CV read and advice please :)

SoundEng

SoundEng

SoundEng

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Joined
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Firstly not even read all of it, but remove the full stop for the section under objective, as it is just a paragraph.

Got anywhere I can upload a quick edit?
 
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Please excuse the layout of my post, I just say things as they pop into my head.

It's over 2 pages long.
Start with name and contact details at the top
There's no apostrophe in GCSEs
I'm not too keen on the personal profile bit
You've not put dates on your previous employment. I also feel it's a bit long winded? And the skills bit doesn't match your job title?
"When I joined Caterham (at age 13) I joined the technical team " reword this bit. At the age of 13 I joined the technical team...
"In December 2011, I again took " remove the again.
There are too many I's
"I lead the" you want led. You lead a horse. You led the horse.

I prefer the use of IT instead of ICT.
"I have, built up a home network, consisting of:" no need for the commas here?



I might have another pass over it after dinner depending on the other responses.
 
kitkat9933 said:
Firstly not even read all of it, but remove the full stop for the section under objective, as it is just a paragraph.

Got anywhere I can upload a quick edit?
Click to expand...

Thanks, err not sure what I could use for that?

Trifid said:
Please excuse the layout of my post, I just say things as they pop into my head.

It's over 2 pages long.
Start with name and contact details at the top
There's no apostrophe in GCSEs
I'm not too keen on the personal profile bit
You've not put dates on your previous employment. I also feel it's a bit long winded? And the skills bit doesn't match your job title?
"When I joined Caterham (at age 13) I joined the technical team " reword this bit. At the age of 13 I joined the technical team...
"In December 2011, I again took " remove the again.
There are too many I's
"I lead the" you want led. You lead a horse. You led the horse.

I prefer the use of IT instead of ICT.
"I have, built up a home network, consisting of:" no need for the commas here?



I might have another pass over it after dinner depending on the other responses.
Click to expand...

Thanks for those points - good to know! I've removed the contact details for now just because it's on the internet.
I know its over 2 pages long but I'm not quite sure how to cut it down, because I'm pretty sure it's all relevant.
I wasn't sure whether to include the previous employment bit because I am only 18 and that was the first job I had, and as you say its not very relevant to my experience/skills. It was just a temporary job. So do you think I should leave it off?

Thanks
 
kitkat9933 said:
A few quick edits

https://www.dropbox.com/s/kohcnnnw4561axu/CURRICULUM VITAE Sound UPDATED 29.1.13 JOB edit.docx

All experience is relevant, for your first CV anyway, as they want to know you have done something, even if its working in McDonalds.
Click to expand...

Thanks for that. Regarding the layers of bullet points, are you saying it would be better to put everything for Point 1 under the same bullet point?

I.e

Experience

-point 1 - Explanation
-point 2 - Explanation

Rather than:

Experience

-point 1
-Explanation
-point 2
-Explanation
 
Sorry, I meant as in only use one layer of bullet points, don't use multi layered bullet points.

EDIT: NVM it's not showing on the forums, take a look at how I changed your bullet points a little bit.

Just keep one layer.

Also remember, if your having to cut down to much in your CV to keep to 2 pages (size 10 font is good compromise between not compacting to much onto 2 pages and big enough to reed) you can use a covering letter to bulk up.
 
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-Give it a bit more sparkle in terms of layout, default word style is very bland
-Try and fit it on 2 pages
-Single bullet point for Objective seems totally unnecessary - go easy on the multi-layered ones later on as well when you only single a single point at the final level anyway.
-Put dates against previous employment and a summation of key responsibilities and skills developed there
-Time management skills paragraph reads badly because you use ", so that I" twice in the same sentence
-I like the way you refer to other sections to give evidence of your skills
-I'd be tempted to move the experience section higher up
-"I and one other student took on most of the responsibility and had to organise most of the show ourselves" - you make it sound like a chore and something you had to do out of necessity, rather than due to your own commitment and drive - I would rephrase this
-"This included with their software development team" probably should have "with" in there.
-"Over the past four years I have, built up a home network" - why is there a comma here?
-Your education is reasonably impressive but you don't present it well, it wasn't until I looked back over your CV a second time I realised you were averaging above an A at GCSE. I would change the layout or at least put the grades in bold.

