English CV

snowdog

snowdog

snowdog

Soldato
Joined
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Hello,

I've recently looked for work online, and an international company sprang out with nice openings. The problem with this is I needed to upload an english CV.

Now at school I was taught a CV is only 1 page with all your personal data on, your education ( fairly short in my case) and your work experience (also fairly short in my case), nothing else.

Now while reading on ocuk, I see CV's are completely different, they have whole stories about people describing themselves how they are and what they do... I wasn't aware such info should be in a CV.

Therefore, I was wondering if there's a rough guide online somewhere where I can learn how to make a proper english CV, eg. that shows step by step what needs to be in it...
Anyone know such a site ?

Thanks !
 
snowdog said:
Hello,

I've recently looked for work online, and an international company sprang out with nice openings. The problem with this is I needed to upload an english CV.

Now at school I was taught a CV is only 1 page with all your personal data on, your education ( fairly short in my case) and your work experience (also fairly short in my case), nothing else.

Now while reading on ocuk, I see CV's are completely different, they have whole stories about people describing themselves how they are and what they do... I wasn't aware such info should be in a CV.

Therefore, I was wondering if there's a rough guide online somewhere where I can learn how to make a proper english CV, eg. that shows step by step what needs to be in it...
Anyone know such a site ?

Thanks !
Click to expand...

TBH they is a weird spread of opinions of what should be in a CV, however the following structure won't be too far of the mark.

Name/Contact details (phone,address,email)
Qualifications
Work Experience
Personal Interests
References

In that order aswell

Hers mine as an exmaple http://jamesfinnerty.co.uk/cv/democv.pdf
 
Like you i was told that CVs should be concise only containing objective facts. Work experience should only contain what your roles were without waffling. This doesn't necessarily have to be 1 side though.

If the selector wants more information they should ask for a cover letter, or you should have the initiative to write one.
 
Last edited:
Well, that's what I was taught kind of, excluding Personal interests. Is that really required? Kind of seems silly to write about my interests imo.
 
Generally, your average CV would be :

Name/Contact details.
Personal/professional statement - a brief (one paragraph) statement of your achievements to date from a 3rd-party perspective.
Job history/experience.
Academic qualifications.
Personal interests/expansion on your personal interests.
References.
 
snowdog said:
Well, that's what I was taught kind of, excluding Personal interests. Is that really required? Kind of seems silly to write about my interests imo.
Click to expand...

It's not really it rounds you out as a person. It can carry good weight in the IT/Computing industry as a good half of applicants are effectively "too geeky". I have also had good feedback from my interests from interviewers ( during phone interviews it has sparked mini conversations ) and recruitment agencies.
 
snowdog said:
Well, that's what I was taught kind of, excluding Personal interests. Is that really required? Kind of seems silly to write about my interests imo.
Click to expand...

Personally I've always found that putting a couple of interests down can give you something to chat to the interviewer about; had an interview last Wednesday, and the first thing that the interviewer said to me was that it seemed that England had made a bit of a shaky start in the cricket. It gave us a few minutes to have a nice relaxed chat, to get to know one another, and for me to show off what a lovely guy I am!!!
 
Some people put an 'objective' on their CV, I leave that to the covering letter, personally.

Mine has:

Page 1

Name in big letters

Address, and other contact details

A short paragraph saying 'I'm a rockstar C++ programmer, if you don't hire me you're an imbecile. Also give me your wife' in more polite terms ;)

Key Skills Bullet pointed skills, with a short description and justification for each.

Education I don't give many details

On the second page

Experience I list my experience thus far, with details, dates and buzzword bingo

and finish with 'references on request'

...

Since I'm a contractor I don't include any personal interests. For permanent work I include a short paragraph with a few of my interests. The main point of this is to make it look like you take some exercise (and thus won't be sick all the time) and have some friends (so won't be the social cancer of the office).

