7 Tips to Write a CV That’ll Get You Interviews

Always feature skills that are universally in demand: analytical and interpersonal skills, teamwork, leadership and creativity. Then, complement these with skills that are especially relevant for the role in question, including soft skills, hard knowledge, technical aptitude and commercial awareness.

Back up each claim with concrete evidence and measurable achievements. It’s not enough to assert that you’re a leader or a good communicator. You need to reference specific projects and occasions when you’ve risen to challenges or taken risks. Give details of exactly how you contributed and what you achieved.

Don’t write: “I participated in a social media project.”

Do write: “I designed a social media campaign that helped increase our customer base by 8% over three months.”

When writing a CV, grab your reader’s attention with buzzwords and action verbs that jump out from the page to highlight your input, initiatives and innovations. What did you increase, decrease, implement, produce, report, create, support or develop?

It’s usually a good idea to fit your CV on a single side of A4, or two pages at the most. Obviously this isn’t to say that you should try to squish huge chunks of texts by reducing font size or playing around with margins. Your CV should be readable and clearly laid out. But try to be selective when it comes to deciding on what information to include in your CV. Express ideas as succinctly as possible – your voice will emerge all the more audibly from concision.

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