• The Layout Counts
  A CV with misspellings does not give a good first impression. Proofread and let some of your friends read through the material. Spelling and careless mistakes can deport your CV to the round archive (trash can) quicker than you could ever imagine.

• Do not lie
  Even though it might be tempting to conceal times of unemployment, quick changes of jobs or other gaps by changing date for employment – don’t. If the employer discovers you, he will probably let you go that same day.

• Do not talk just about your jobtasks
  Do not list all your jobs with boring descriptions of duties and responsibility. Explain what your job titles was and how you carried out assignments. Ask yourself what problems and challenges you faced and how you dealt with them. Show what benefits the company got because of you.

• To long or to short
  Often people tell you that your CV should only be one page long but in front of all you should include essential experiences. Do not sift out (exclude) important experiences just because there is no room for them. Also do not include unimportant things. Recruiters wants to know your latest experiences. If you have worked 20 years there is no need to include all of the jobs since the start. 5-10 years back in time is enough. Your CV is not really a autobiography even though some might say it is.

• Do not send your CV to everyone
  Do not get desperate and try searching every job post you see. If you are not the least qualified for a post, save your and the companys time and at least apply for jobs that are near your qualification.

• Irrelevant information
  You should consider including information about your hobbies unless they have something in common with the job. If you apply for a job as a lawyer it could be ok to include your hobbies as reading lawbooks. An librarian post allows for reading books as hobby for example.

• Use keywords
  It is important to include keywords in your CV. If you want tips for keywords a good old trick is to read job advertisements. They usually contains alot of keywords, use these.

• Reverse chronological order
  Always use reverse chronological order when you do lists of previous experience and such. This shows your personal development and makes it easy to see what you have been doing the past years. If you have just graduated, put your education at top.

When your CV has a good layout and is well written your chance increases to further contact and possible an interview.

Include this in your CV:

• Your positive sides aswell as concrete and concise examples.
• Shortly describe your assignments.
• Shortly describe the substance of studies and courses.
• Describe your career goals and what kind of knowledge you want.

Include as headlines

• Goals – What you want to achieve
• Conclusion – Your own estimation of your skills and knowledge, 2-3 positive sides of yourself along with some examples.
• Employments – You list these in reverse chronological order. That is to say latest one first.
• Education – Also in reverse chronological order. Feel free to include bigger articles by yourself.
• Courses – If they fit the vacancy.
• RTW Languages – Reading, talking, writing. Also explain how good you are at each language. For example, Fluent, good writer, reader etc.
• Computer skills – Write down if you are good at computers and some particular program. You can also list major software and explain how good you are to use them.
• Military Service – If you think it might help you.
• Other – Birth of year, family situation, drivers license, interrests, scholarship, foreing country experience etc.

Try to start your sentences with, or have them contain active verbs that highligts your initiative and power to act. For example – completed, planned, established etc.

You can end your CV with something like this: “If you want to see grades and references I will gladly supply them for you!” With this said, you do not really need to include reference persons in your CV. When you are asked for an interview it is time to call your 2-3 references. Then you inform them about your job apply and they can help you. In this way you do not disturb them unnecessary.

To apply for a particular job vacancy.

Yes, people usually read the newspaper. The newspaper contains job ads. Job ads can be interesting and if you find one interesting enough you might think about applying. Be careful to show in your CV that you qualify and even if you don’t, try to make it look like it by pointing out for example job experience. Just follow all instructions in the post and remember that anything is possible.

To apply for a new kind of job in a different category

Has your career goals changed? Do you master everything in your life and are looking for new challenges? Write a CV and highlight any previous experience, skills or qualifications in this new category. It is also a very good idea to include some kind of reason for your career change because your new employer probably wonder why you want to change job.

To apply for a similiar job

You are satisfied with your job, you get along good with colleagues but your boss is a real pain in the ass. Do you want the same job as now, but somewhere else? When you want to change your place of work, make sure you point out your achivements in your CV. Highlight the things you are skilled with and show the new employer that you should be in his team.To apply for a job within a different field.

