Surely any CV will be looked at?

CVs are extremely important for making a good first impression. Without a good CV, job prospects will be limited and it will be very rare that you are invited to the next stage of the recruitment process. It is very easy to distinguish between a good CV that somebody will be interested in, and a bad CV that will most probably be put to the back of the pile.

Formatting

In order to have a CV that is classed as being ‘good’, an appropriate format is vital so that the information appears organised and concise. Do not try and fit everything onto one page if it means you have to decrease the spacing and make the page look messy, unless you have been asked to submit a one page CV, which in that case it should be a summary of your full CV and should still look well organised.

The formatting needs to fit the job role you are applying for, e.g. if you are applying for a marketing role, your CV needs to be creative and show that you can sell yourself, this will make the recruiter believe you have the ability to market products and services and therefore will make you more hireable for that role. If you are applying for a role in professional services, your CV needs to be more sober but still stand out from the crowd, showing that you have the ability and the professionalism to work in the professional services industry but also that you are different and surpass the other candidates applying for the same role.

Content

The content of the CV needs to be detailed, so that the recruiter can see exactly what role you held, what company it was in, how long you were there for, your responsibilities and your achievements, if you experienced issues or problems when carrying out work, and how you successfully overcame these.

However, make sure the information on your CV is not too detailed. One way of achieving this is to summarise your responsibilities and achievements into bullet points. This ensures that what you are saying is concise and relevant and prevents you from writing unnecessary and inane information, resulting in a more interesting CV. By writing in bullet points and including obvious headings the reader can navigate through your CV more easily making the reader much happier. Whatever happens make sure your CV is not like an essay and that it is not too many pages long, as this might be too detailed for the reader to spend the time reading through your CV, meaning it could be disregarded. Remember, most people who are looking for staff want to be able to glance through the main points in your CV and decide whether to read further.

Introduction

When applying for different job roles you should not have to change the whole of your CV. The only thing that needs to be changed, and it should only be slightly every time (as otherwise you would spend too long on the CV for the number of jobs applied for), is the introduction. The introduction should be tweaked slightly to show your best and most relevant summary of experience and skills for the job specification. Make sure you do not re-copy the job specification into your introduction, as the recruiter will know that this is what you have done. You need to able to show you fit the job specification without using too many of the same words in the specification given.

How JMR Consulting Ltd can Help with Your CV and the recruitment process

JMR Consulting UK Ltd provides a unique IT contractor placement and a permanent placement consultancy service, specialising in highly qualified and experienced IT contract professionals. Our IT Contractor placement practice is positioned in the Market place between the “Big Five” Consultancies and the generic IT consultancy and IT contractor agencies. We provide high calibre professionals that you would expect from the “Big Five” but at rates that are commensurate with smaller IT recruitment consultancies or agencies due to our own very competitive margins and key relationships in the financial services market.

This post was written by Jagroop Bagary, the newest member of JMR Consulting UK’s graduate programme. If you would like more information on the JMR Consulting Graduate Programme, email jobs@jmruk.com.

Tags: applying for work, contracting, contractor, contractor placement, CV, CV Don’ts, CV Do’s, good CV, job hunting, job search, Recruiter, Recruitment