Your CV is your chance to tell a brief story about yourself to the people you would like to work with.
How can we make that story interesting and compelling? I am not a huge fun of strict rules in this area because ultimately there are probably as many jobs as there are people and there is no perfect equation to identify the right candidate for the right position, so it is good to be creative.
Nevertheless, having applied and recruited for many jobs in my career, here are some suggestions I would like to share for those starting their job hunt and staring at a blank page.
Keep it short and sweet
I know your life is much bigger than an A4, but try and think what – among your many skills – is relevant for this position. A good idea is to start writing down all you would like to say and then erase mercilessly what needs to go to stay within one page. Less is more!
Avoid personal details that are not relevant
More and more organizations strive to make the recruitment process as transparent and fair as possible, removing sources of potential bias. Your marital status and your age do not say anything about your ability to perform the job and in some cases may even invalidate your application. Most of the times all that is needed is your name and a way to contact you: email and phone are enough.
Describe what YOU did
Did you work in a restaurant? State what you were doing there.
Were you part of a research project at university? Describe briefly what it was about and what you did. Doing so, you show that you can explain your work clearly to someone else (good communication is an important skill in ANY job!) and that you were not simply tagging along, but played an active role in the team.
Check the spelling
You have probably heard this a million times, but it is worth considering. Typos are part of life and in most cases they do not severely affect communication. To be completely honest, I have never seen any good candidate rejected because of a typo!
Yet, they give a sense of a sloppy job, and whether you are aspiring to be an electrician, a pilot, a teacher or a doctor, everyone appreciates a job well done. If you have been working on your CV for hours, your brain is probably so focused on the content that it automatically corrects the spelling. Save your document, sleep on it, and check it again tomorrow. A good strategy is to read it aloud slowly.
Edit it for the job
Chances are that if you are applying to work as a bartender in a pub you will need different specific competences than if you want to be an official translator in court. Consider which of your qualifications and experiences are relevant for the job and give prominence to those.
Is having a driving license necessary for the job? Do you need to be great at orienteering? Is your first prize at a chess competition relevant? If they are not relevant, just let them go.
Applying for jobs can feel daunting: it is time consuming and has a relatively high rate of rejection. But each of us has useful skills and an unique combination of talents, it is often a matter of making sure they are visible to the world out there.