CV help needed

AutumnMist

Annisele wrote: »

I think you should cut some of the padding, and replace it with something that gives more of an idea about what you can do.

For example:

[/QUOTE]"Stock replenishment and stock taking
Merchandising OK, but that doesn't tell me whether you're any good at merchandising. Were you putting out boxes of cereal in Sainsburys, or designing the window displays in Selfridges?
Demonstrating products to customers What sort of products? Are we talking retail, or going into other businesses to demonstrate?"[/QUOTE]


It was an electrical retail store. It would have been displays instore and in the window.

penelopedee_2

Extensive retail experience within an electrical store, involving stock monitoring and replenishment, also product display and merchandising.

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Busy and varied sales role for a website design agency, via telesales and face to face. Generating new customers and maintaining effective relationships with established customers. Achieving sales targets and promoting the company.

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General administrative role providing support to the .................. department/team, with specific responsibility for purchase order/delivery note approval. Regular use of computer packages and office equipment.

ERICS_MUM

also it's worth tailoring your CV to the requirements of the job you are applying for. If they list certain requirements and you have them, make sure they are prominent in your CV, maybe use wording similar to (don't just cut and paste !).

Things I always looked for when recruiting were "attention to detail" , "ability to work well as part of a team", "good communication skills" (in writing if appropriate, face to face and by phone. ) Ability to organise well, good time management etc etc.

You need to sound confident but not arrogant.

National_Careers_Service

Hi AutumnMist, as ERIC’S MUM said, it can really help you if you tailor your CVs to job vacancies. I can’t quite tell yet which vacancies you plan to apply for - are there a few different ones or are you aiming at a particular type of role?

As you can probably see from the advice that people have shared so far, there aren’t any black and white rules where CVs are concerned.
To help you to think about what to leave in, what to emphasise and what to take out, it could be a useful rule of thumb to look at the CVs that you’re producing from the employer’s perspective. What is it that you want to get across to them? It could work in your favour to minimise the chance that an employer will have to use their imagination to figure out if you have what they need – it’s a good idea to do the leg-work yourself.

It’s not all about having to include this and having to include that in CVs, it’s more about thinking why you might include something and why you might remove something. As Chrissyr60 said, it might not be necessary to include the phrase ‘Curriculum Vitae’, as it’s probably self-explanatory what the document is. I would hope it’s doubtful that including this alone would prevent you from being invited to interview. I suppose in this case, your motivation for removing it might be to free up some space in your CV to put it to better use. You might feel that space is limited and you’d rather use the limited space to include something that would provide more impact and a further reason for the employer to invite you to interview. It’s the same with including ‘role title’, as Anisele pointed out. If an employer has limited time to initially skim-read your CV, including anything that is self-explanatory might distract the employer from the key points.

You can use these same rules of thumb when you’re tailoring the content such as your key skills and responsibilities. It’s a good idea to really research each job that you apply for to figure out what is likely to be important to each employer. You can then go through your CV and figure out if each piece of information is relevant to that specific employer. Removing or playing down anything irrelevant and adding detail to anything relevant should really help the employer to better understand why you meet their criteria. Using Anisele’s advice, you could have a look at each piece of information in a CV that you’ve put together for each vacancy and think about whether the employer is likely to be left wondering anything; such as ‘what sort of merchandising has this person done?’.

To help you with putting together a Key Skills section, (if this is something that you plan to do) again, think about which skills will be ‘key’ to the role that you’re applying for – try to be specific about these. If you think using spreadsheets will be part of the role, rather than saying something subjective, such as ‘proficient in the use of Microsoft Excel’, you could consider trying to make this more objective by letting them know what you’ve used spreadsheets to do. They can then decide whether you are ‘proficient’. This can really help too if you’re concerned about making ‘cheesy’ statements to sell yourself. By keeping the statements objective, you can avoid the cheese.

You could also using the STAR acronym to help you to structure your achievements:

• Situation: a challenge and situation in which you found yourself.
• Task: What did you have to achieve?
• Action: What did you do?
• Results: What was the outcome of your actions?

What you did + what the result was = achievement


For example:

• Devised and implemented new procedures to speed up the processing of invoices, decreasing turnaround time from x days to y days.

I hope this helps you to feel a bit more comfortable about tailoring your CVs to make the most of what you’ve done in the past. Good luck with your applications!

Emma

AutumnMist

So would I just write '3 A level passes, and 8 GCSE passes' instead of naming the subjects?

National_Careers_Service

That’s right. If you want to condense them to save space/reduce detail, you could write something like that. Do you think any employers you approach might be interested in any of the subjects?

For example, somebody applying for a science-related role might put:

3 A Levels, including Biology.

Or another person might include their Maths and English grades if an employer is looking for good numeracy and literacy skills:

8 GCSEs incl. Maths (C) and English language (C)

You could also include a summary of your grades:

8 GCSEs grade A-C

Does that help?

piglet74

My CV (not that I have used it in a long time, been in the same job 9yr now) is quite short and sweet but it does included 2 referees and my interests and hobbies,

AutumnMist

piglet74 wrote: »

My CV (not that I have used it in a long time, been in the same job 9yr now) is quite short and sweet but it does included 2 referees and my interests and hobbies,

Ah the hobbies part. I only fill that in if its asked in an application form. Sure I don't really have any hobbies anyway

claire16c

AutumnMist wrote: »

So would I just write '3 A level passes, and 8 GCSE passes' instead of naming the subjects?

No because that looks like you perhaps got 8 D grades when perhaps you actually got 8 As! So as suggested above list out at least the highlights or some grades. Pass does not sound good, it sounds like you maybe didn't even get an E grade.

Definitely don't waste space with references, just put 'References available on request.'

AutumnMist

claire16c wrote: »

No because that looks like you perhaps got 8 D grades when perhaps you actually got 8 As! So as suggested above list out at least the highlights or some grades. Pass does not sound good, it sounds like you maybe didn't even get an E grade.

Definitely don't waste space with references, just put 'References available on request.'

I thought anything less than C was a fail anyway. So best to list them after all then?