Graduate CVs and Covering Letters

Jenny Keaveney, Bruce Woodcock

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781137606266
• eBook ISBN:
  9781350315204
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Adult Education

Based on feedback from recruiters and written by two experts in the field, this handy guide is packed with tips on how to craft high quality CVs and covering letters. It features practical guidance on content and appearance, and helps readers to communicate their skills and capabilities effectively to prospective employers. It also includes annotated examples of creative, academic, video and international CVs, alongside advice from recruiters and insights from students and graduates. Exercises and quizzes are embedded into the text, providing students with additional opportunities to hone their skills. This is an invaluable resource for students applying for placements, internships, graduate jobs and postgraduate study, and recent graduates. It will also be useful to careers advisors and staff involved in running employability, skills and career planning modules.

Chapter 1

Introduction

Contents

•Why will this book be useful to you?

•What is a CV?

•When should you use a CV?

•How do student and graduate CVs differ from other CVs?

Why will this book be useful to you?

As university careers advisers we receive vast numbers of queries about CVs, from students and graduates applying for anything from part-time casual jobs to postdoctoral research posts.

Although there are many books on CV writing, it can be hard for students and recent graduates to find one that relates specifically to them. Most books on CVs are written either for non-graduates or for experienced managers and staff.

This book aims to fill that gap by offering advice targeted towards students and recent graduates. Whether you are applying for a part-time or summer job, an internship or placement, or a graduate training scheme, this book will help you to write an effective CV that will make you stand out to employers.

It is not easy for students and graduates to find the right job. The Association of Graduate Recruiters’ annual survey carried out in 2015 (http://www.agr.org.uk/surveys) showed an average of 65 applications for every graduate scheme vacancy. In popular areas such as the media or investment banking, employers will receive over a hundred CVs for every job! The increasing demand for graduates to demonstrate employability skills and work experience in addition to their academic achievement, and the need for many students to earn money to support themselves through their studies, means that this high level of competition has trickled down to even casual and part-time jobs.

A quality CV will not only help you to stand out from other candidates but can also help you to learn more about your skills and other attributes.

What is a CV?

CV stands for ‘curriculum vitae’, a Latin phrase which translates literally as ‘course of life’. A more useful and detailed definition is:

A summary of a job applicant’s experience and educational background, together with other relevant information about the candidate.

You may also see the word ‘résumé’ used as an alternative for ‘CV’. It is derived from the French word which means ‘condensed account’ or ‘summary’. This is the standard term in the USA, where they generally drop the accents and just write ‘resume’ but still keep the French pronunciation (‘re-zoom-ay’ rather than ‘rez-yoom’). Slightly strangely, the usual term in France is ‘CV’, not ‘résumé’.

The word ‘summary’ gives a better idea of what a CV actually is than does ‘course of life’. A CV is not the same thing as a life story or autobiography. The information it provides is selected and focused, with the purpose of demonstrating to the employer that you are a good candidate for the job.

Perhaps the first CV ever written was the one used by Leonardo da Vinci over 500 years ago to apply for a position at the court of Ludovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan. You can find it online at http://www.mycareertopia.com/resume-secrets-davinci-cv. Considering how long ago it was written, it is very good: it is concise and Leonardo designed it to market himself to the duke by highlighting the skills he could offer in military engineering. Not surprisingly, he got the job!

Leonardo’s CV was more of a letter of application than what we would call a CV today. The modern CV sets out the candidate’s experience, qualifications, and so on, much more briefly, using headings, bullet points and a note format to allow the reader to take in as much information as possible at a glance.

Your CV is more than just a ‘summary of your education and experience’. It is a marketing document; an advert that sells you to an employer by showcasing your unique set of skills and attributes. To be successful, you need to make it as relevant as possible to the job and the employer.

When should you use a CV?

A CV will not be acceptable for every job application. Many employers, particularly large employers running graduate recruitment schemes and also most public sector employers, will use their own application form. In these cases, you will not normally be expected to send a CV as well. And, if you are asked to fill out one of these application forms, don’t ever try to send a CV instead! The employer will have spent a lot of time designing the form in a way that allows them to get the information they need about candidates and to compare candidates quickly and easily – so if an applicant can’t be bothered to fill out the form, the employer will not be bothered to read his or her CV!

