My top tips for a great CV!

'Writing a CV can be one of the most challenging aspects of university life. It is a document that could mean the difference between securing an interview or not. The number of hours I have sat there writing and re-writing my CV to tailor it to each specific application are numerous. What is the aim of a CV? To concisely present your skills and experiences and tailoring them to the job in such a way that it attracts the recruiter’s attention.

Here are my personal top tips on how to do this: 

• Understand the job description. Highlight the skills the company are looking for a think of experiences you can use to demonstrate that you have these skills. 
• Start with an objective. In two sentences write why you want the job and what you could bring to the job.
• List education with the only the most relevant qualifications and modules
• Outline your experiences using the STAR method. Situation, Task, Action and Result. This provides a better structure and stops students from just listing tasks they did, rather than what they accomplished. I would use this for employment and university experiences. 
•  I would end the CV with an achievements section to demonstrate accolades achieved. This end to the CV will leave the recruiter with a good impression if you get this correct! 
•  Keep your CV to 2 pages of A4. Recruiters are busy people and do not want to read pages of waffle. 

If you follow these helpful tips, I guarantee that you will be in with a good chance of getting an interview…'

Things you might not know

Did you know that the university has affiliations with many professional bodies including: CIMA, ACCA, CIPD and many more? This means many of the modules you are taking may make you exempt from taking them further on in your careers.


 Here is some information from CIMA


 

Interested in a career with Enterprise-Rent-A-Car??

Women in Investment Banking

Freshers

Fail to prepare, prepare to fail!

Fail to prepare, prepare to fail! Preparation is always key to success and lack of preparation is one of the main reasons why students don’t get through the application process. One of recruiters main complaints is about receiving numerous generic applications for a position. Companies want to see that you have researched their company. They test this through competency-based application questions, covering letters and telephone interviews. To ensure you get through these stages you need to show the recruiter that you are answering questions in a way that is specific to their company and not giving answers that could apply to any company! To test this look at what you have written and change the company’s name. If it could apply to that company to, then it is too generic. To avoid this you need to do research! Here are my top tips for carrying out in-depth research about a company and how to use the information in the application process.

• To gain the best insight into a company, I would advise attending an insight day. This is a good way to gauge the company culture first-hand. Insight days usually involve a company presentation. This is an excellent way to compile facts about the company that only people who have attended the insight will know. 
• Visit the company’s website. From this you can usually find out the company’s core competencies. You can also find ‘hints and tips’ for the application process and news links. 
• Visit Targetjobs.co.uk. Targetjobs provides excellent advise on how to write applications and CVs; however, it also provides company profiles which can be used to find out about the company’s culture, recent news links, and awards. 
• Research the industry not just the company. Finding out facts and figures about changes in the industry will be an added extra that will put your application to the top of the pile. Researching the industry could include changes in legislation, technology and information about competitors. This level of research show recruiters that you have gone the extra mile. 

How to use this information?

When you have collated this information, to answer either application questions or to write a covering letter, I advise you to write five reasons why you want to work for that company and five reasons how you match what the company is looking for. This will formulate a succinct covering letter/application answers, but will be in-depth enough to show that you have done your research. This level of research may take a few hours, but what is a few hours if it gets you to the next stage in the application process? I bet most of you spend longer than a few hours per day on Facebook!

Using the STAR method when writing your CV...

When applying to graduate schemes (or otherwise) there will be numerous application for the position, so how do you make your application/CV stand out? From reading articles, I have found out that recruiters normally look at a single application for about two minutes. This is a very short amount of time so you want to get your skills and suitability for the job across succinctly. This can be done using the STAR method. Situation, Task, Action, Result.

Here is an example of what is normally written:

"During university, I worked in a shop. I served customers and replenished stock."

The applicant is just stating what they have done in the job and is assuming that the recruiter can guess what skills they can bring to the job.

The above example could be written using the STAR method:

"During university, I worked in a shop. I was very effective at resolving customers' issues. One customer could not find the product she was looking for. I listened to what she wanted and told her that I would look in the warehouse to see whether it was in stock. As it was not, I brought her an alternative product. I explained  the benefits of the product to the customer. She bought the product and went away happy."

From this the recruiter can see that you have selling skills, communication skills, problem solving abilities and the ability to think on your feet.

You can see that the second option says more to the recruiter than option one. As you have a limited amount of time, each paragraph needs to say something to the recruiter. If you follow this method, on your CV, it is a sure fire way to get an interview.