In summation, based on your CV I would say the main strengths you need to push (and have succinctly and clearly presented on page one) are:
-Academic qualifications
-Experience section

I would try and promote these above the Previous Employment and Skills sections which are fairly disappointing. The one-liner on previous experience gave me completely the wrong impression, some recruiters will just bin your CV immediately without even reading the section later on about what actual practical experience you have managed to gain at your age.
 
Better I think, I would still look to expand the previous employment section:
-You were there for 18 months, surely you must have at least something worthy of mention, maybe health and safety related, observation skills, training/mentoring new lifeguards or swimmers etc?
-Maybe add your work experience in there, you've worked at Plus4Audio, the Bank of England and Cancer Research UK but it is all hidden away in the text. I think putting them in the with your formal employment would transform the CV from one where people might thing "hmm, this guy doesn't have much practical real world experience, just what he's done at school and the lifeguard stint" to "wow, compared to most school leavers he actually has a fair range of practical exposure".

Essentially what I'm saying is, I would merge some of the employment/experience section such that whenever you actually worked for a organisation outside of school, it goes in the work experience bit to make it clear and obvious to people who are skim-reading dozens if not hundreds of CVs that you have actually had a fair range of practical experience albeit most of it for short periods of work experience.

When I first looked at your (original) CV, it didn't do anything for me, but having looked into the details I think you are probably a far better candidate than the impression it gave off. And strange as it may sound, that's a bad thing :) Being a good candidate in itself isn't good enough - you need to make that abundantly clear in the first 20 seconds of someone looking at your CV. Because we spend so much time on our CVs, and are (naturally) self-centred, we don't always realise how little care and attention those who's desk it lands on will give it.
 
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HangTime said:
Better I think, I would still look to expand the previous employment section:
-You were there for 18 months, surely you must have at least something worthy of mention, maybe health and safety related, observation skills, training/mentoring new lifeguards or swimmers etc?
-Maybe add your work experience in there, you've worked at Plus4Audio, the Bank of England and Cancer Research UK but it is all hidden away in the text. I think putting them in the with your formal employment would transform the CV from one where people might thing "hmm, this guy doesn't have much practical real world experience, just what he's done at school and the lifeguard stint" to "wow, compared to most school leavers he actually has a fair range of practical exposure".

Essentially what I'm saying is, I would merge some of the employment/experience section such that whenever you actually worked for a organisation outside of school, it goes in the work experience bit to make it clear and obvious to people who are skim-reading dozens if not hundreds of CVs that you have actually had a fair range of practical experience albeit most of it for short periods of work experience.

When I first looked at your (original) CV, it didn't do anything for me, but having looked into the details I think you are probably a far better candidate than the impression it gave off. And strange as it may sound, that's a bad thing :) Being a good candidate in itself isn't good enough - you need to make that abundantly clear in the first 20 seconds of someone looking at your CV. Because we spend so much time on our CVs, and are (naturally) self-centred, we don't always realise how little care and attention those who's desk it lands on will give it.
Click to expand...

Brilliant thanks, so I'm thinking something along the lines of a work experience section and then a sort of personal experience bit?

Yeah its the first real proper CV I've written so it will need quite a bit of tweaking ha, but thanks a lot - really useful :)
 
Something like this? Any better?



I've added a bit about having a driving License, is there a better place I could put that?

Thanks again
 
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In February of this year, myself and a small...


incorrect usage of myself - this is a peeve. People use it because they want to be more posh and not say 'me'. The problem with this is you look like a douche because 'me' is correct and 'myself' is just plain wrong.

/rant

the most pertinent stuff on your cv is the Sound Design/Recording Experience - so that should be first, not education or work experience.

Sound Design/Recording Experience - you could cut it to 1/3 the size imo.
 
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I'm no expert in this, but I did some work experience with REED on the education recruiter team and was tasked to look through CV's and shorten them down to relevant information to pass onto clients. The idea was to find strong candidates from hundreds of CV's to then take forward.

One of the major flaws with CV's is they're basically a wall of text cramming as much in as they can, which means the recruiter/employer has to spend a lot longer than they anticipated reading it and making decisions.

