Curriculum Vitae literally translated means the story of your life. A CV will assist in securing you a contract. The CV is the only point of the recruitment process that you control and it is your opportunity to showcase your skills and experience.

What information should a CV contain?

The basic set of information is as follows:-

• Your name.
• Your address.
• Home Contact number.
• Mobile phone number.
• Your email address (if possible).
• Your date of birth.
• National Insurance Number
• Profile - including your key skills and experience.
• Your employment history, current or most recent position first.
• Your education history, most recent first.

For an Example CV layout please click here

Why are CV's rejected?

First impressions are important. If your CV does not attract the reader's attention in the first 20-30 seconds then your chances of obtaining an interview are greatly reduced. An employer may have a hundred or more CV's to look through and probably only a couple of hours in which to make their selection. An employer is looking for one thing, and that is, should they invite you for an interview? For this reason a short summary of your skills and Qualifications and a list of your major achievements can often be a good idea, but be careful that you do not oversell yourself.

Length of CV

It is usually best to try and keep your CV to not more than three pages of A4, unless someone specifically asks you for a longer CV.

Too little information

You need to shout about your skills and qualifications, Please remember that your CV is your sales document to an employer. If it does not tell an employer why they should employ you then it has failed. An employer will only want to employ you if they can see a benefit in it for themselves.

CV tips

1. Keep your CV to the point. As a guide you should aim for not more than 2 pages. Anything over 4 pages is too long -companies do not have the time to read CV's of this length.

2. Don't sell yourself short. This is by far the biggest mistake of all CV's. Treat your CV as an advertisement for you. Be sure to thoroughly "sell" yourself by highlighting all of your skills and qualifications.

3. Stick to reverse chronological format. (Last job first ), If people have to work too hard to see what you did when and where, they may just put your CV aside and move on to another which is clear, simple and straightforward. Also, as with contact information, a career history where dates are not logical implies that there may be something that you don't want the agency to know.

4. If there are gaps in your employment or educational history try to account for them.

5. Define what YOU have done for each important project, what you did as a team member or solo and what impact it may have had, as well as anything special that was accomplished. Also, where relevant, explain what skills were used in the completion of each task. Key skills should not just be mentioned in a list at the top of the CV. A client should be able to see where, when and how these skills were used by you.

6. Be sure that your key technical credentials are visible both through the human and the electronic eye. Include, even repeat, as many key words and phrases as possible, that define your technical strengths. These "magic words" will be searched for in matching your credentials to available jobs. If your document has been electronically scanned in to a database the keyword search may be sensitive to one spelling of a term and not another. It may even rank you by the frequency with which a particular word appears on your CV.

7. Finally, don't forget that UK Engineering Recruitment Ltd is dedicated to helping you market your experience and skills to their best advantage - so if in doubt ask.