What should my CV look like?
• The cardinal rule of CVs: Your CV should be no longer than 2-3 pages
• Two is better than three. Unless you are retired President of the United States, a former Secretary General of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union or the Director General of the BBC, there is no excuse for not getting it onto two sides.
Why the obsession with two sides?
Two reasons:
• It shows you understand what a CV is for, and can order your thoughts and structure them in such a way as to convey the image you wish and
• No recruitment consultant has the time to wade through page after page of your personal details. They want the facts and just the facts.
Structure
• Put the information the recruitment consultant needs first. That means your name (but not your address) and your employment history, starting with your most recent position.
• Education, your home address, hobbies and pastimes, and all the other information goes at the end. Until you have been selected for interview, your address is not needed.
• Make sure your contact details are clear however. You do not want to be selected for interview and then find that no one can get hold of you.
Layout
• For most people, unless you are going after a position in a creative industry, stick to a very simple, clear and straight forward design. Always keep in mind that your CV is going to be scanned. It will be a very key discipline to keeping it clear and readable, and should discourage you from the excesses of Microsoft Word's layout tools.
Typeface
• Choose a clear, straight forward font. On the PC, Arial and Times New Roman are a good choice. You can use both — perhaps using Arial as your headline font, and Times New Roman as the body text. Do not use more than two font families in a document - although with careful use you can make use of Arial Black and Arial Condensed.
Type size
• Fonts should never be used at less than 10pt - a typical broadsheet newspaper uses 8.5pt type - anything less than that and first the OCR will not pick it up, and secondly you are not going to make the person reading it terribly happy.
Type styles
• Although there is no problem in using bold fonts, be sparing in the use of italic. OCR software can be fooled by italics. Avoid underlining for the same reason, and under no circumstances use black - or indeed any other colour - boxes with white text in them. The OCR will almost certainly fail to read the text.
• The same goes for shadow, outline and any other of those bizarre typestyles that Word allows you to use. That typographic disaster zone "Word Art" - which allows you to make you name appear to be shaped like a ball - is best left to publishers of the village newsletter and the corporate sport and social club, where it is much admired.
White space
• Allow your text some space to breathe. Do not be tempted to set 1cm margins on the basis you can get more on the page. It will look cramped and unprofessional.
Consistency
• Devise a style sheet and stick to it. Think about the hierarchy of headings — section headings: Profile, if you have to have one, Career and achievements, education, other information; then how are you going to present your job titles (dates, Job title, company name).
• This is where the use of different fonts can help. Use differing weights and font sizes to help the reader pick out the key information. Perhaps 14 point Arial for the main sections headings, then 12 point Arial bold for the second level headings, with 10 point Times Roman for the main body text.
Printing and paper
• If you are sending in a paper CV (as opposed to sending a word attachment) then consider very carefully the quality of paper. You should use at least 100gsm paper, typical photocopier paper is only 80gsm and tends to look a bit flimsy. Conqueror weave is a very popular choice. Stick to white paper as your CV will almost certainly be photocopied.
• Preferably use a laser printer, although an ink jet on its highest setting on good quality paper is probably indiscernible. Stick to black and white.
Email
• Like it or not, Microsoft Word is the de facto standard. If you do not have Word, then send you CV as an RTF document. Do not send other proprietary formats (.wps etc). Remember if you use a Mac to put the file extension on the filename.
• Be very, very aware of the file size. You can check this in Word by selecting File / Properties from the menu and then selecting the General tab. Any CV over 100K is big. Be wary that graphics and pictures can take a huge amount of space (not to mention are distracting from main content of the CV) - consider removing them. Anything over 200K may actually not get through because of firewalls etc.
Language
- Use bullet points
- Keep sentences short
- Active not passive verbs
- Stick to facts, not opinions
- Use standard job titles, not company specific ones. This will increase your chances of your CV being found in a key word search