Writing a graduate CVWhether you have already graduated, or you are just about to, you will need to start putting a graduate CV together. It is best to think of a CV as a kind of marketing brochure for the services that you can provide, listing all the reasons why a potential employer should hire you ahead of anyone else.Before you start, it can pay to do some research into the type of jobs that are available to graduates of your degree. Job sites such as the graduate jobs section of the Guardian Jobs website can be a great place to look. Although you are free to set out your CV any way you like, as a general rule, a CV should include a short written profile, a list of achievements, qualifications, details of your experience and skills, and references from previous employers. Here we shall discuss what you should put in these sections in order to make the best impression. Your profile, sometimes called a personal statement or a summary, should briefly summarise your experience, skills, and abilities. It should only include information pertinent to the type of job that you are applying for, and should be under six lines long. While the achievements section of a graduate CV is usually fairly short, for example if you can think of anything that you have achieved so far in your life, such as editing the university newspaper, then you should write these achievements down in bullet point format. Avoid putting anything irrelevant to the type of job you are looking for, and put down your biggest achievement first. In the qualifications section, you only need to list your most important qualifications, such as your A Level results and details of your degree. You do not need to list your O Level results, but you can indicate how many of them you have if you haven't go much else to put in here. In the employment section, you should list all the jobs you have ever done for a reasonable length of time, plus any relevant work experience you have gained. Feel free to change the wording of a job title if the actual job title you had seems a little obscure or company specific. Also, if you worked at a lot of similar jobs for short periods of time, you should group them together to save space. Beside each job title, you should note the start and end dates that you worked there and briefly include some details of what you did there. At the end of your CV, you should list any additional information which may be relevant to the job, and any outside interests which may be relevant, particularly if they involve some responsibility. Keep this section short though. Finally, you should list a couple of references. One of these must be from a prior employer, but the other one can be from one of your tutors if you have not had that much work experience to date. Always ask for consent before you list a referee. |
