attained a reputation of being the hardest working and most respected employee at every job I’ve had, smashing every target I’ve been given and always being the member of staff the customer directly asks for when placing orders or making enquiries.

EMPLOYMENT EXPERIENCE

Out of Hours Emergency desk – EWA (TA Phillips 66)
October 2013-Present
- Logistics – routing fuel tankers so that all customers fuel orders are delivered on time within the respective site constraints. There are not enough resources to complete all deliveries, so being able to convince the hauliers/drivers into doing overtime work so that all deliveries get made is an essential part of the job.
- Customer service – Dealing with all out of hours customer calls between 16:00 and 00:00, ensuring that they are given the best service and are left happy with the status of their order whether they be increasing product, altering the delivery date or just asking for an ETA.
- Health and Safety is the number one priority, ensuring that nothing is routed that could cause injuries or fatalities to the drivers, sites and general public (e.g. not mixing Unleaded Petrol with Kerosene, no spills, no dropped loads etc).

Sales, Account Management and Customer Service – VoIPon Solutions
March 2012-October 2013
- Sales, Account Management and Order Progress – Selling a wide range of VOIP and Wireless products. I’d always maximise margins where possible whilst keeping all the customer accounts I managed happy, ensuring repeat orders. I was also in charge of contacting customers with existing orders to try and upsell them to products with better margins as well as sourcing the products themselves and getting the best possible price from the supplier.
- Management – Ensure that the staff that I manage are meeting their KPI's and are giving
110%; I do this with a hands-on approach to managing, evaluating the way they work and offering constructive criticism as to how they can be more productive, I also implemented a small incentive scheme where staff I managed would get a small bonus each month if their met their targets.
- Customer service – Dealing with all phone calls and emails for all orders placed with us.
Providing tracking information, stock ETA's and fixing any problems with the customer’s order, such as resolving an order when the customer was shipped the incorrect items.

Specialist Courier – Claridon Group Ltd
November 2011-March 2012, Temporary contract covering long term illness.
- Single package drops at military bases, airlines and commercial premises which required working to tight deadlines, patience, concentration and being on call 24/7.
Essex Police Cadet – Essex Police
September 2008 – August 2011
- Helping to train newly recruited Police Officers/Specials/Community Support officers on dealing with confrontational situations and vulnerable people.
- Patrolling my assigned beat with another Police Officer, dealing with non-emergency enquiries as well as 999 calls.
- Training through almost every sector in Essex Police from Beat patrol and Firearms to Service Desk Management and Administration work.

Controller – Claridon Motorcycle Recovery
March 2006 – September 2008 (During my school years)
- Controller for a motorcycle breakdown recovery company
- Managing calls from the AA, RAC, Green Flag etc.
- Distributing the different drivers to the breakdowns, working out which driver to send to which job to maximise profit and reduce waiting times for the customer.

OTHER WORK AND ACHIEVEMENTS

- I built up a small sweet selling business during my school years, starting out with as many
sweets as I could afford for £2, I managed to build up a business turning over £150+ per week, unfortunately I was forced to stop this as it transpired that I had started taking business away from the school canteen after I introduced soft drinks to my product range. The money I earned from this paid for my first car and insurance outright.
- Also during my school years, I started a car cleaning service called “Sparkling Clean” at weekends in the vicinity of my home, after a lot of hard work, I built up a nice little client base and paid several of my school friends to help me in order to maximise the amount of cars I could clean in a day.

EDUCATION & TRAINING

- ADR Aware
- National Diploma BTEC in Public Services
- 10 GCSE's grades A-C including Maths, English, Science and Business Studies
- ECDL, Law and Customer Services courses taken
- Fully computer literate with good understanding of MS Office programs

INTERESTS

I have a passion for cars and am an amateur racing driver sponsored to race in the Production BMW Championship. In addition to this. I also have a love for film and an interest in IT and Social Media.




