How To Write a CV?

The question of "How to make a CV?" can be answered in short by stating that you should write down all your qualifications, your personal details like date of birth and address, and how to contact, but when you set out to write a resume please keep in mind that the recruiter is not interested in all those things, he is more interested in how you actually write your resume. To understand the process of making a CV, consider the following two scenarios:

A Fresh Candidate

You are fresh out of college, you are hopeful for a great career, you have just had a degree of your choice, and you want to now work in your relevant field, you have had relevant sessions with your career counselor who has told you to get your academic documents in order and make a professional cv, start applying to the companies of your choice and wait for that phone to ring as you get an invitation to that desired company for an interview.

You do all the things right, but you don’t get that call or calls for that matter, the key problem is that students don’t get enough education about how to make a cv or how to write a resume.

Experienced Professional

Scenario two is for those mid-level professionals or even top management staff, who have not bothered to redraft and renew their CVs. Hence they get stuck in a company and often think that they themselves are the root cause of not getting ahead. Most of the time, the issue is with their resumes or CVs. People simply do not know how to make a resume.

In this article we will focus on the very basics of how to write a resume or how to make a resume which will land you countless interview calls.

Making a CV is a complex process but at the same time is it very simple, let’s look at the steps involved in writing and making a CV which will capture your real persona!

Analyze your Profile

Research on what ingredients make a CV - Usually a CV will comprise of your personal info, your schooling and credentials, your work experience, your interests and accomplishments, your skills, and references. There is professional help available by resume or CV writing experts. Use an up to date and simple format. A CV format is not standardized, hence it is up to you or your professional CV maker as to what kind of format is finalized.

Make Job Specific CV - Although this might seem a daunting task, but if you want to get an interview call, always try to leave your cv formats flexible, whenever you see a job which matches your skill set, you should customize your CV according to the job posted, this is a very clever trick and has a 9/10 chance to land you in front of the interviewer.

Always Research About the Company - When you write a CV make sure that you do extensive research about the company you are applying in, then make cv according to the culture and needs of the company, again this is a bit taxing but when you write your cv always leave room for edits.

Enlist all the jobs you have held. This is the main reason of drafting a CV, the core reason of writing a resume is to get your experience on the paper, a few obvious things to put here are the names of the places you have worked with, your tenure with each firm and the designations or the posts you have held.

Highlight Your Technical and Other Skills - If you are a tech savvy or if you have that extra edge with numbers, or if you have design skills, or any particular skills which might compliment your job skills then put them in your cv and make sure to highlight them.

The Extras - Although this area is somewhat neglected by the recruiters as they quickly sift through your experiences and your qualifications, however it is quite essential to put your hobbies and interests if they indicate a stronger side of your personality, such as reading personal development books, or be an avid fitness freak. Remember only list those things here while writing a CV which will boost your image in front of the hiring manager.

How to Write & Make a Perfect Resume

Design a Format For Your CV - Initially you can try to draw a format from scratch but given today’s world of search engines and databases you can find many professional formats to choose from. However make sure you get expert opinion on the CV format which you finalize as it could be a make or break situation for your CV. Never forget that you are not an expert or a professional CV maker.

Personnel Details - The name is the focal point or key text in the entire document, as it is obvious, that anyone would want to know your Name. Standard format would be to have your name in the center of the page, but it is exclusively your decision it can be left aligned as well. Your home address should be listed on the left side of the document but when you write a CV make sure that you don’t put the entire address. Most of the time only your city and residential area is sufficient. Put your telephone number and email below your home address or horizontally aligned.

Write a Personal Summary - This is optional but desired, take a pen and paper and try to summarize your professional and personal self and skills in 3 – 4 lines. If you can pull this off good, rest assure your path is clear in making a CV and you can always claim yourself as a subject expert on “how to make a resume”

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Education and Qualifications - This section can be at the beginning of your CV or you can choose to list it after the experience or job sections. The order of sections is your choice. Write your most recent or most relevant qualification at the top and carefully analyze what kind of education details you want to give out, for example a senior person would be well off if he puts his masters and post masters qualification, whereas a fresh person can put up his college education as well.

If you have area specific certifications or other qualifications list them as well, but when you make a CV make sure you don’t put too much details, Name of your degree, your alma mater and your passing year is sufficient.

Your Work Experience - This is the section in which you should list all of your relevant work experience. List the name of the company, the location of the company, the years you worked there, and what your job duties including your designation. Start with your most recent job and work backwards. If you have a long list of work experience, try to concise it as much as you can.

Skills and Achievements - This section is where you list the things you accomplished at your jobs, and the skills you have acquired and developed through your experiences.

Make an Area For Your Interests - Before you write a CV make sure you think about the areas of interests you are going to put in, run them through family members and friends and only put those which seem right. Again this area in your resume will not get much attention but it is good to be detailed oriented nevertheless.

The other Information Section - If there is an obvious gap in your CV or there is some other information you would like to share, put it in this section. Make sure you only put those activities or that information here which reflects you in a positive light.

The Debated Reference Area - If you sit with 100 CV writers or professional CV makers and ask them about their opinion about this area, you will get 100 different responses. The best trick is the oldest trick in the book you can always write that references shall be provided on request. In the question of how to make a resume, perhaps this section is the most often disagreed upon.

Finalize Your Resume

Spelling and Grammar Check - Bad spellings or poorly written sentences do not impress the recruiter or the hiring managers, it is conclusive that many people bearing good credentials were not even considered for the job when spelling or grammar mistakes were found on their resumes, when you make a CV, try to write it with a spell checker. And finally double and triple check it before clicking on the save button.

Proofread - Although many people are confident of their writing skills, this is not the case with a CV, people should get professional help, when they want to write a CV, or at least have a session with a professional covering the subjects of how to make a resume or write a resume, then read your resume all over again.

Get in the Mind of the Hiring Manager - Consider yourself as the hiring manager and view your resume for a candidate fit, what is your opinion about the layout and the information written there? Do you sound professional? Do you think you will be happy to hire a person bearing your resume?

Opinions Matters - As mentioned more than twice in this article, get opinion, it could be professional opinion of an HR person or your teachers, always first try to improve upon your resume. Ask them questions about the relevancy of your resume, is the content ratio good, opinions about your CV format and so on. Would they hire you if they were a company? What do they think could be added or taken out from your cv?

Thorough Research on Employers- Always visit websites, read the job descriptions to the point where you know them by heart, edit your resume according to the needs and requirements of the job (Don’t put in false information or things you haven’t done).

Now you have the answer for How to write a resume or make a resume, but how to make a CV which is professional or how to write a CV draft which will impress the recruiter is a largely situational thing. The best advice we can give to anyone is to hire professional CV writers or professional resume writing companies. For example have you ever stood on the main commercial area of a city and looked at the advertisement boards? You can easily differentiate between which brand exudes quality, professionalism and reliability.

Similarly a CV written by a professional CV writer will be amazingly different from what a normal job applicant would write for himself. The best way to start getting that phone ringing is to get your CV written by a professional CV writer. A professionally written resume will do all of these things, it will emanate confidence, professionalism.