CVs/Resumes

[Atlantis]

Hey guys,

So at school part of our careers program we do in Year 11 is learning how to write a CV. But I have absolutely no idea what to include. Any ideas?

[yeehaw]

*cracks under Year 11 pressure*

Unfortunately, I am in the same boat as you. I am also pretty sure we don't get such mentoring for CVs... one thing I can suggest is that you can take a notation of some past achievements in and out of school, like if you still have any little certificates for being good at school or anything like that. I hear that anything good - even little such as the certificates - looks good on your CV.

[Vlerchan]

Mine has gotten me jobs in professional offices - a retail bank and a mutual fund - so I hope I can give some advice.

I begin with a list of personal details: name, phone number, email address and date-of-birth.

I then included what I labelled a 'profile': which is a summary description of what I figure my strengths are. Ensure that there are references to where these skills are demonstrated - so I highlight selection for prefect in highschool and the years I played team sports, for example.

I then included education details, what I have been enrolled in (high school) and what I am currently enrolled in (university), and then the relevant years. I try to make it seem like I was a good high school student with a rather misleading description of my finals grades.

I then discuss work experience. Include volunteer stuff here, too. You can also include work you did for family members - like I worked on my uncles farm a number of times.

Then I list notable achievements and skills. The 'notable' aspect makes it seem as if there's so much more. That's stuff like the programming languages I can write in. But also that I was player of the year for my soccer and Gaelic football teams at one stage or another (if you play team sport, emphasise it, because odds are you will be working on a team). I also include membership of college societies. twentyone horizons is right here though: include certificates, and so on, it all helps (in fact, it's whats going to get you your first job, basically).

Then there's the section for references, to which I just add: "References to be made available on request".

Other tip is to use bullet points whenever you can. Be succinct. Ensure there's no spelling errors. Spend time on presentation - I learned a word processing language called LaTeX - looked upon highly in Finance - so I could sharpen the presentation.

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I can answer whatever questions people have.

[Flapjack]

Honestly buddy I know it is daunting but when you have done it once it is really easy :)
Here is a good structure to use (https://www.studentjob.co.uk/info/the-standard-structure-of-a-good-cv) :)
One thing I would add is to focus your CV towards the job you like and mention transferable skills!:)

[CareerHelp]

Be sure to check out this article - a definitive guide to helping students find work... https://careerimprovement.club/blog/how-to-write-a-student-cv

How to write a student CV (https://careerimprovement.club/blog/how-to-write-a-student-cv)

[BlackParadePixie]

is that because you have no work experience? what about any volunteer experience? activities you have partook in school or church... like a play? helping with a special event? or if you're a president or member of a club or something.

[Archerrr]

I believe it is worth to mention that every CV that you will write will be different depending on your purpose in writing one. I believe the simplest way to explain it is that a CV should be a summary of your qualifying features and an advertisement for your self.

Perhaps in the environment of a school assignment or any other place where it may be general purpose (like how a professeur may post a curriculum vitae detailing his background), posting everything about yourself that you can think of will be okay but is not quite optimal. You should specifically cater what you put on your CV to the purpose or reason for why you are making one

For example, suppose you are applying for a job or intern position for information systems. The job requires for you to use a lot of computers, fix computers, and do technology stuff. It would be to your best interest to spend your CV capacity on information most relevant to the position. Suppose you do a lot of microsoft and programming, that would be your first priority to put down. Or perhaps anything that may detail or display your skill in technology. After which, you may put down anything else you might consider to be relevant.

From what I can understand, it is a common mistake that people purposely make a very general CV and use it for all purposes. They may put down anything or everything they have done under skill and experience with very little to no correlation. It may make your experiences and skills look better but is not very meaningful without correlation to the objective or consistency. This will only work for a few scenarios and will be a very ineffective CV. Consider the same job from my example. Perhaps you volunteered selling cookies at your school club. Putting that on a CV for a technology job will not be particularly useful and will give the interviewer a particular insight that you do not want about your character if that is among the first or only thing you put down. Selling cookies is not very useful for a technology job. Perhaps you may have worked at a fast food job before and you put that down. The ability of grilling a hamburger is not particularly useful for that job either. Perhaps you may argue that you can work many hours, but that does not mean much if the hours were asked of you to begin with. I suppose you could say you deal with bad customers a lot but that appeals more for marketing jobs rather than a programming or engineer job where you sit behind a computer for a long time. I do not mean to talk bad about people with little experience or people who do this, but I mean to say that people who have relevant experience and skill and/or people who put down more relevant experience and skill will be at a natural advantage over you. Competition should make you motivated to seek resource when you don't have it, so it should be your responsibility to find experience or develop a skill. You will not be owed a engineer job if you cannot do engineering. You will not be given experience for engineering if you do not seek it out yourself.

But I do not mean to discourage putting such things on a CV, but they should only come second. The relatedness of any experience to a job does not need to be natural to the experience itself. For this reason, it is important for you to put specific details of what you did in that experience thing that you write and try to spin the detail to match the most with what you are doing. Perhaps you may put down that you did the sales helper at a general store. That is not naturally related to engineering. However, you can say that you have dealed with difficult customers before by listening to their problem first and then being able to pitch a certain product to create a sale. You have become the best employee in the general store by doing this by creating value for the customer and the store. You can spin it to sound like engineering by saying it is an exercise of problem solving skill because you wait to assess the situation and then do an analysis to see the best option to do. and that is why you think your job at a grocery store might help you in the engineering job. However this will not be immediately apparent and the interviewer might not ask about it always, so it is also up to you to learn the proper speech skills to mention it and explain it without forcing it out of no where.

You will want an objective statement to give your CV context but i think a cover letter is better.

[InternetTeen]

I'm only in Year 10 but we practised writing them a while ago. We had to include our contact details/personal details, our GCSE subjects, our achievements, what skills we have, past work experience, our interests and any references. I'm sure you'll be able to find some good CV structures out there to help you writing yours. Good luck.