Get That Job With The Right CV

Julie Gray

• Publisher: Teach Yourself
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780340991503
• eBook ISBN: 9781444129762
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Careers

Get that Job with the Right CV will teach you how to write the best possible CV to land that perfect job. It covers everything from layout and format, through to perfecting a jargon-free writing style, avoiding common pitfalls and tailoring your CV to different jobs. Julie Gray's in-depth professional advice and friendly style will guide you through every step of the CV writing process with humour and practicality and give you real confidence to effectively showcase your skills to employers.
NOT GOT MUCH TIME?One, five and ten-minute introductions to key principles to get you started.
AUTHOR INSIGHTSLots of instant help with common problems and quick tips for success, based on the author's many years of experience.
TEST YOURSELFTests in the book and online to keep track of your progress.
EXTEND YOUR KNOWLEDGEExtra online articles at www.teachyourself.com to give you a richer understanding of how to get your CV right.
FIVE THINGS TO REMEMBERQuick refreshers to help you remember the key facts.
TRY THISInnovative exercises illustrate what you've learnt and how to use it.

1

How this book can help you

In this chapter you will:

• understand the benefits of writing your own CV
• get started straight away
• decide where in the book to begin

There are few guarantees in life, and employment is certainly not one of them. Despite hard work and careful choices, jobs can come and go quite unexpectedly.

The perfect opportunity that slipped by because you weren’t quite ready for it; the too-good-to-be-true job offer that lived up to its name; that brilliant role ruined by a domineering manager with whom you simply couldn’t get along; the seemingly secure job for life that disappeared just when you needed it most; the small gap in your employment that quickly expanded into a chasm.

Whether you welcome it or fear it, job searching is a part of almost everyone’s life – now more than ever.

Competition for jobs

There is one thing you can guarantee when it comes to a job search: competition.

Most of us have had to fight to get the jobs we need and want; this was happening even before the catastrophic impact of the 2008 events on the global economy. If the company you work for goes under, it’s not just you being left without a job. Tens or even hundreds of your co-workers will be in the same position. That raises the stakes: you’re all chasing the same job opportunities at the same time.

Once the economy has started to stabilize, competition for jobs will probably keep rising because companies will remain very cautious about whom they take on.

Before the crash it wasn’t uncommon to have 100 or more applicants chasing one vacancy – and that’s not just the high flyers. However much or little experience you have, it’s getting harder for anyone to reach interview stage.

Repeatedly being refused interviews, often with little or no explanation, can undermine anyone’s self-confidence. If you were feeling a little shaky to start with, this can quickly become a problem. Before long you find yourself sending out applications that you don’t really believe are going to get you anywhere. Once this happens, it’s often clear to the person reading your application that you’ve given up. Unless you work for an anti-smoking charity, quitting is not a desirable quality in an employee.

What is a CV?

The one tool that everyone needs in a job search is a great CV, or Curriculum Vitae, which literally means ‘the course of one’s life’. Ignore the Latin roots: a CV is simply a brief written summary about you. It tells prospective employers three things:

• what you can do for their business
• why they should interview you for this job
• how to get in touch with you to arrange it.

You may hear it said that CVs are just for managers and professionals; this simply isn’t true. From administrators to accountants, truck drivers to telesales reps, school leavers to shift workers, having a confident CV can only improve your chances of getting an interview for the job you want.

How can I write a CV?

Even if you don’t feel your writing skill is anything to shout about yet, it will improve as this book takes you through every step of writing and refining your CV.

You’re not alone if you find this daunting at first: many people find writing about themselves the hardest subject of all, one over which even the most confident communicator can stumble. It’s easy to:

• believe your writing is not very good
• know what you want to say but struggle to find the right words
• think of so many ‘good words’ that the really important bits get overlooked
• just feel uncomfortable writing anything about yourself
• be unsure how to balance modesty with self-promotion
• have low confidence after being rejected for interviews
• not know what should be on your CV, or what it should look like
• wonder if you even need a CV anyway.

All these concerns will be addressed in this book.