A life achievements summary

It is always a good idea to have all your skills on a paper because you never know when a good opportunity will show up. Just keep your CV updated and add courses, skills and qualifications when you achieve them. This is good if you suddenly want to apply for a new job and then you do not have to write a CV in a hurry, everything is already written. You also will not have any problem remebering all things you have done in life. Do not forget to edit your CV so that it fits the new job post you are applying for.

Do you know that your CV is the key for the company door? You want the job and you are ready for it – but does your key fit? How do you make your CV interesting, and that key to fit?

• For each job, write a New CV. You should specifically design them to answer the questions of the actual job requirements. It is usally not a good idea take a standard format CV template from word and just fill out and send in. If you do this – do not expect any overwhelming reactions.
• Make yourself gold worth for employers. You are to be Wanted, not the opposite.
• Collect as much information about the company and the job as possible. The more you know, the easier it gets for you to match the job requirements.
• Pay attention to market trends, latest training and technology as well as the right terminology (jargon). Use this and let them know what you master.
• The CV formatting should be pleasant to the readers eyes. Think of alignment, chosen font and fontsize (not too small and not too big), margins and paper quality. All of this should be chosen with the job applying for in mind. For example, if you apply for art director, a colorful and estethic styled CV would probably help you.
• Try highlighting special keywords that explains alot. As pointed out in other documents on CV Creator, the employers often has only a few seconds to read each CV. Make sure the text getting attention is worth it.
• Keep your CV interesting with short sentences and use bullet points when you do lists.
• Use good manners according to the region or country you are seeking to. Give the employer good expectations with the CV and higher when on interview.
• Point your value for the job and company out.

The goal of your CV is to invite the employer to get to know you better. The above list is only for help and there is no must that everything is to be followed. Make sure you make a good first impression with your CV, open the employers mind that you might be the right one for the job.

Do not include this:

• The Reasons for leaving earlier jobs.
• If you are a scientist, do not include a list of publications unless you are asked for it.
• Cool frames/borders – This is usually just annoying and pulls attention from your text.
• Use date of birth instead of age. Weight, health, hair color, or any other personal information irrelevant should not be included because it does not matter.
• Photo/Photos – Only include photos if requested or when applying for modelling, acting, waitress and such.
• Take time and effort to make your CV look like one of a kind. You do not want the look of cheap photocopies because that will make it look like you are sending alot of CV to alot of employers and do not really care who you work for.
• Salary demands – It is easier to let you go when reading your CV than after two interviews knowing you are the right person for the job. If requested, include it.
• Failures – All of us experience failures sometime in life, do not shout about it. Failures might include exams, bad marriages, alcoholic problems, etc.
• Religion – This is just irrelevant and there is no need to include this unless you are applying for something that follows a certain religion.
• Ethnics – This should not matter and if it does, I am sure you do not want the job anyway.
• Repetion – Words and sentence repetion should be exclude.
• Long words, jargong or other words that you usually do not use – Do not include this because this will make a false picture on who you are and the employer might be dissapointed when you are on interview.
• Modest description of yourself – You should promote yourself.

Your first impression matters a whole lot. If your CV doesn’t attract the reader’s attention in the first minute your chances of an coming interview are less than half. If you think about it for a second, a big company looking for folks to employ. Do you really think you are the only one to be sending an CV in? The employer might have several hundreds of CV as well as only five to look through. Not to mention the guy reading all of those CV probably has a job to do. So start your CV with work experience and after that personal and educational details.

The question of an employer reading CVs is why they should invite that particular writer for an interview. So for this reason there might be a good idea to provide a short summary of your capabilities along with a list of your major achievements in life. Make sure you don’t oversell yourself, the goal is the be wanted by them an not want to get employed as quickly as possible.