Edited by TREMAiNE on Tuesday 30th June 12:57

C0ffin D0dger

3,440 posts

146 months

Tuesday 30th June 2015
quotequote all
Seems a bit low on content wink

toasty

7,482 posts

221 months

Tuesday 30th June 2015
quotequote all
Lacking attention to detail.

TREMAiNE

Original Poster:

3,918 posts

150 months

Tuesday 30th June 2015
quotequote all
I thought I pasted it in! smile

illmonkey

18,209 posts

199 months

Tuesday 30th June 2015
quotequote all
It's written in a bizarre way, like you're whatsapp'ing a mate.

Routing fuel tankers so that all customers fuel orders are delivered on time within the respective site constraints. There are not enough resources to complete all deliveries, so being able to convince the hauliers/drivers into doing overtime work so that all deliveries get made is an essential part of the job.

Scheduling multiple fuel orders across many customer sites, to ensure on time delivery taking into account access constraints. Managing drivers schedules to ensure orders are fulfilled within agreed time allocations.

It's a quick idea, but, I've got "scheduling" & "managing" in to the sentence. It's importanted to get keywords into your CV, so it's either picked up by the servers or someone sees it and knows what you can do.

I'm not saying you are a manager, but managING peoples time.

hornetrider

63,161 posts

206 months

Tuesday 30th June 2015
quotequote all
TREMAiNE said:
I am proud to have attained a reputation of being the hardest working and most respected employee at every job I’ve had, smashing every target I’ve been given and always being the member of staff the customer directly asks for when placing orders or making enquiries.
>>>***File in the bin***<<<


Jaska

728 posts

143 months

Tuesday 30th June 2015
quotequote all
A few really quick points - Why is it written in first person? Unless sales roles are totally different and you apply for all jobs directly, you'd want it to be third person surely.

And you keep re-using bits like the below examples - You're essentially totally wasting a line.

Controller – Claridon Motorcycle Recovery
- Controller for a motorcycle breakdown recovery company

Sales, Account Management and Customer Service
- Sales, Account Management

There's no need to re-state your job title for each line, just go straight into your responsibilities. Don't forget most recruiters and managers are thought to spend less than 30 seconds reviewing a CV on a first pass - Don't just tell me that you've maximised a margin, show me how you've done so with %'s or similar.

And the one time you have used a % it's 110 - Please don't say 110%! As above if you have genuinely increased sales or margins, hit me with the statistics - 'Improved communication techniques in all staff to increase customer retention by 10%'

For interests feel free to put them down, but leave it brief, which allows you to discuss in detail with the hiring manager if they are intrigued - The CV is your hook smile

Honestly it reads like you're a capable person, but so many people apply for jobs, you need to have a more structured CV.

TREMAiNE

Original Poster:

3,918 posts

150 months

Tuesday 30th June 2015
quotequote all
illmonkey & Jaska

Cheers for the feedback...

In interviews I've always been complimented on the layout of my CV (Job title, the listing skills, followed by explanation) so I'm surprised to see its written strangely as that's how I was told to format it (I'm not saying its correct, just surprised) - how would you write it?
Obviously with my choice of words below it does look a little convoluted which I didn't realise at the time of writing.

What doesn't help is that I quickly changed it all to focus on Sales related skills - rushed being the keyword there as I've obviously not worded it well or included the relevant evidence to back up my claims.
I know this will sound really big headed but I'm genuinely a great employee - so really want to put the time in to sort this CV out - do you have any other suggestions or tips on what to write/how to write? And any other keywords I can put in that look good but are also honest?


hornetrider said:
>>>***File in the bin***<<<
To be fair, its genuinely true! getmecoat

rog007

5,760 posts

225 months

Tuesday 30th June 2015
quotequote all
Good on you for getting it out there and not being afraid of the feedback! And there is some valuable feedback above.

Now the bad news; it's quite far off being the high quality brochure for your competencies that it should be. I'd commend a full review to convert it in to an outcomes based CV that follows industry norms for formatting and style. Good luck!

