You have a reputed 30 seconds to get a recruitment consultants attention when they look at your CV . Recruitment consultants often sift through hundreds of cv’s each week, reading documents quickly and making fast decisions. If your CV is too long, confusing or the relevent information the recruiters eyes are scanning for is not obvious then you risk your application being misjudged; or worse – overlooked for your perfect job.

The advice that I am giving you in this posting is about how to get a recruiters attention. As part of the recruitment process your cv will be formatted to suit the nature of role you are applying for and the recruitment consultant will ensure that your cv contains the necessary facts, which will be gathered during your registration.

Every recruiter will have their preferences when it comes to CV’s, here are mine:-

1. Please send your CV as a standard Word document. I will need to remove your contact details with other changes such as spelling, re-wording and re-formatting potentially required. Please understand that this is all part of the recruitment service provided to you and I need to be able to do this as easily as possible.
2. Unless you are applying for a creative role, please keep formatting and styling to a minimum. I am far more interested in the content than how it looks. Consider that I will need to make some alternations which will potentially affect any tables or formatting the document is subject to.
3. Please make sure that all your correct contact details are on the document.
4. Please spell check your CV and get someone else to proof read the document. Do not under any circumstances use ‘text talk’, there is no place for this type of language in a business environment and your risk your CV being deemed ‘unsuitable’.
5. Use bullet points as opposed to large area’s of text.  Do not waffle, be concise.
6. Sell yourself! It sounds obvious, but all I will know about you is what is written on the CV. Please make sure that you document all the relevent qualifications and work experience that you have, listing your achievements clearly.
7. Type in black and use one font.
8. Please use dates (MM/YY) within your education and employment history entries.
9. Write your CV in chronological order, ie the most recent job first and work backwords.
10. Please write about your hobbies and interests. I am genuinely interested in you as a person, as are my clients.
11. Your CV should be 2 pages long. It should NEVER be longer than 3 pages.
12. Please account for any gaps in your career history.

Please do not:-

1. Lie on your CV. I am likely to find out and it will be detrimental to our future relationship.
2. Send me pages and pages of text. If I am being honest its a complete turn off.
3. Add a picture to your CV, as lovely as you are, I am interested in your skills, experience and potential only.
4. Write in the 3rd person.
5. Write your CV as though it were a story.

The Sarah West Recruitment team are here to help and are happy to offer any support or guidance that you need during the recruitment process. Got any questions with regards to writing your CV? – just give us a call!