The most important thing to remember with any CV is that it's a sale pitch. Every word and sentence on there (other than contact details) should be pitched to make it more likely you'll get the job.
 
If your CV is for a non UK company I would check what kind of CV they expect. European CV are generally slightly longer 3 or 4 pages is quite acceptable and they normally contain a photograph on them. So if you send them your one page succinct UK style CV with no picture they may not like it.
 
Mr Jack said:
Some people put an 'objective' on their CV, I leave that to the covering letter, personally.

Mine has:

Page 1

Name in big letters

Address, and other contact details

A short paragraph saying 'I'm a rockstar C++ programmer, if you don't hire me you're an imbecile. Also give me your wife' in more polite terms ;)

Key Skills Bullet pointed skills, with a short description and justification for each.

Education I don't give many details

On the second page

Experience I list my experience thus far, with details, dates and buzzword bingo

and finish with 'references on request'

...

Since I'm a contractor I don't include any personal interests. For permanent work I include a short paragraph with a few of my interests. The main point of this is to make it look like you take some exercise (and thus won't be sick all the time) and have some friends (so won't be the social cancer of the office).

The most important thing to remember with any CV is that it's a sale pitch. Every word and sentence on there (other than contact details) should be pitched to make it more likely you'll get the job.
Click to expand...

^^^ Sound advice here folks.
 
It depends on your job history and eduction but 1 page is too small imo, even contact details and personal details take up 1/2 a page unless you condense them needlessly and no one wants to read a horribly compressed CV.

I personally have 2 pages:

Page 1:
Personal/contact/address details
List of Qualifications with grades
A paragraph explaining my background (work not personal lol)

Page 2:
2 Previous employment positions with about 5 bullet points each of job roles and experience gained
A personal statement which is tailored to the job I am applying for as some online applications do not allow you to add a covering letter

And that works out to about 1.8 pages. I guess I could condense the list of qualifications to a sentence and each job role to a sentence or two and it fits on one page but then it just looks terrible and gives hardly any information.
 
2 pages maximum.

Personal info.

Role, dates you held that role between, company you worked for.
Bulletpoints about what tasks you carried out.

Qualifications. Do not list every GCSE. 9 A* - C grade GCSEs is fine. A levels are viable if you don't have a degree.
Any relevant industry qualifications.

Include any entrepenurial / interesting things you do in your free time (if there are any / where applicable)

Reference contacts.


As someone reading the C.V. If the best they can show me is how they learned to pass a test then I'm not interested in giving them a job doing work. I want to know what they've done and how long they've done it.
Everything else is secondary to hiring a good worker.
Obviously there are considerations for school leavers etc. but experience is key.
 
I agree references shouldn't be included unless really necessary. I have 'References on request', which really grinds my gears because really it should say 'Referee details on request', but too many people are idiots.

I also describe my previous work split in to three different sentences: Responsibilities, skills required and achievements. That way you succinctly tell them what you did, why its relevant and that you didn't just twiddle your thumbs the whole time.
 
Yamahahahahaha said:
Qualifications. Do not list every GCSE. 9 A* - C grade GCSEs is fine. A levels are viable if you don't have a degree.
Any relevant industry qualifications.
Click to expand...

I'd say this depends on how much experience you've got. My rough suggestion would be something like this:

Only got GCSEs? List 'em in full.
Got A-Levels but no higher? List the A-levels and GCSEs in full
Got a degree, but little experience? Put a full paragraph on your degree, plus a second paragraph talking up skills gained either from group projects or societies you were involved with. List your A-levels in full. Put "X GCSEs, good grades in English and Maths".

Get a degree, and 2 years+ experience? List the degree, with a few lines if relevant to your work, or just with the dates, grade (if 2:2 or better) and institution if not directly relevent. Put 'X A-Levels and X GCSEs', unless you're degree is not relevant to your target job but one of your A-levels is.

5 years+ experience? Just put a line for each qualification. They're largely irrelevant now.
 
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