Lotus Notes

1,204 posts

192 months

Tuesday 30th June 2015
quotequote all
Very 'wordy', stop mentioning negatives and constraints.

FunkyNige

8,887 posts

276 months

Tuesday 30th June 2015
quotequote all
It gets more interesting the further down you read! Which is a bit of a shame as the opening paragraph is a bit lame - a racing driver ex-cop is much more likely to get the attention rather than 'hard working, maximising profit', etc. that anyone can write down.

Du1point8

21,610 posts

193 months

Tuesday 30th June 2015
quotequote all
I will probably by flamed but this should not be your first section as it will be binned 9 or 10 times out of 10.

PROFILE

I am a hard working individual with the ambition and drive to always want to improve and better my abilities. Whether I’m selling to customers or getting better pricing out of suppliers I always maximise margins where possible and deliver the best, most professional service I can. I am proud to have attained a reputation of being the hardest working and most respected employee at every job I’ve had, smashing every target I’ve been given and always being the member of staff the customer directly asks for when placing orders or making enquiries.

Its the first bit and sometimes the only bit HR reads.

As a contrast this is mine (ignore its IT related):

Profile

Domain Knowledge: Equities Derivatives, Swaps, Total Return Swaps, CFDs, Financial trading, TRS Affirmation, Pricing Calculators

Technical Skills: C# .Net, VS2005/2008/2010, WCF, LINQ, Winforms, Remoting, SQL, PL/SQL, XML, XSD, JS, Subversion, Perforce, Control-M, Office (Word, Excel, Access, Power Point, Outlook), VBA, UML, NHibernate, Multithreading

It needs to be easy enough for HR to pick out the key words and nothing more. I can send you a copy of my CV for use of layout and even though I have not really updated anything in 2 years I still get recruiters ringing up and asking about it as it flags up for everything they want.

Jaska

728 posts

143 months

Wednesday 1st July 2015
quotequote all
As you've said - You've had good reviews before, but from companies hiring you for temporary work or similar.

I think we're all getting the same idea here that you'd be a capable employee, but you haven't taken the time to fully review your CV - And this is the main tool for your application, so it's what we would judge you on - Does s/he cut corners, are they lazy, etc. I know your feeling myself as I had to expand from a 1 page CV to a 2 page, and rushed it, and failed to get any interest because it looked rushed... This was the same CV I had from years ago and it showed. A full on couple of hours reworking it from scratch and I had much more interest.

I think having the standard format is fine, skills/profile/experience/qualifications - But you definitely want to rewrite your profile and responsibilities for each job. Maybe find your old job descriptions and incorporate some of the points? Think for each point "How can I say this in a more succinct way. Can I use a better word than that" etc. In a world where templates are so easy to find online, you might get beaten to posts by far weaker candidates otherwise...

Stick another copy on here when you've given it a go and we'll let you know our blunt opinions once again. We probably all got the same criticisms at one point or another!

Studio117

4,250 posts

192 months

Wednesday 1st July 2015
quotequote all
Du1point8 said:
I will probably by flamed but this should not be your first section as it will be binned 9 or 10 times out of 10.

PROFILE

I am a hard working individual with the ambition and drive to always want to improve and better my abilities. Whether I’m selling to customers or getting better pricing out of suppliers I always maximise margins where possible and deliver the best, most professional service I can. I am proud to have attained a reputation of being the hardest working and most respected employee at every job I’ve had, smashing every target I’ve been given and always being the member of staff the customer directly asks for when placing orders or making enquiries.

Its the first bit and sometimes the only bit HR reads.

