Creating a good CV or application is a critical part of moving jobs. It enables you to be clear about what you have to offer. Whether or not it is needed in the application process, the investment you make in writing a CV now will pay off. You need to be clear, from the start, what you want the organisation to know about you. Your CV is the first encounter you have with the people recruiting for the job you might want. In pre-selection where there are many applicants, they may be read for as little as 20 seconds.
"I had put together what I thought was a good CV but 3D Coaching turned it into a great one! They explained how to distill my key skills and showed me how to present and support these in a positive and proactive way. As a potential candidate up against stiff competition for a post, I resubmitted my CV as enhanced by 3D Coaching and believe it was this, more than anything, which resulted in my being offered the job shortly thereafter." Kevin Sims
What do you want from it?
• To communicate evidence of your skills and suitability for this job in a clear and concise way
• To be put with the ‘maybes’ and invited to interview
What do they want from it?
• To have evidence of whether you fit their criteria
• To find out whether they want to meet you
Foundations
The university careers office CV of the 80s is long gone. CVs need to show clearly and concisely what your skills are with evidence. In many ways your skills are more important than the jobs you have done. As long as you have evidence that you have them. Don’t despair. Your old CV will act as a springboard to create a new one. And a well thought out CV will contain most of the information you need to put in an application form.
What you are going to do first is to create a definitive CV. This will be a summary of ALL the skills and experience that you bring to this point in your life. It will be far too long to use as it stands, but it will be a great resource for this application and any other applications you will make in the future. Don’t worry – we’ll talk about editing it later!
Using your old CV and any other info you have, start at age 16 and write down
• Every training you have ever remembered doing with dates (include professional qualifications and INSET)
• Write down every job you have ever done dates, location, line manager (referee) etc
• Every activity out of work which has developed skills or sustained an interest
What have you forgotten? Go back and add them in. Make sure you account for all the time, even periods of unemployment or voluntary work. This is your raw material. Keep it together and add each new job, interest, community involvement, and training course to it from now on.
Skills
What you can do is far more important than job titles. You need evidence that you can do things, and skills need to be quantified and specific.
Selling yourself is counter culture for many people: For example, it strikes dissonance with the idea of vocation. But if you don’t know what you can do, how is an interviewer going to find out from you? And you may have a fellow candidate who is clearer about what they have to offer and gets the job on good communication at interview, even if you were the better candidate.
How much? How many? Are key questions.
e.g. running courses or small groups. Were you the leader? Did you take another role in the team? How many courses, How many participants?
To your reader, running courses can mean anything from agreeing that Fred should run one with 4 attendees and popping in once or twice… to organising, fronting and training other leaders for 4 courses of 25 or 500 people a year
Some of your critical skills may come from non-work activities. What are they?
Pulling it together
With a PC, it is now quite straightforward to create a definitive list of your skills and experience. Undoubtedly this will be far too long for a CV, but you can then tailor it to the job you are applying for – either to make a CV or to fill in the application form. It is also worth tailor making CVs for speculative applications – although you’ll find that the same CV will service several contacts if they are in the same field.
Curriculum Vitae
For the definitive CV, simple is best. Outline brief details – name, address, contact details. In general, it would be most appropriate to follow this with a simple statement that presents you as experienced in this field with your particular interests and gifts. It should, in essence, read: If you get me, this is what you get! As you write it, imagine that the interviewers are reading 3 other CVS from people with almost identical biographies to you. Now think again: If you get me, this is what you get!
When you’ve written your statement, leave it for a few days and then think: If that was all they knew about me what’s missing? Does that matter?
This statement should be followed by a summary of your skills. If you have an idea of how you now wish to develop and use this experience and skill, then that could usefully be included briefly too. Include clear evidence for each skill.
Group the skills into categories which are useful to you! When you submit it for a post, summarise according to either
• What you think are YOUR key skills
• Or which match the skills in the person profile for the job
This means that you will use a different CV for each job/ organisation.
The summary could be followed by a synopsis of your experience, emphasising the variety of organisations in which you have worked. In terms of written presentation, it is important that you make as immediate an impact in your CV as you can with the relevant and most recent information first. Finally, qualifications. Unless specifically asked, don’t include references here.
Don’t forget
When you edit your definitive CV to use, don’t put in many things which are not relevant to the job, but include one or two to show that you have breadth!
The job you are applying for may not necessarily build on immediate past experience and draw on older skills and gifts. However they must have some currency. Is there a thread from this in your present job, or in non- work commitments? How have you kept up to date on developments in this field?