CVs, though, are commonly used by smaller employers, employers in the media and creative sectors, and recruitment agencies. It is therefore always useful to have a CV ready to use when, for example, you are applying for part-time and vacation jobs during your studies or if you are applying for a graduate job or internship with an employer that does ask for a CV. You can also use a CV to make speculative approaches – contacting employers who have not advertised a vacancy but who you hope may be able to offer you a suitable job or work experience.

Preparing a CV and keeping it up to date does not only mean that you always have a document ready to send out quickly when needed. Summarising and writing down your skills and achievements will also help you to get an insight into what might suit you and to plan your career development.

How do student and graduate CVs differ from other CVs?

Parents sometimes give well-meaning advice to their offspring on how they should write a CV. Unless you are lucky enough to have a parent who works in graduate recruitment, this advice may not always be helpful. Not only can it be out of date, if it has been a long time since your mum or dad applied for a job, but also their advice could be appropriate for someone already in work, but not for a student. Although CVs for students and graduates do have a number of factors in common with other CVs, there are some differences of emphasis.

Student and graduate CVs often put the greatest emphasis on their degree. Depending on whether your course of study is relevant to the job you are applying for, you may include quite detailed information on modules studied, dissertations, individual and group projects and technical skills gained.

This information about your education will normally come before any work experience, because work is often a less important element than on the CV of an experienced employee.

If you don’t have any work experience that is directly relevant to the jobs you are applying for, you can compensate by including skills you have gained outside your course. This could be through vacation and part-time jobs, posts of responsibility in student societies, sports teams or university positions such as student ambassador or course representative.

Your CV will also be relatively short, especially when you are first applying for jobs. You may start with a single-page CV and build up to a two-page CV as you gain more knowledge and experience.

Chapters 5 to 7 will look in more detail at how to set out your CV and what to include in it.

CVs in this book

This book includes a number of CVs in different styles as examples of how you might approach writing your own CV. Please treat these as guidelines to follow and not as templates to copy: your CV should be written in your own words. There are no hard and fast rules about CVs, and you can adapt these examples to fit your own skills, experience and strengths. Also, please note that all names and career histories in these example CVs are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons is purely coincidental.

Finally, the bulk of advice and CV examples in this book relate to applications for jobs in the United Kingdom. While it is not possible in a book of this length to cover all the various types and styles of CV used in other countries, Chapter 10: ‘International CVs’ does give some guidelines and resources to help you if you plan to apply to employers outside the United Kingdom.

Chapter 2

Recording your life

Contents

•Get the facts right

•Career history/timeline

•Gathering information

•Personal Development Planning

•Finding out more

What will you learn from this chapter?

This chapter covers recording your life and experience to date by gathering factual information on your education, work, skills and achievements. It also stresses the importance of making sure that this information is entered accurately on your CV.

The following two chapters cover analysing yourself (thinking about your skills and personality and how these fit with your career plans) and researching employers (identifying what they offer, whether they are right for you and what they will be looking for on your CV).

Get the facts right

Before you start to write your CV, you need to think about yourself, what you have done and how this can be used to show employers that you are a good candidate.

There are three stages to this process:

•Record your life – what you have done and when you have done it.

•Analyse yourself.

•Research the employer.

Why is this preparation important...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: Recording your life
• Chapter 3: Analysing yourself
• Chapter 4: Researching jobs and employers
• Chapter 5: Types of CV
• Chapter 6: What should your CV include?
• Chapter 7: Making your CV look good
• Chapter 8: Creative and Media CVs
• Chapter 9: Academic CVs
• Chapter 10: International CVs
• Chapter 11: Video CVs
• Chapter 12: Covering letters
• Chapter 13: Mind the gap – and other CV problems
• Chapter 14: Job hunting tips and how to submit your CV
• Chapter 15: So what next?
• Index