As a contrast this is mine (ignore its IT related):

Profile
beer
Domain Knowledge: Equities Derivatives, Swaps, Total Return Swaps, CFDs, Financial trading, TRS Affirmation, Pricing Calculators

Technical Skills: C# .Net, VS2005/2008/2010, WCF, LINQ, Winforms, Remoting, SQL, PL/SQL, XML, XSD, JS, Subversion, Perforce, Control-M, Office (Word, Excel, Access, Power Point, Outlook), VBA, UML, NHibernate, Multithreading

It needs to be easy enough for HR to pick out the key words and nothing more. I can send you a copy of my CV for use of layout and even though I have not really updated anything in 2 years I still get recruiters ringing up and asking about it as it flags up for everything they want.
I'm all ears for tips on formatting the profile(it as well)section as mine has got a bit stale.

beer


Edited by Studio117 on Wednesday 1st July 10:41

hornetrider

63,161 posts

206 months

Wednesday 1st July 2015
quotequote all
TREMAiNE said:
hornetrider said:
>>>***File in the bin***<<<
To be fair, its genuinely true! getmecoat
Nobody writes 'smashed' on their cv. Nobody. Unless they're 12.

The Beaver King

6,095 posts

196 months

Wednesday 1st July 2015
quotequote all
OP, to give a bit of guidance, this is the important parts of my CV below.

It's not the best, but it has done me well in the past and should give you some idea of the right terminology and formatting to use. You'll notice I also used a first person writing style.


TBK CV said:
Name - Address


PERSONAL STATEMENT

As an experienced Estimating Engineer, I strongly believe my broad skillset can add value to your business and bring new, innovative ideas to the table. My strong communication skills and engineering knowledge will help in building relationships with new clients; and my focus on detail will ensure I deliver work of the highest quality.


PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Estimating Team Leader – October 2009 – January 2015
XXXXXXXX

My previous role was an Estimating Team Leader for XXXXXXX Engineering business. I was employed by the business initially as a CAD Engineer, responsible for the design of prefabricated service modules. After a period of six months, due to my passion and success, I was tasked with the creation of a separate Estimating department. I felt confident in my ability to deliver and driven to use my keen eye for detail, ability to lead others and excellent relationship building skills with clients and suppliers to grow the department.
This new role required me to learn a new skillset and adapt my previous experience to suit my new tasks. Using the knowledge gained from my time as a CAD Engineer, I was able to implement a high level of engineered design and technical support at tender stage.
As well as an increased level of detail; I was able to reduce quotation production time by approximately 50% (against the previous method) whilst maintaining an accuracy rate of within 10%.
I was also actively involved in the creation and implementation of a project/quotation tracking system that enabled the department to maintain clear and concise project records and highlight other sales opportunities for the business.
The role required me to work closely with numerous clients of varying positions of responsibility, including Senior Engineers, Project Managers, Directors, Managing Directors and Consultants. As such; I was required to maintain a strong knowledge of all aspects of offsite construction from general and specialised engineering through to procurement and logistics.


Responsibilities:

• Key figure in leading the Estimating/Tender department for XXXX.
• Responsible for creating, maintaining and improving the high department standards through the creation of KPIs, regular team meetings and adopting new techniques with the department.
• Main point of contact for the Estimating/Tendering Team, working with clients at Engineering through to Director Level.
• Heavily involved in securing numerous high profile projects for the business and liaising with the client through to completion. Striving to provide an exceptional service level to the client whilst also maximising profit for the business.
• Working with the supply chain to ensure the business was at the forefront of building services technology and explored opportunities to implement new systems into the business portfolio.
• Driving departmental changes and supporting the team in reaching individual goals relating to career progression.
• Adapting to meet the changing needs of the business, modifying or learning new skills as required to succeed.
• Production of monthly forecasts and KPIs and presenting them at management meetings.
• Presenting to large groups (20+) of clients on the benefits of modularisation/Value Engineering and fielding technical Q&A sessions.
• Raising the profile of the business through networking and promoting a positive business image through work standards.
• Identifying opportunities to increase project value and promote value added service.
• Working with the sales team to develop their understanding of offsite construction and advising on the positive aspects to assist in driving sales.
• Broad range of engineering knowledge that encompassed mechanical, electrical and ventilation service. As well as a solid understanding of procurement, rebate/account structures, sourcing, logistics, building standards and project programming.



