Content
The first step in your writing process of your CV is to present your capabilities and how you have used these in a professional or social manner. Do you have previous work-related competencies or been doing voluntary work? This is the place to enlighten you potential new employer about it!
A good start is to plan the content of your CV and this is exactly where you should provide information about you experiences and the skills you have gotten through your professional life.
As a starting point these are the information that your CV at least should be contain:
- Your name
- Contact details
- Email
- Phone number
- LinkIn profile or other visual presentation - Education
- Previous work experience
Beneficially you can add what languages you speak and at what proficiency you speak it. Depending on the position, it can be of great interest for the employer that you can navigate between multiple languages with ease. This is especially if you are applying for a position within communication or at an international business.
To give the employer the best and quickest overview of you as a candidate, you should add your professional experiences and education in reverse chronological order to showcase your latest achievements first.
Hard Skills & Soft Skills
It can seem like a good idea to showcase all your capabilities into your CV, but it can often lead to cluster. To get the most out of the limited space that you have while writer a CV, it can be a good idea to read through the position before writing your CV to make sure that you highlight competencies that make you shine for the specific role. Are you applying for a job in communication or customer service e.g, it will make sense to highlight how you from previous experience have developed a great set of communicational skills. This showcases that you have an understanding of what is understood by the tasks of the position and that you are not completely green in the field. Highlighting competencies that is understood from the role, can make you stand out in a crowd of cluster and providing relevant information about you as a candidate; Ultimately giving you the upper-hand.
It can be beneficiary to include interest, that make you stand out from other candidates. Do you have an interest in Crypto currency, digital marketing or been writing a blog actively these can give the employer an idea of where you strengths lay. These interest can work as a brief introduction to you as a person instead and showcase what role you can play in a work environment. These are the hard skills, the tangible assets that you can provide to your new team connected to specific tasks.
Soft skills is on the other hand skills that will be considered to be useable through different industries. These can be anything from your problem-solving skills, positive mindset or communicational skills; All those that can give an impression of what it is like working with you.
While hard skills are directly connected to your work, soft skills are as important a factor when it comes to becoming an irreplaceable.
Layout & format
When you have your content ready for your CV, you can start focusing on the layout.
As you prepare your layout, it is important to remember that the employer often receives a lot of applications. Therefore it is crucial that you do not have too much information in your CV, but get to the point quickly. A picture and a brief introduction in the start of your CV is a great way to ensure a great first impression.
Do not have too much text on your CV.
While you might have many competencies that you want to share with your future employer, it can easily become a cluster of information. The key is to make it readable and manageable. A good way to showcase your competencies is to visualise it on a rating system, e.g. 1-5 stars in your Photoshop skills.
This can be a great way to avoid an overflow of text throughout your CV and get straight to the point, while at the same time can be a great conversation starter in a potential interview.
We recommend that you showcase a variety of soft skills and hard skills to get an overview of how you will be in a work environment.
There is a huge amount of tools that you can use to build a good looking CV on the internet. There are versions for Word/Pages/Google docs, both paid and free. This offers a possibility to add your own style on the CV and thereby give it a personal touch.
A strong recommendation from Exodius is Resume.io
Det, they offered a great variety of templates for your CV as well as tips and tricks of how to make it stand out. This is one of the tools that we have found great as it is quick and you have the possibility to personalise it all the way through.
Remember that the CV is a representation of you and your skillset.
