What's on your CV? (or, what should be on mine...)
What's on your CV? (or, what should be on mine...)
Author
Discussion

Davi

Original Poster:

17,153 posts

249 months

Thursday 26th April 2012
quotequote all
I've got a bit of a crap task to do, write my CV.

I've always kept an up to date CV on my computer and had one emailed to myself for backup, plus I had all the details noted down in an old filofax - pretty organised eh?

Nope, hard drive failed about a year ago, I can't remember my old email account password and the filofax was lost in the last house move. I can't remember anything! Is it okay to be fairly general with dates of employment, or can past employment be just rough years? I've been in one job for the last 10 years and can get those dates easily, anything prior is not quite so simple.

As to qualifications, I can remember roughly what I got at school or college, but not exactly! Is it okay to just say '10 GCSE, 3 A levels' and give subjects or do I need to state grades? hell do I even need to mention GCSE's?!

Targarama

14,780 posts

312 months

Thursday 26th April 2012
quotequote all
I'm going to be rewriting my CV soon. It is currently a 4 page affair. I have decided to go for a resumé type CV, and try to get everything into two pages, ideally this would be one page but I think I'll not quite make that.

Surely you can remember what jobs you had, what you did, when they were?

Davi

Original Poster:

17,153 posts

249 months

Thursday 26th April 2012
quotequote all
Targarama said:
I'm going to be rewriting my CV soon. It is currently a 4 page affair. I have decided to go for a resumé type CV, and try to get everything into two pages, ideally this would be one page but I think I'll not quite make that.

Surely you can remember what jobs you had, what you did, when they were?
I know what they were, I know where they were, I'm just crap with dates. As accurate as I could be is to say that my last job was about 10 years!!!

Carthage

4,261 posts

173 months

Thursday 26th April 2012
quotequote all
Don't know if this link will help at all.
If I can't remember the date of my quals or jobs, I just try to be accurate as to the year, then guess.
I figure they are unlikely to know any better than I do.

http://www.prospects.ac.uk/example_cvs.htm


Davi

Original Poster:

17,153 posts

249 months

Thursday 26th April 2012
quotequote all
Yeah cheers very helpful, been a loooong time since I've needed to do this lol

rog007

5,828 posts

253 months

Friday 27th April 2012
quotequote all
If I can be of assistance, drop me a PM; it's what I do.

RizzoTheRat

28,796 posts

221 months

Friday 27th April 2012
quotequote all
I had some assistance from a professional firm with writing my CV as part of my redundancy package a few years back. My advice would be take rog007 up on his offer as there's a lot of different views and suggestions out there and you can end up with a right mess if you don't focus it properly.

A few general points I learned:

Make a big master CV several pages long, and then edit it down.
Do a different edited version for each job application focussing on the requirements in the job spec.
For a technical job 3 or even 4 pages is acceptable but all the important information must be on the first page to interest them enough to look at the rest for the details.
Format it properly so it's easy to read, if it's big blocks of text it won't get read.

Davi

Original Poster:

17,153 posts

249 months

Friday 27th April 2012
quotequote all
rog007 said:
If I can be of assistance, drop me a PM; it's what I do.
thumbup PM coming your way!