PERSONAL INTERESTS

My primary interests relate back to engineering. I am a classic car enthusiast, spending my free time involved in the restoration and general maintenance of cars. I am also part of a charity that raises funds for disabled children through car shows and other motoring events.
I am an active reader and a passionate football fan.

REFERENCES

References are available on request.

illmonkey

18,209 posts

199 months

Wednesday 1st July 2015
quotequote all
No.

Du1point8

21,610 posts

193 months

Wednesday 1st July 2015
quotequote all
In the IT industry it looks like this:

(omitted the last few as I don't really need for anyone to see where I currently hang out)...

me said:
Profile

Domain Knowledge: Equities Derivatives, Swaps, Total Return Swaps, CFDs, Financial trading, TRS Affirmation, Pricing Calculators

Technical Skills: C# .Net(4.0), VS2005/2008/2010, WCF, LINQ, MVC 3, Winforms, Remoting, SQL, PL/SQL, XML, XSD, JS, JQuery, Subversion, Perforce, Control-M, Office (Word, Excel, Access, Power Point, Outlook), VBA, UML, NHibernate, Multithreading

Professional Accomplishments

Corvus Performance Management- Analyst Developer (Mar ’12- June 2013)
• Analyst Developer for Corvus delivering Corvus platform, interfacing with 3rd party businesses to deliver a robust and reliable platform to analyse performance management of business stakeholders. (ASP.Net, SQL, C# 4, WCF).
• Responsibilities include:
o Analysis of Corvus requirements for creation of performance management system, including website front ends, metrics, training.
o Reporting system development for pdf and documentation download of metrics.
o Full regression test system of current Corvus project.
o Creation of full security system.
o E-commerce integration of current platform.

Travelling (Nov ’11- Jan ’12)

Citi- Senior Analyst Developer (Aug ’09- Oct ‘11)
• Analyst Developer for a Prime Finance System (CFDs/Swaps/TRS/Financing/PTHs); part of a 2 man team delivering TRS enhancements. Interface with business and other support teams to maintain high availability and reliability, provide 2nd level support, and currently engage with other areas of the bank to extend the system into other business areas. (C# 2/3, SQL)
• Analysed TRS requirements for replacement of EQRMS system including trading front ends, PTHs and Affirmations.
• Developed a legal affirmation system for payments (realtime and EOD) with realtime tracking of all TRS related operations, including all downstream feeds to Settlements, confirmations and credit.
• Development of same day pricing for New York clients.
• Multithreaded development in C# and for the database SQL.
• Developed daily resetting Swaps for PFS client London Clearing House.
• Development on trading front ends and reporting system. C#, CAB, .Net 2.0, Winforms.
• Primary contact for Oasys interface and downstream feeds for enhancements, support and remodelling.
• Primary contact for the EOD system for Prime Finance System, including adviser on the breakdown of region specific EOD systems.

Burberry IT Central Master Data- IT Consultant (May ’09- Aug ‘09)
• IT consultant for Central Master Data which is the main change management control for fabric data held within Burberry. Part of a team of 8 reviewing, implementing changes and enhancements to the main data source, key technology is SAP.
• Implemented a simplified method of addition of data using automation that increased team productivity 5 fold.
• Streamlined the request system to reduce the workload of the London team to reduce workload by 50%.
• Increased the efficiency of the creation of new stores out in Korea and New York to main data control
Travelling (Dec ’08- Apr ‘09)

