CV Writing
As a leading European lifescience and medical device recruitment company Remtec is pleased to offer you advice on CV Presentation
Your CV is your marketing tool, which should be designed to demonstrate to the employer that you are the right person for the position. It must convey a lot of information in a few words, enabling the employer to instantly attain your suitability. To do so, it must be clearly focused on your abilities, addressing the employer's job requirements, if known, and highlighting your specific suitability for the type of role you are seeking.
Format
Firstly avoid using too much formatting. CV's prepared as a PDF are not generally popular since some companies insist on a Word format. Excessive use of tables and colours is not recommended and try to keep your CV down to 2 pages whilst utilising the entire width of the page. Keep skill set summaries brief, thereby avoiding a repetition of information in your employment history
The information is best laid out in the following order:
1. Contact Details
A potential employer must be able to contact you, so include your name, address, phone number(s), and e-mail address.
2. Job Objective/Personal Profile
A brief, 3-4 lines, job objective or personal profile is optional. This is your opportunity to convey your focus, areas of work interest, and express your personality. Your objective should explain the kind of work you want to do.
3. Key Accomplishments
You should add a section that highlights your key accomplishments and achievements.
4. Education
If you are recently qualified, this should be quite detailed (current qualifications first). If you have work experience, this section can be preceded by Work History. This section should include school(s) attended (including years of attendance) and qualifications awarded. If you have carried out a final year project, include a title and short description with key techniques used.
5. Work History
This should be in reverse chronological order (current role first). Each position held should include company name, job title, and dates of employment including the month of each year. For companies with whom you have spent a long time or where there has been a takeover, buyout, spin-off or change of name please ensure that your length of service is quite clear to see. This may be best achieved by an umbrella statement of your length of service and then detailing below the various roles, company changes and any other relevant information.
It is important to describe what the company does, what they make or manufacture, who the key customers are and key segments you work in. For international experience state the main countries or parts of the world.
For sales roles you should also include your territory, as well as the products you were selling, the main served market and key customer types.
For management roles details of the numbers of people and functions managed as well as the size of budgets controlled are very useful.
It is not very informative to simply have a list of bland functions, planning, organising, budgeting, without a specific subject, the reader wants to understand what you have been doing and this is your chance to tell them about and excite them about your skills and abilities
Include a brief description of the responsibilities of each position, major achievements and evidence of using transferable skills e.g. speaking effectively, negotiating, motivating. Use appropriate ‘action verbs’ e.g. researched, created, designed, implemented, to emphasise your accomplishments.
6. Technical or Laboratory Skills
It is useful to include a list of techniques which you are competent in and types of machinery, equipment, software etc you have used.
7. Interests and Affiliations
Your interests can say a lot about you, they can give great insight into your personality and motivations. This section should also include professional memberships and any spoken or written language skills.
8. References
This section should only include a statement saying references are available upon request. Do not include the names of your referees.
9. Publications
Include a list of your publications on a separate page if relevant to the position, or include a statement saying a publication list is available upon request.
And finally...
Check the appearance, layout, grammar and spelling of your CV before sending it anywhere. It may be useful to ask a trusted friend to proof read your document. A well presented CV suggests an individual who takes their work seriously and has a good attention to detail. A badly presented document does, of course, infer the opposite!
