Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Getting All The Interviews You Can Handle? Don't Read This

by Glenn Hughes

If you have sent your CV to what seems like thousands of recruitment agencies and have applied for job after job and you're getting nowhere, it just could be that your CV sucks! Recruiters today have hundreds, sometimes thousands- yes, really! of CVs and application forms landing on their desk every day. Gone are the days when employers were desperate to employ anybody- your CV now needs to be outstanding to even get a look in

Get the basics right. Make absolutely sure that you include your name, address, contact details, etc. No spelling mistakes allowed. Don't rely on your spell checker, it sometimes misses contextual spelling mistakes. Use 2 sides of A4 or foolscap paper, no longer or shorter. Write in in MS Word- no fancy document software, and save it as the lowest version that your version of Word will allow

When you work for a company, you are paid to do a job. Recruiters today take it for granted that you have actually carried out your job responsibilities as you were paid to do. If you didn't, why would you be applying to them? Show how much you were worth to the companies that you worked for by detailing your key achievements in bullet point form for each of the most recent jobs that you have done. separate yourself from the other candidates

Detail your previous employment details in reverse chronological order. Start with your latest (or current) job and work back wards in time. Work experience older than approximately 8 years ago can be summarized in an "other" work experience section. Show attention to detail by giving the month and year between which you were employed

Clarity is absolutely vital in a CV. Arial, Verdana and Times New Roman are very easy fonts on the eye as long as they are printed large enough to read easily. Font sizes between 9 and 11 point are easy to read and easy on the eye. Black type on a white background is the norm. Avoid fancy fonts at all costs, particularly fonts with serifs or anything that looks like fancy handwriting. If you are physically sending your CV, print it out on decent quality paper and make sure your ink cartridge prints properly

Company names as well as the name of the recruiter, their secretary, job title, etc are vital. Make one million percent certain to spell these things correctly or your CV will probably get binned. Make sure your email address is very conventional, no stupid pet or other names please. If you need to get another email address just for job hunting, get it done. While you're at it, don't re-direct it to another email address that you may use to reply by mistake

Is there anything on your facebook, myspace, bebo and other social networking sites that you might not want an employer to see? Get rid of all stuff associated with your name that you might find even slightly distasteful as an employer. Do a search on your name and town and see what comes back. If you don't do it, you can be almost certain that an employer will

About the Author:

About the author: Glenn Hughes is the Global consultant and senior partner of the cv writing services business, CV That Works. CV That Works provides cv services to job hunters worldwide This and other unique content 'employment' articles are available with free reprint rights.

View this post on my blog: http://travelnursesuccess.com/getting-all-the-interviews-you-can-handle-dont-read-this

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