The benefits of writing your own CV

Writing your own CV can take quite a bit of effort. But the rewards are worth it. Going through the process of preparing, writing and refining your own CV – and keeping it up to date – generates benefits at every stage of your job search.

This book can help you learn to:

• identify your skills and abilities
• deflect attention from your less positive aspects
• become comfortable writing – and talking – about yourself
• build your self-confidence
• see yourself from a prospective employer’s viewpoint
• create a positive CV that you can still relate to
• write covering letters or fill out application forms
• refresh your memory before an interview
• highlight weaknesses you may wish to act upon
• ensure you are ready to act whenever an opportunity comes along.

A few of these benefits are discussed in more detail below.

Hard evidence

One great advantage of teaching yourself to write your own CV is that it becomes solid proof of your writing/communication skills.

Everyone needs to communicate at work. Most jobs involve some degree of writing, speaking, or both. Waiters pass orders to chefs, teachers write school reports, hauliers negotiate delivery slots with warehouses. Call centre operators soothe angry customers, senior managers justify a budget of millions and charity workers send out letters to potential donors. Every employer needs good communicators.

There’s little point sending a badly written CV to try to convince an employer what a great communicator you are. They will just wonder what other skills you say you have, but actually don’t. A clear, concise, well-written CV supports your claim to be a good communicator, because it provides proof. It is your proof.

CVs as personal trainers

Employers aren’t the only ones who will benefit from your CV. You can too. Try treating your CV as something you are doing just for yourself.

You don’t have to run marathons just because you start running a mile every Wednesday. Improving your fitness is a good enough reason to do it. Likewise, even if you don’t have to send a CV when applying for a job you can gain a lot by preparing one anyway.

With the help of this book, going through the process of writing and refining your CV will help to develop the way you see yourself. As you think more about what you can offer an employer, your strengths will become clearer. The way you talk about yourself to others will also become clearer.

That’s the perfect state of mind to be in when searching for a job, whether you are sending your first application or trying to impress someone at final interview.

A personal CV

Employers don’t receive piles of CVs that all look more or less the same because employees all are more or less the same. They receive stacks of them because most people don’t spend enough time preparing their CV, or don’t know how.

Perhaps you sit or stand next to someone at work, in the classroom or in the lecture theatre, who appears to do the same things you do, with similar results. Your ‘double’. Outwardly, they might seem just as employable as you. If you both wanted the same job and sent a CV, surely both of you (or neither of you) would get interviewed?

Not necessarily. Despite obvious overlaps, you will each have skills that the other does not. Outside of work or study, other aspects of your lives won’t be the same. How you write your CVs will also differ.

Like fingerprints, no two CVs should ever be identical. Whatever the surface similarities, every mix of skills, traits and experiences is individual. This uniqueness gradually becomes clear as you prepare, write and refine your own CV. Used well, it makes a good case for why you can do this job for this employer in a way that no one else can. This type of CV sees you invited for interview when your ‘double’ is not. In times of mass redundancy and layoffs, when you can find yourself on the market with dozens of similarly skilled people, this is crucial.

Cost-cutting CVs

Job searches often coincide with times when there isn’t much money around. When you’re on a budget, you can’t get any cheaper than do-it-yourself.

Granted, there’s the cost of this book. But how many reputable CV companies can offer a professionally written and tailored CV for the same price?

Of course, you could negotiate with the cheapest possible CV-writing company and save some cash that way. But beware, your name could end up at the top of a CV that – plus or minus a few tweaks – hundreds of other customers have already put their names to. There’s no way of knowing whether an employer has already seen three other versions of the same CV when you add yours to the pile.

Writing a CV tailored for a client, for the job they want and for the employer they want to work for, takes considerable time to do properly. Time, unless it is your own, costs money. You’ll only get as much of someone els...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Meet the author
• Foreword
• Only got a minute?
• Only got five minutes?
• Only got ten minutes?
• 1 How this book can help you
• Part one: Preparing the details
• Part two: Writing the basics
• Part three: Refining your language
• Part four: Targeting it carefully
• Part five: Presenting it perfectly
• Part six: Using it properly
• Part seven: Further help
• Index