How To Create The Best CV

If you need to write a CV from scratch, then this is the blog for you. Not only will we go through the basics, but we’ll also cover the things you need to stand out (we even include some cv examples to help you). 

When you work with us, one of our expert recruiters will help you with your CV. But this guide will give you a head start!  

What are the 5 parts of a CV? 

There are 5 key parts of a CV are: Name and Contact Details, Personal Summary, Skills/Qualities, Employment History and Education/Certifications. There are other sections you can include whilst writing your CV, things like your hobbies and interests, but if you can’t make it relevant to a skill you have, then it can be removed. 

Let’s talk more about how you should write your CV with these parts. 

1: Contact Details  

It might sound a little patronising to tell you to add this. But the amount of CV’s we see without basic contact details is concerning. For this, you want to include your  

• preferred contact number,  
• email address,  
• Address (City/postcode as a minimum), and  
• social handles.  

2: Personal Summary 

There are a couple of names for this. Personal Summary, Professional Statement, Business Objective. But they all want you to do the same thing: Outline your career goals and introduce yourself.  

This section is a good opportunity to get a bit of your personality into your CV. 

3: Skills and Qualities

By placing this after your personal summary, you can immediately show your suitability for the job you’re applying for. For this section, just bullet point the skills you have that link to the job. (this is also a great way to show that you have tailored your CV to the job) 

Recruiter Tip: Use bullet points throughout when writing your CV, it makes it easy to read and emphasises the key information. 

4: Employment History

It wouldn’t be a CV without including where you’ve worked. For this, you want to start with your most recent job and then work backwards. Including these 3 things for each experience: 

5: Education  

In most cases, you won’t need to go into too much detail for this section. A simple qualification name, grade (if applicable) and expiration date (if applicable), is all you need for this. You can also add in the course provider, especially if it’s well-known. 

Recruiter Tip: Keep your CV format simple! Use an easy-to-read font and a clear layout.

What is the most common mistake when writing a CV? 

Not tailoring your CV to the role. 

This is the most common mistake we see when looking at CVs (and we look at hundreds of them every day). But it’s a fatal mistake to make for a couple of reasons: 

Other common mistakes we see when people write their CVs are: 

So, if you are looking to create the best CV, avoid making these mistakes. Instead, focus on what makes a CV Impressive! 

What makes a CV stand out? 

Having a concise and well-laid-out CV isn’t enough to impress an employer (or recruiter if you using them). You need to add real value to your CV, which you can do by including: 

Top Tips from this CV Writing Guide 

If we wanted you to take away just 3 things from this guide they would be: 

1. Include all 5 parts we mentioned. 
2. Tailor your CV to the job you’re applying for. 
3. Show your real value. 

The easiest way to do the above is to have a master copy of your CV. One that contains every bit of detail possible, even different versions of your Personal Summary. Then you can quickly grab and drop the relevant elements into a new document. 

But that’s still time-consuming. So, another plan can be to use a prebuilt template that is already built for your needs. We have two, an experienced maintenance engineer CV template or a Newly qualified CV template (more are coming!) 

The Next Step after Writing your CV 

Once you’ve got the master draft of your CV sorted you should start seeing what jobs are available. You can check out the jobs that we have below:

Once you’ve found the job for you, remember to tailor your CV before applying!