Some points:

  1. Shorten the CV down, 2 pages of full text seems too long
  2. Make the relevant information stand out, interviews is where you can explain everything else
  3. Don't talk in the 1st person, example "A hardworking and euthisastic induvidual" rather than "I am a hardworking.."
  4. Don't go crazy with indenting, keep it listed neatly with a max of 1 indent
  5. Ensure good use of line spacing, make it look neat and tidy, break up the text

I think the CV is good and sells yourself, however there is a lot going on, shorten it down to the absolute most relevant information. Maybe make the header a similar font size, the size 16 looks out of place.

Hope some of this may be of help.
 
Latest version has all your personal details in, I would take it down. Also update the OP with the latest version so anyone coming in to the thread can find it easily.

Looking much better now, the key things I would look at now are:
-Indenting bullets - as others have mentioned there is too much of it and apart from anything else it is wasting space on the page
-I would merge the "Work Experience" and "Previous Employment" sections
-IT experience feels too padded out considering you are not applying for a pure IT job - most people will not give two hoots about a detailed listing of what VMs you are running and for what purpose. By all means archive that section away somewhere in case you apply for IT jobs in the future but I would look to abbreviate it considerably in this CV. Let me put it this way - you have ten lines on your CV relating to your home network. You have one line on your CV relating to your entire employment history (excluding work experience). The balance doesn't seem right.
 
ThaReaperGuy said:
I'm no expert in this, but I did some work experience with REED on the education recruiter team and was tasked to look through CV's and shorten them down to relevant information to pass onto clients. The idea was to find strong candidates from hundreds of CV's to then take forward.

One of the major flaws with CV's is they're basically a wall of text cramming as much in as they can, which means the recruiter/employer has to spend a lot longer than they anticipated reading it and making decisions.

Some points:

  1. Shorten the CV down, 2 pages of full text seems too long
  2. Make the relevant information stand out, interviews is where you can explain everything else
  3. Don't talk in the 1st person, example "A hardworking and euthisastic induvidual" rather than "I am a hardworking.."
  4. Don't go crazy with indenting, keep it listed neatly with a max of 1 indent
  5. Ensure good use of line spacing, make it look neat and tidy, break up the text

I think the CV is good and sells yourself, however there is a lot going on, shorten it down to the absolute most relevant information. Maybe make the header a similar font size, the size 16 looks out of place.

Hope some of this may be of help.
Click to expand...

Thanks for that, have tried to make things stand out a bit more. Have changed the header down to 14, looks better now.

HangTime said:
Latest version has all your personal details in, I would take it down. Also update the OP with the latest version so anyone coming in to the thread can find it easily.

Looking much better now, the key things I would look at now are:
-Indenting bullets - as others have mentioned there is too much of it and apart from anything else it is wasting space on the page
-I would merge the "Work Experience" and "Previous Employment" sections
-IT experience feels too padded out considering you are not applying for a pure IT job - most people will not give two hoots about a detailed listing of what VMs you are running and for what purpose. By all means archive that section away somewhere in case you apply for IT jobs in the future but I would look to abbreviate it considerably in this CV. Let me put it this way - you have ten lines on your CV relating to your home network. You have one line on your CV relating to your entire employment history (excluding work experience). The balance doesn't seem right.
Click to expand...

Thanks again, Have now merged previous employment and work experience and added some detail for the previous employment. Have also removed some of the waffle in the IT experience bit.

updated:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u...TAE Sound UPDATED 11.5.13 JOB no contact.docx


Is my driving license info in the right place? Not quite sure

Cheers
 
Firstly. That is much better.

What do others think on the order of the work experience? I see what you are doing with wanting the most relevant on top but at a quick glance it looks like you haven't worked for a year.

"When I joined Caterham (at age 13) I joined the" you don't want the 2 I joined bits there.

CCNA is Cisco Certified Network Associate

You've got a Previous Employment line with nothing under it. This needs removing.

I would put full, clean drivers licence. I have it under 'other qualifications' on my C.V. but it is fine there.
 
"In February of this year, me and a small group of students ran the annual Charity Talent Show"

Should really be:

"In February of this year, a small group of students and I ran the annual Charity Talent Show"
 
Need a better structure to sell your main points as I personally think there's too many to take in all at once due to the layout.

Need to be more straight to the point of what you've achieved straight away from reading the first line (preferably first few words) of each bullet point rather than going through when and what responsibilities you've had.
 
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