4 Quick Tips for Writing Your Resume

John Krautzel
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Some jobs may require a curriculum vitae as opposed to a resume. When you run across this in your professional life, make your CV stand out from the crowd with a few solutions that get your employment record noticed ahead of other candidates. Examine these four quick tips for writing a fantastic CV.

1. Think First

Brainstorm some ideas about your CV before you commit to anything in your document. Decide on the purpose of this document. Is this CV a more professional look at your entire career as you apply for a highly skilled or technical job? Is the purpose of the curriculum vitae simply to get noticed by using an unusual format with lots of eye-catching subheadings?

For the most part, companies want your CV to look polished and professional. Design companies or companies that deal with the arts may gravitate toward documents with a greater visual appeal.

2. Check for Grammar

Even though your CV is longer than a resume with much more experience, certifications and technical skills included in the document, you must still check it for grammar mistakes and misspellings. Run your document through a spellchecker on your word processor. Consider uploading your text to a grammar website for further analysis. If you're not a writer, have someone else look at the CV for a second pair of eyes to examine it thoroughly.

Grammar mistakes can turn off the recruiter or HR person looking over the text. They can also count against you in terms of applicant trackers if the grammar mistakes happen with a relevant keyword.

3. Cater to Different Positions

Cater your CV to different positions. This may seem difficult since your professional qualifications and experience don't change that often. However, you should still look at the posted qualifications desired by the company. For example, one employer may have a certain name for a degree even though your college degree says something slightly different. The same may be true of a computer program, certification or specific requirement. You may have to make a few tweaks here and there to ensure the employer knows your experience aligns with what the company needs.

4. Leave Room for an Interview

Even though a CV generally runs between one to three pages, you still want your future employer to call you for an interview. As such, you should leave the HR manager wanting more. List areas for various groups and organizations to which you belonged in college and the roles you played in each one. Consider adding a brief sentence, starting with an action verb, about some accomplishment that occurred due to your leadership in that organization. Mention other school activities that prop up professional acumen.

A resume is more like a short snippet or a marketing tool. Your CV represents a meatier document submitted to an employer that needs more details about very specific job qualifications. A CV may sound more boring than a resume, but you can still make it stand out with these four quick tips.


Photo courtesy of phasinphoto at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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