Professionally written CV
Discussion
Jesus wept. I'm also a STE and wrote mine myself - haven't failed to get an interview yet. There's plenty of examples of decent ones on the net.
Mine is basically:
- Personal details
- Brief personal profile/statement
- Skills summary
- Employment history (most recent first)
- Professional qualifications
- Academic qualifications
- Very brief personal interests
That's it.
Mine is basically:
- Personal details
- Brief personal profile/statement
- Skills summary
- Employment history (most recent first)
- Professional qualifications
- Academic qualifications
- Very brief personal interests
That's it.
My BiL was a Senior Test Engineer at Marconicoms and I tried desperately to get him to rewrite 28 years of completely randomly generated words, into something I though might help secure a job and was laughed at. Which may be why he now works in Social Work.
I've currently got 6 versions of my CV as I'm betting on being redundant in 30 days from now.
Me - The Chartered Manufacturing Lean Six Sigma Business Improvement Engineer Consultant.
Me - The Quality Engineer
Me - The Health and safety version
Me - The Trainee train driver one.
Me - The Cost Estimating engineer
Me - The supplier development engineer.
Just got to write the 7th
Me - The any fecking temp job in a factory will do.
and then I've just got to remember which CV I sent to who.
Futureologist said:
There are enough reference websites and directions on the net that offer a free service. I wouldnt pay anyone any money to create a CV for me.
Bit of time and attention to detail would do the same job and you can save yourself a stack of cash.
Care to point me towards any decenet sites? I have a decent CV but will want to create a few variations for the reasons POD mentioned. Bit of time and attention to detail would do the same job and you can save yourself a stack of cash.
Not everyone's that good at CV design, so I can see a paid service being value for money - if it gets you a job a few days earlier that's a few hundred quid! Especially if they target it to a job rather than include everything including your first job at Tescos etc etc.
Prob is, you spend that money, and a lot of recruitment companies will just hack it about anyway.. I've seen ones with typos in that the original candidate didn't make !
Prob is, you spend that money, and a lot of recruitment companies will just hack it about anyway.. I've seen ones with typos in that the original candidate didn't make !
Thanks for the replies.
My current CV is not so bad, just a bit 'dry', even boring
In other words, it needs a sprinkling of BS, for example:
'Saved the company squillions of pounds by implementing a new widget testing script'
'Used blue-sky thinking in an outside-the-box manner on a go-forward basis'
etc.
In other words, more than just a list of facts. Problem is, I've reviewed a few such CVs, and my bullsh*tometer just goes off the scale
when I see that sort of stuff.
My current CV is not so bad, just a bit 'dry', even boring
In other words, it needs a sprinkling of BS, for example: 'Saved the company squillions of pounds by implementing a new widget testing script'
'Used blue-sky thinking in an outside-the-box manner on a go-forward basis'
etc.
In other words, more than just a list of facts. Problem is, I've reviewed a few such CVs, and my bullsh*tometer just goes off the scale
when I see that sort of stuff.john_p said:
Prob is, you spend that money, and a lot of recruitment companies will just hack it about anyway.. I've seen ones with typos in that the original candidate didn't make !
Not in my experience. They may remove your home address and DoB, but that's about all. This is based on what I have seen when being interviewed and reading CVs prior to interviewing.Matt_Tilda said:
In other words, more than just a list of facts. Problem is, I've reviewed a few such CVs, and my bullsh*tometer just goes off the scale when I see that sort of stuff.
You have answered your own question there. If you want to get the job, BS will ensure you don't. when I see that sort of stuff.If you are contracting your CV can get quite long but it is best to to keep the page count low. A few years ago I got advice as part of a redundancy package. They insisted my "resumé" should be on one page only. I sent this out to a number of companies and got requests for the proper one. My current CV runs to 7 pages but could be reduced by at least 2. Page 1 is effectively the "resumé", page 2 is skills (i.e software knowledge) summary and the rest is job history with diminishing detail as relevance reduces.
I recently asked a recruiter why I hadn't been selected for a role she was offering. She said that she couldn't see any relevant experience on my CV - in spite of my having previously done exactly the same job.
We had a chat about my CV and she said that whilst it was an excellent document in its own right, it wasn't recruiter-friendly.
This is a link to their suggested template. It's 'project management'-centric but any role would have similar items to drop straight in.
http://www.arraspeople.co.uk/Project_Management_Ca...
We had a chat about my CV and she said that whilst it was an excellent document in its own right, it wasn't recruiter-friendly.
This is a link to their suggested template. It's 'project management'-centric but any role would have similar items to drop straight in.
http://www.arraspeople.co.uk/Project_Management_Ca...
FlossyThePig said:
Not in my experience. They may remove your home address and DoB, but that's about all. This is based on what I have seen when being interviewed and reading CVs prior to interviewing.
All our candiates from one agency have their CVs reformatted onto the agencies own headed paper and style - I know that bits can be changed without the permission of the candidate and one candidate was disappointed to find something (misspelt) added without their permission. I know this, because I asked them about it in the interview!FlossyThePig said:
I sent this out to a number of companies and got requests for the proper one. My current CV runs to 7 pages but could be reduced by at least 2. Page 1 is effectively the "resumé", page 2 is skills (i.e software knowledge) summary and the rest is job history with diminishing detail as relevance reduces.
Although pagecount is pretty meaningless in the days of online applications and email contact, you should really get it down to three pages at the most. If it's IT, I struggle to imagine what skills you could need for a role that would take a whole A4 page to explain. If you find you need multiple pages to explain the reason you should be selected for that particular job then chances are you are in too much detail for your interviewer to care about.Definitely agree with what's been said about keeping a CV short - everybody I've spoken to has said a max of 2 pages.
Anyway, the CV is coming on nicely, and I may decide to save my £229 + VAT. Just need to sort out the 'achievements'. Turning a couple of bullet points describing what was (in one or two cases) a fairly routine role into achievements that saved the company money/reduced costs/cured the common cold is hard work.
Anyway, the CV is coming on nicely, and I may decide to save my £229 + VAT. Just need to sort out the 'achievements'. Turning a couple of bullet points describing what was (in one or two cases) a fairly routine role into achievements that saved the company money/reduced costs/cured the common cold is hard work.
smn159 said:
v9 ogre said:
IMO I would just wright it yourself!
Make sure that you turn the spell checker on when you do though 
recall being at an interview and they showed me the CV that the agency had supplied, most of it was BS as it was edited for the job - which was essentially selling environmental systems, only found out exactly what the job was at the interview and hate sales jobs
been in current job for 8-9 years ?
been in current job for 8-9 years ?
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