Writing Your First CV

The purpose of a CV is to persuade someone to give you an interview. That is it’s only function. It won’t directly get you the job. It is your way of asking someone to meet you and find out more about you. Writing your first CV can be a daunting task simply because you’re not sure where to start. This article will try to guide you through those first steps and collect all the data you need to write a good first CV.

Dividing it up

A CV can include the following sections. You don’t have to include them all; pick and choose which ones are most relevant to you depending on the sort of role you are going to apply for. Are you going to try for a summer job? Maybe you want to apply for an internship at the end of university or college? Or maybe it’s a voluntary role you are after. Some of these sections are absolutely essential (for example, the contact details). Others may be included or left out (for example you may not feel that you want to write a ‘Personal Profile’).

Write down everything you could include in the following sections:-

Contact details – This is an essential part of the CV to fill in, but you may choose not to give all your details. At the very least include an email address and a mobile telephone number. You might also give a location (e.g. “Bristol” or “Oxford”), so that the employer knows you live close enough to the place of work.

Personal Profile – Some candidates choose to give a brief introduction about themselves. You might write: “Confident biology undergraduate seeking internship in the environmental management sector” as an example. It gives an idea of your personality, your skills and, perhaps, the sort of role you are seeking. It gives the recruiter an at a glance summary of who you are.

Education – At first you will list everything, from your GCSE subjects and grades through to your graduate study, but as you progress in your career you will find that the earlier qualifications become less relevant for recruiters.

Work experience – At the start of your working life all the work experience you have may have been in an unpaid capacity. List it all in this section in chronological order. Were you a volunteer for a village fete? Were you a student rep in first year? List down everything that shows you have skills and can carry out duties and responsibilities. Some CVs will separate this section out into paid work and a voluntary Work section.

Training courses – You might list any office skills or vocational courses in a separate section. This might include BTECs, SCOTVECs or college certificates in skills focused courses.

References – You can list the referees here with their contact details or simply write “References available on request”.

Customise your CV

In reality, you won’t just have one CV. You have a basic CV, but every time you apply for a job you tweak it slightly in order to highlight the skills that the particular vacancy is asking for. Some experts suggest you not only change it for every job you apply for, but also that you update your CV with your new experiences and achievements three or four times a year.

Presentation

Your CV may only have 30 seconds to persuade the recruiter to read through the whole document in detail. You need to make sure that it is an eye-catching document. Leave a clear space between each section so that the CV is clear and easy to read.

Study Examples

Study as many examples of other people’s CVs as you can. To see examples of layouts, you can go on Google images and search for “CV examples”, but be careful: you will find examples of good and bad CVs. If you really struggle with producing a CV your school or college may be running a CV workshop or you can pay to have a CV produced for you.

Writing Your First CV