CV layout, good/bad

The visual layout of your CV is also very important. Even though you are a master of language use, unless the employer find the information he wants – he will take the next CV in line and probably make your CV to a little basketball and throw it in the garbage can. Use alot of white space in your CV, in other words, more paper than text. Don’t forget to use appropriate headings and section breaks.
The use of machinery for writing your CV i.e computer (word and such word-processors), typewriter or pencil make a big impression according to what kind of job you are trying to get. Don’t use a typewriter/pencil if you are trying for a computer programming job because that might give the wrong impression. A pencil-written CV might be good if you are looking for an esthetic job. Use good quality paper, preferably A4 since that’s standard format.

Lenght of your CV

Opinions vary, some say approximate two pages of A4 and some say up to 20 pages. This of course depends on your age and working skills. Unless the employer specifically asks for a longer CV you should probably try to keep it at a maximum of two A4 pages. If you go over two pages make sure the most important information is on the upper half of the first page. Employers usually don’t want know your whole life history at first. They only want to know enough the decide for an interview or not.

CV organising

A badly organised CV will make it hard for reader to find information and make himself a picture of you. The reader will not spend the entire weekend looking just at your CV, probably not even five minutes. So if he can’t find the information he is looking for he will move on to the next one.
An overwritten CV with long paragraphs and sentences makes it very hard to read. Imagine this page right here with no white areas – only text with no breaks. That would be very hard to read. So try and keep your sentences short with lots of keywords. Also use bullet points or something similar to organise lists under section headings.

Too little information

A lot of CV writers do not include enough details about their previous jobs and experiences. Therefore, and employer does not have all the information he wants and the rejection is a fact.
Be loud about achievements, remeber that your CV is your key to an interview. If it does not fit in your employers door, than you are never getting in. If your CV does not tell an employer why they should hire you, then it has failed. The only way to get employed is when the employer see benefits in it for themselves. Tell them why they should employ you, why you are better than everyone else.

Error handling

It is very important with an good language use. Look up words you can’t spell, use your word-processors misspell checks. Ask others to read your CV and point out poor grammar and misspelling for you. Even the smallest error can make an overall very good CV bad and make you careless.

A CV must be forseeable and it is supposed to be easy to see when, where and how you got certain skills and experiences. All information should be clearly categorized with headlines. Language use should be formal with short clauses and no full sentences.

To think about:

• Should not exceed 2 pages.
• Always leave an lasting address – An Employer might try to reach you a long time after you have sent your CV in.
• Always start with the latest education and the latest work (reverse chronological order).
• Include all trainings and classes you can think of.
• When you describe job experiences try to find keywords that explains what you have been doing. Example keywords might be: Worked with, Job assignment was, In charge of, Development of, Informed, Improved and so on.
• References are always to be asked before listed. You could also only mention them on your interview, make sure you point that out under the headline.
• References.
• Except for theatrical professions, including a picture is strongly discouraged in the U.S. as it would suggest that an employer would discriminate on the basis of a person’s appearance — age, race, sex, attractiveness, or the like.

Personal information:

• Name.
• Address.
• Postal Adress.
• Year of birth.
• Phone: Home and cell.
• Email.
• Family, might be interresting for the employer in case of moving.

Education:

• Beginning and end of the education i.e, 1998-2001, 2001 – present.
• University and highscool studies.
• Locations of studies (What you studied, the school and location of the school).

Job experience:

• List earlier works (profession/title) and employer in reverse chronological order (Start with latest). Try giving a brief description of job tasks. Use keywords, state beginning and end.

Language skills:

• List the languages you speak and how good you are. You could make a difference in your ability to read, write, talk and understand. For example, “English – fluent”, “Spanish – very good knowledge in both speech and writing”, “French – good reader and communicator” and so forth.

Computer skills:

• List the programs you control and on which level. I.e “Good control of Word”, “Fundamental knowledge of photoshop”, “Very good at programming c/c++, cgi, java, html”.

Commissions of trust:

• List assignments and their contents. Also list the time when.

Other:

• List qualifications that don’t fit under the other headlines. For examples scholarships or other qualifications such as sports, drivers license, traveling.

Hobbies:

• What do you do when you don’t work or study?

References:

• Title/position, name, contact information and the persons connection to you. Can also be handed over when asked for.