Writing A CV? Ask Yourself These 4 Questions!
Advice after advice you are told that you need to a CV that markets and sells you to the employer? You are also told that CV presentation is what will either keep the employer or recruiter glued to read on or discourage him or her from reading on. So how do you come up with a marketable CV?
Florence Mukunya, a Professional CV Writer at Corporate Staffing Services says a marketable CV should demonstrate how suitable you are for the job in the few seconds a recruiter browses through. A good CV should communicate what job you are suited for in only one glance.
In order to achieve this, your work experience (which is the most important to employers when hiring) should be very clear. But that is not all, once the recruiter has seen that you have the experience, other sections of your CV are next in the evaluation process. This means that your entire CV should be without mistakes or misleading information.
So, how do you ensure that your CV is too good for the recruiter to resist? Ask yourself these questions.
4 Questions You Need To Ask Yourself When Writing A CV?
1. Did I include my contact details?
One of the reasons well qualified job candidates are not called for interviews is because they didn’t leave their contact details, and if they did, they are usually out of reach.
“You come across candidates who are well qualified for a position, they have the experience and the skills needed but you can’t contact them because they didn’t leave their numbers. It’s very disappointing,” says Justus Ng’etich, a Recruitment Manager at Corporate Staffing Services.
When writing a CV, you must remember to include your working phone number(s) and email address. Not one of the two, both.
2. Are my duties & responsibilities for each position clear?
A big No when writing a CV is using paragraphs to explain your duties and responsibilities for previous roles – truth is – no recruiter will take time to read in between. Just like job adverts usually list responsibilities required for the job, make sure that your duties are in bullet form and that they are in short clear sentences.
Avoid being too wordy, recruiters appreciate brief and to the point information. You will explain further during the interview.
3. Is the information in my CV relevant for the jobs I want
A marketable CV demands that the information provided shows what you can do and what you cannot. It is your expertise in a document. For this reason, every single thing you write in your CV, from personal details to hobbies, must be meaningful and important for jobs you will be applying to.
Watching movies, swimming and travelling are good hobbies, but they do not add any value for that banking job.
4. Is my CV grammatically correct?
Setting your computer to UK English or using the Auto Correct feature in your Ms Word program when writing a CV does not mean your document will be free of errors. Words such as too, to and two are grammatically correct but when used wrongly, it becomes a mistake.
Humans are prone to error and anyone can make a grammatical mistake, but if done repeatedly, including detail oriented as a skill will not work out well.
Writing a CV that sells you to the employer or recruiters does not have to be complicated and tedious; just make sure you have important information at your fingertips.
