CV... any tips.

[Pozz]

Found out today I now have a job and a sponsor! It hasn't sunk in yet but needless to say it was a pretty good start to the week.

[OZwanted]

Found out today I now have a job and a sponsor! It hasn't sunk in yet but needless to say it was a pretty good start to the week.

many congratulations,

[itsSHIRLEY]

Hi can anyone advise me on what to include on my CV. I only have two years expereince as a qualified nurse. Two years previousy as a care assistant, however i am 42 and have had many jobs before not unrelated to nursing, do i have to include all my job history, or do i just put relevant previous jobs ? can anyone help ?

[One Hour Photo]

I have some experience in this, including going through quite a few. My ex-husband who used to employ people, we had names for certain types of applications i.e. War and Peace, Centre of the Universe, Dreamers ....

I recal going through one lot of about 60, every single one was appalling (tatty, bad spelling, white out) and was initially put to one side, however someone had to be appointed so we went through them again and picked the best of a bad lot (based on specific qualifications and experience) and 3 or 4 were interviewed.

The fact is poor quality applications sometimes succeed because they have nothing to beat. If you make the effort to put together a good application you are qualified to do that will give you a head start.

Keep it short and relevant, no-one cares about you, or what you did 20 years ago, who you are married to or how many kids you have ... they care about 'what's in it for me'.

No-one cares if you 'play squash' (yeah right) unless you are applying for a job at a squash club or in a sports store. If things go well and you get along you may get chatting about things at the interview, but really your private life is no-ones business.

If you ask a group (I ran a few classes on this) 'what is the purpose of a CV' most will answer 'to get a job' WRONG. The purpose of the application is to get contact from the prospective employer leading to an interview.

Imagine yourself as the employer, imagine you are busy and have 50 applications on your desk to go through - what would you want to see. Don't think about it from your point of view or what you want, think from the point of view of the employer and what they want, what it important to them.

Then you must role play interviews, I did this a lot with my ex. He had been in the same job for quite a long time so he got out of practice and is a bad communicator (if words were money he would be a billionaire because he never gives any away) so he was going to interviews and missing out, he knew he was hopeless at interviews but didn’t really want to deal with it.

He was very reluctant to practise but in the end he got sick of coming second and went along with it. When it came to the technical questions I didn’t understand his work so I had to get the questions from him and then ask ‘is that a good answer’ but in other areas I could test him.

Sometimes I would ask something like ‘have you ever had to deal with problems of sexual harassment’ or ‘what would you do if you saw a colleague being bullied’ (he was a manger) he would get irritated and say I will never be asked that .... which is true (people pretend to care about things like that but in reality no-one does) but I said it was my damn interview so he would answer or I wasn’t playing anymore. In the end he got into it and we did a lot of practice, we set it up and role played as close to a real interview as we could, with the advantage you can ‘re-wind’ and try again.

My purpose in asking unlikely (but relevant) questions, was at some point in an interview you are likely to be asked something you weren’t expecting so, by me doing that, he learnt to think outside the clichés, about who he is and what his values are. It paid off and he has had some good jobs and is a lot less stressed by interviews these days.

My main ‘advice’ is don’t be lazy, the more time, effort and work you put into preparation the better results your will be.

I always suggest to people to update their CV at least once a year, even if they aren’t considering looking for a job. As new things come on take old things off, or at least reduce them. No CV should be more than one/two pages + a good cover letter.