HSBC Investment- Analyst Developer (Nov ’06- Dec ‘08)
• Analyst developer of trading system of 3 developers, delivered one internet trading system for 3rd party clients and one internal for the front office to trade equity CFD/TRS products (Java, Tibco, C# .Net 2.0, Sybase, SQL).
• Internal trading platform (Phoenix) for CFD and Swaps trading based upon C# .Net 2.0 and SQL
• Development of interfaces of the multithreaded, distributed components in core trading system.
• Re-modelled current End of Day processing to increase performance and reliability and integrating new downstream feeds.
• Developed systems for market data capture for various order types using Tibco Rendezvous as middleware for both trading platforms.
• Developed automated affirmation system for TRS to replace manual system, increasing productivity 4 fold over the old affirmation system.
• Release manager, organising affected teams to physical global releases including support.
• Provided 24/7 on call support of End of Day processing and feeds, including day to day system support.
• Management of the contingency systems to make sure the disaster recover implementations are effiecient and up to date.
• Part time supporting of the traders in their day to day transactions on the Phoenix system, ranging from simple explanation on how to book CFDs and SWAPs to reviewing issues with the P&L figures that have been produced in reports to external clients, including fixing and implementation of changes to solve issues.
• Business consultant on new features and liaising with all Operations teams (security to central Ops) to gain business confidence and maintain the deliverable is industry wide SOX compliant.
• Creation of MiFID compliant changes which included liaising with Reuters, then processing the RIC changes to the business, including training the traders with the new MiFID complaint implementation.
• External trading platform (eMA) is a web based trade entry and credit check application for CFD and SWAP trading. A DHTML front end is served by JSP/Servlets and EJBs running on a Websphere/Sybase platform. To facilitate sub-second access to market, the system uses a series of satellite RMI services/caches
• London sole JAVA developer for eMA – on site development and leading an offshore dev team to meet the day to day requirements of the eMA system, from delegating work to implementing a chase the sun method of working to allow eMA the greatest amount of up time.
• Test driven development (TDD) approach involving JUnit/JMock/Cruise Control/Fitness/JMeter.
• Agile/XP/Pair programming techniques used throughout.
• Eclipse/Subversion/Websphere/Sybase/SQLServer/Windows (dev)
• Developer server side Java for Feeds to 3rd party teams.
• Creation of End Of Day calculations in both JAVA and Stored Procedures via Control M calls.
• Creation/updating of the MarketData application to call and receive data from Reuters depending on market forces for security pricing and Interest Rates.
• Implementation of the FX pricing system using internal DMDS system and manipulation of XML to output fresh pricing for eMA.
• Messaging - FIXML over MQ, TIBCO RV for market data and system heartbeats.
• Implementing Liquidity and Credit Risk calculations.

Education & Training
Polytechnic somewhere in UK
BSc (Hons) Computing, Systems Analysis and Design
We have always been told, its an impersonal document, they don't need interests, anything boasting about how hard you work, etc... you are just a list of key words... HR read the Profile section, the manager will read the Professional Accomplishments, there is no need to add anything more than what you have accomplished really.

If anyone disagrees with the CV layout or how it is it written above, Im not really caring... the above gets me into any Financial Services company/bank/hedge fund it has ever been put in front of, so it must be doing something correct.

Studio117

4,250 posts

192 months

Thursday 2nd July 2015
quotequote all
Nice one!

TREMAiNE

Original Poster:

3,918 posts

150 months

Tuesday 7th July 2015
quotequote all
Update time!


Many thanks again for all the help guys!

I did change my CV around and applied for a few roles (would post it for you to see but @ work at the moment so not got a copy)...

Funny enough, I think my boss realised I was unhappy here, and to cut a long story short, I've been given some new responsibilities, new targets and new hours and to repay me for the extra work I'll be doing my wage has been doubled!!! Jumped from 23k straight to 46k - Unfortunately its not a permanent increase to that amount, 4-6 months most probably, but then when that time is over I go back to more acceptable hours and my salary will be re-discussed so I'm pretty pleased with that.

BUT, I got an email this afternoon for one of the jobs I applied to - confirming an interview for Monday. Pay is decent, 30k + Commission and being sales its a role I'll enjoy, going back to a normal working shift will be nice too...

Its just typical its come at a time where I am finally happy at my current job - I'll go to the interview though and see how it all pans out.

2015 is proving to be such a good year so far, in all aspects of life! biggrin