Spring Clean Your CV

Clean your CV. Don't put any of your potential employers off!

Hiring managers and interviewers are not impressed by extremely content-laden and  a never-ending CV. They have little time to review all the applications closely, so make yours stand out.

Muovo would like to share with you the following tips, which will help you spruce up your CV:

1. Declutter the content.
Omit information that no longer supports your career goals, reclaiming valuable space. Old or irrelevant roles can be deleted or grouped together in an "additional experience" section to take up less room. It is a pity that sometimes an applicant loses his or her chance for an interview simple because the long career history listed shows that the individual is not as focused on the career line as the interviewer would like him or her to be.

2. Prune your education section. If you're a graduate, your degree eclipses your school qualifications, which can be relegated to one line in most cases. Recent training and upskilling might even be more relevant than a degree in some cases.

3. sure your CV contains the information necessary to market you for a role.
Examine the job description to check you're including appropriate keywords. Use a range of strong, positive vocabulary, but avoid clichés. Focus instead on facts – numbers and results prove your strengths much more effectively.

Remember, your CV is not a complete account of your life to date, but a carefully worded summary. Weed out the day-to-day details of job responsibilities to create a bigger picture: the scope of your role and your most important results.

For example:

ABC Publishing Ltd, Marketing Manager 2007 – 2011
I revitalised marketing campaigns in key regions to increase sales by 25% in six months:
• Renegotiated partnership terms with distributors to double profit margins
• Cut promotion costs by 35% through internet and mobile campaigns

4. Smarten up the layout.
Tidy up your contact details. If you've got four lines for your street address, town and postcode, phone number, email and LinkedIn profile, adapt your format so it takes up less space. You can also save space by summarising company details, such as turnover and staff numbers etc, on to one line (see the example above).

Use the beginning of your CV to reel in your reader. Instead of a long paragraph in a personal profile section, use the title of the job as a heading, and then summarise your main selling points in one or two lines under that. These can include your areas of expertise, length of experience in the sector, a branding statement, or other information that furthers your application.

Choose a font that is easily read on screen, avoiding fonts such as Times New Roman, which look dated. You could experiment with font sizes (smaller for company details, for example) and use bold to highlight key information, such as numbers. Two pages of easy-to-read and visually appealing text is preferable to one page of densely packed paragraphs with key information buried.

Long lists of bullet points are not easy on the eye, so limit yourself to three or four in any one place and split up long paragraphs. Plenty of white space will enhance the readability of your CV. Section headings can also help break up the text. To keep things tidy, try to avoid orphans and widows where possible – paying attention to space-saving will help you focus on making every word count.

Courtesy of Guardian Career.

Nikita Pisani at Muovo

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