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Review Your CV With These 5 Easy Steps

cv
Written by Faizan Patankar

You have a CV – well, hopefully you have a CV, and if you haven’t got it reviewed yet, why not use the steps below to do an initial review of your CV? These are the first steps to creating a professionally-looking CV. Don’t worry if you don’t have a CV – just download our CV templates.

Anyway, here are 5 points to help you review your CV:

1. Get Rid of Any Tables – If you have any tables in your CV, get rid of them. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, a recruiter initially reviews your CV (for further reading) in about 10 seconds max. Tables mean that the flow of reading changes between vertical and horizontal mode. Not ideal. Secondly, if your CV is going into an automated system, then these ‘robots’ can’t parse tables correctly. Not your mistake, but you need to adapt to the technology.

CV flow of reading


2. Keep Content in Chronological Order – This is generally true of a lot of things but it’s particularly important to keep things in chronological order on your CV. From the latest to the oldest – whether that be experience, qualifications, or education. The reasons for that are the following:

a.        It shows poor organisation if you jumble things up and bad organisation isn’t a skill any employer would want from their employees.

b.       Presenting things in order on a CV makes for a smooth and logical flow of the text. Recruiters look at tens of CVs every day, so make their job easier by providing information clearly.

3. Spelling Mistakes and Grammar – Wuold you like it if I worte like this? Do I eeven show any credebelity with what I have just written? No. But it is still easy to read. That is just how easy it is to make spelling mistakes. I still get CVs for review with spelling mistakes. And these CVs have been sent to employers. Have a look at your CV now and get rid of any mistakes you find. Now you’ve done the hard work, have a look at some generally funny resume mistakes.

4. Stick to Keywords and Bullet Points – Your CV is like a sales script or an ad about you. You’ve got to tell in as few words as possible how awesome you are and what skills you have. Keywords is what recruiters or even automated systems look for. It makes their job easier. Bullet points help you stick to the key points, be concise and have maximum impact.

5. It’s Your CV, Not Art – Unless you are a direct descendant of Michaelangelo, Vincent Van Gogh or the other big guys in the art world, please do not draw, add images or clip art to your CV. Get rid of those smileys and border lines. And no, I’m not joking – I’ve seen people do this.

That’s it, folks! Remember – it’s these small steps that increase your chances overall. These points are a few of the criteria that we review CVs against. Head over to www.careergeekpro.com and have a look at our amazing CV Diet Package which can help you get your CV reviewed and improved right away.

 photo credit: Zach Klein via photopin cc

About the author

Faizan Patankar

I started Career Geek Blog in 2011 to share my experience in job-hunting. I now focus on careers industry and blogging is just a tool to share that info. Love hacking careers. During the day I focus on my hobby - Engineering.

7 Comments

  • Very relevant article given that recruiters are increasingly investing in parsing and matching software, coupled with a rise in people using infographics to create a CV. It would be a great shame if a CV is rejected because the software cannot read it. Conventional CVs are fine for almost all roles, design led and creative candidates should only use a quirky CV to showcase their work if it is of a high standard, otherwise links to portfolio sites such as a blog, Instagram, Flickr etc would suffice and be readable by matching software.