What is a CV?

If you are just starting out in the employment market, you may be unsure of how to create a good CV or even what a CV is. CV is an abbreviation for curriculum vitae, which means the course of your life. It is the name given to a document which provides information about your education, qualifications, work experience and skills and which is used by employers to select candidates for job interviews. In the US, a CV is usually called a résumé, unless it is for academic purposes, when the term CV is used.

CV writing is not usually taught at school, but it is an essential skill and final year students should learn how to write one before they start looking for a job.

The quality of your CV is important and will determine whether or not you get a job interview. With around 400 applicants for certain job vacancies, it is crucial that your CV stands out. In the first round of scanning, employers will glance at CVs for 10 – 20 seconds and so, if he doesn’t see what he’s looking for, your application is destined for the bin.

Although you should create a generic CV, with all of your experience, skills, qualifications in place, you will need to customize it for each application. This may seem like a lot of work, but without this attention to detail, you will have little chance of securing an interview.

If you have never written a CV before, you should begin by gathering together all the information you will need. This includes dates of all the jobs you’ve had, including summer jobs, if you are just leaving college. You will also need to write a brief description of the duties you carried out. In addition, you will need details of all of your qualifications, with dates and grades.

At the top of your CV, you should put your name and contact details, including email address and phone numbers, both landline and mobile if possible.

Most CVs begin with a profile, which is a brief summary of your experience, written in the third person.

If you are writing a chronological CV, you should type your work history and then your education and qualifications in reverse chronological order, that is, starting with your present or most recent job and educational experience and working backwards. This is a useful format to use for a reference CV, which is helpful if you have to fill in job application forms and must give all of your work experience in chronological format.

You can also create a functional CV, which highlights your skills on the first page and then goes on to list relevant jobs and courses of study.

Once you have all the information in one document, you can customize it for each application, choosing which format fits your circumstances and which keywords are relevant for the job in question.

What is a CV?