CV Advice

Jasoncmor

Jasoncmor

Jasoncmor

Associate
Joined
13 Feb 2010
Posts
609
Location
Bournemouth
Hi all
I'm just looking for a little bit of advice if possible please.
I'm trying to update my CV and just looking for some feedback on this section.
I am useless at writing about myself, so any advice would be much appreciated.

Hobbies & interests

In my free time I am a frequent gardener, and love to grow fresh produce which I use in trying out new recipes for family and friends. I am particularly interested in a broad range of technologies,
and enjoy building models, playing computer games, and keeping up with new technological advances. I love to drive and work on maintaining my car, as well as exploring new improvements for it.
I enjoy challenging myself to learn new skills, researching a chosen subject in order to expand my knowledge. I also enjoy spending a lot of my time helping others where I can,
which can include repairing of electronic devices, cars etc. Whenever possible, I like to spend time socializing with friends and family.
Click to expand...

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I would maybe just make it smaller - like a sentence. Hobbies/Interests are ok tbh and you can end up chatting about them in the interview if its interesting and proves you're not a boring robot.
 
Nothing wrong with putting in some hobbies and interests but that paragraph is just silly, it seems like you're just adding in words for the sake of it.

"I like to spend time socializing with friends and family." Most people do, but that isn't a hobby. "When I go to comedy shows I enjoy laughing"

So far it seems you've got:

-----------------------------------

Hobbies & interests:
Gardening, computer games, model building.

-----------------------------------

You've thrown in a vague mention of learning new skills, just list the actual skill. Just keep it brief, you don't need to tell people that gardening involves growing fresh produce! The same applies to the rest of the CV avoid waffle.

For example, people have an annoying habit of throwing in some generic paragraph of self-praise at the start, it tells the person reading the CV absolutely nothing and just wastes space, anyone can write generic sentences explaining that they're "ambitious", "a goal-oriented professional" etc..etc..

Likewise, people get overly detailed in job descriptions and list stuff like daily/weekly tasks they fulfilled (things that would be more of interest to a job seeker considering applying to that role) when a hiring manager is really just interested in progression (promotions/job title changes), results(reduced backlog by X, generated X in revenue or savings), relevant experience etc.. and the most recent role is usually the most relevant, other roles before that warrant a single line or two lines at most.
 
The hobbies section is really only there for one of three purposes: to give the interviewers something to break the ice with, to show you keep fit (and thus are seen as less likely to be off sick), or to demonstrate leadership/organisational roles outside work if you run a club or captain a team or something.

Your paragraph above is too weighty for the small role of this section. Cut it down, focus on the parts relevant to the goals above.
 
Keep it brief and to the point, including things that demonstrate skills transferable to the workplace and/or tailored to suit the role (example, I once applied for a job at a Video Game publisher/developer, so I included gaming on that submission).
As mentioned there's a huge amount of fluff in that paragraph, I'd switched off by the time I got to "fresh produce".
 
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