Writing a CV
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Before you begin
Think about your reader. What do they need to know about you?
Then think about your goal in writing the CV. What do you want to convey to the reader?
How Long is a CV?
Often CV guides nominate 2 pages as the magic length for a CV. Unless you have very little experience, that may be a little light on detail for IT industry requirements. For our purposes, ideal CV length would be 3 - 5 (and not more than 6) pages, depending on your experience.
Presentation
The most important requirements of CV presentation are that it is readable, coherent and the information is laid out so as to be easily found. By all means inject some personality or originality into your CV, but remember that it will be used by agencies firstly as an information resource, so don't sacrifice clarity and quality of content to do so.
Of course an engagingly designed CV can also be an effective marketing tool, so if you have a strong creative bent you may wish to develop a second CV to take to interviews.
Content
Your CV should be factual and concise. Use terminology specific to your industry, but please remember to provide translations for the more arcane or specialised acronyms!
These are the details contained in an ideal CV:
Personal Details (Name, Contact Details - address, email, phone, fax, pager)
Professional Affiliations (if any)
Education (Tertiary or other relevant qualifications, including majors, institution and year of completion)
Other Courses and Training
Referees details (Try to include the names and telephone numbers of at least two referees. We will not call them without checking with you first, but for general purposes it may be wise to put a note to this effect alongside the details.)
Introductory profile - You might like to briefly introduce yourself. You can use this opportunity to nominate your key strengths or qualities. Remember to be credible and don't oversell yourself. Your claims should be demonstrable through your work history, your interpersonal skills at interview, or your references. This is also a good point at which to mention your career goals and aspirations.
Employment History - This should be in reverse chronological order and include:
1. Job Titles
2. Organisation name
3. Start and End Date of each job - Don't leave gaps, even if you were unemployed. Perhaps you travelled, did voluntary work, or raised a family during this time? These activities are all achievements!
4. Technical Skills and Tools used - (be specific about the key ones eg. Visual C++ v5 or SAP R/3 MM)
5. Responsibilities -Here you should outline the projects undertaken and your personal involvement in them. Point form can be useful here if it us used to express complex details concisely. Beware of being too vague or too generic. For example it is better to say 'two years leading a team of six in an accounting system development project' than 'wide experience in team leading'. Avoid generalising too much: for example, saying 'developed and maintained system' does not disclose whether you did analysis design coding implementation etc.
6. Key Achievements -What are you particularly proud of? What new skills did you acquire?
NB. If you have many years' experience, you may want to provide this level of detail for the past 3 years, and simply list points 1-4 for all prior roles.
Technical Summary - This can be a very useful resource for employers to quickly assess your technical skillset. It is usually a table (often broken into sections such as Hardware, Databases, Languages, Productivity software, Networking, Methodologies etc) of tools you are familiar with. For each tool it is a good idea to list number years of experience, year last used and your own rating of your skills in this area. Some people choose to include roles or functions in the table (eg. Analysis, Team Leading, Systems Modelling, Configuration Management, etc)
Finding it a bit hard to squash all this into 3-5 pages... ?
You might consider having more than one CV. It may be useful to have one detailed CV, the repository of all your experience, which you then edit down to a concise version focusing on the details relevant to the role for which you are applying.
The Covering Letter
State what job you are applying for and where it was advertised, with a reference number if available. Outline why you want the job and expand on any skills you have that are directly relevant to the job that are not covered on your CV.
