Byrnesys Blabberings

Although I am not in HR I have been running a department for a couple of years now and am in charge of contracting individuals for specific projects, therefore I have seen a lot of CV’s, and I have decided partly in order to outwork my own frustration with CV’s but also hopefully as a resource for some, to outline the do’s and don’ts, when creating and sending a CV, in my humble opinion of course.

First it is important to recognise as I mentioned above, that I am giving an opinion on CV’s, albeit from someone who has the authority to hire someone  from their CV’s which should hopefully give my opinion a little more weight, but all the same I recognise that a good CV to me may not be a good CV for another person in my position but I believe that you should at least find some of my points universally useful in creating a good impression.

There are a few other factors that you might want to take account of before swallowing all my advice, my context gives me a specific lens with which I view a CV, the CV’s I look at are primarily for individuals who are work on contract with our company for a short period of time, which is why I see so many CV’s but it is also true that a company looking to hire somebody long-term may do things differently, they will certainly look far more closely at the CV’s than I might.

1. Layout and fonts – I often feels like I am reading pages and pages of times new roman font, it makes all CV’s blur to one, so be a little creative in your layout and font choice, but also keep those creativities within the box of business-like formality ie. using comic sans font would lead to write off your CV straight away.
2. Recently we advertised 4 positions and received over 100 CV’s, when receiving this level of input your CV is used for the retrieving the basic info, so make sure that is accessible quickly, as hard as it may seen it is not unheard of for a grumpy administrator who is doing data input on dozens of CV’s to accidentally lose a CV if the important data is hard to find. This means your contact details, date of birth, and proof of the minimum requirements (such as a college/university degree) is easily accessible and on the first page. 
3. For most positions 2 pages should be as long as a CV should be, there is some age old myth that all experience is good experience, wrong, I don’t really care that you worked for McDonalds when you were 16 if that is completely unrelated to the position your applying for, I don’t think it shows good work ethic, I just think your floundering for experience on your CV. In my opinion a concise CV is more attractive than one with 6 pages of experience unrelated to the job you’re applying for.
4. Spelling and grammar are important, especially if your job is going to involve turning in written reports and suchlike. Write with a formal air but not one that sounds like you’re a character in a period drama.
5. Here comes a pet annoyance – If you are submitting a CV by email or including your email on your CV it SHOULD NOT be a nickname email address like sexysara@hotmail (dot) com or drunkenrichard@ yahoo dot com. We all know that people have a fun side but your CV is not the place to include that, if you dont have a email address that relates to your names such as bobjones @ gmail dot com then be an adult and get one start start using it for things like sending your CV’s around.
6. Feel free to write a blurb on yourself but don’t make it more than 4 or 5 sentences, Interviewers know that most of it is crap, phrases like "If I had a flaw it would be that I work TOO hard" aren’t fooling anybody. Also don’t  get too full of yourself, a little humility is endearing, so for example "I Believe I am an outstanding communicator" is possibly overstating the matter unless you are applying for a position that requires you to have a delirious amount of self confidence (I’m looking at you pushy door to door salesmen).
7. If you are sending an electronic copy of your CV make sure it is as compatible as it can be, if your not sure about this ask someone who knows about computers. Send a PDF or a word document as long as it isn’t  created in the very latest release of office suite which isnt compatible with anything else. If I have to spend 20mins finding a converter for a file to read your CV and I have 10 others waiting to be read, we are not getting off to a good start!

Those are my thoughts on CV’s, any one else? Feel free to leave your responses in the comments.