How To Write Your CV

Download our free CV template from our webinar to get started. Then use the tips below to get your CV in professional shape.

The Top of Your CV

At the top clearly have your name, email and mobile displayed. It sounds simple but a lot of people do not have their mobile clearly visible. You want to make it so the hiring manager or business unit head can have your CV in hand and call your mobile with ease.

The Profile Statement

Always use a profile statement, never use an objective statement. Some candidates have objective statements which sound something like “I am a results-oriented executive who is looking to apply my experience to a multi-national company to create value and dynamic results” or “Highly skilled chef looking to work for an international hotel chain and leverage my food science and menu creation capabilities”. This is wrong on so many levels, firstly clouding your CV with a bunch of management words and jargon will just turn your audience off.

Secondly, if you are applying to a company that is not multi-national or international you have just disqualified yourself. That is the issue with objective statements is if your objective does not match the objective of the company you are actually doing yourself more harm than good. You can lose the job in the objective statement if you are not careful.

That is why I always suggest using a profile statement. Short and less than 60 words maximum. One or two sentences is all you need. Some examples are below;

15 years of Real Estate professional covering design and development delivering over $2.5 billion in mixed-use projects since 2012.
Experienced Executive Assistant with 10 years working for Chief Executive Officer’s office.
Head of Cardiology with 20 years of experience, possessing strong healthcare leadership skills underpinned by hands-on cardiac surgery expertise completing over 3,000 open-heart surgeries over the last two decades.
Focused sales professional with 3 years of hands-on experience having been ranked in the top ten sales executives for the last two years. A proven closer who enjoys building client relationships for life.

These are a few examples of what a good profile statement looks like. Whether you have three years of experience or thirty, you always want to be focused and clear on what problem the employer should hire you to solve. If you try and be all things to all people, pretty quickly you want to be anything to anyone. Stay focused and in one or two sentences describe yourself professionally.

Often, I see candidates who are trying to highlight all their experience to keep their CV as broad as possible to help them catch any job they can. This strategy is not going to work. With the average job application getting over 2000 applications a generic CV will be buried into the black hole of applicant tracking systems and digital databases never to be seen again.

You have to be focused in one area and you need to present yourself as an expert. Even if you are early career. Perhaps you are a cashier for a grocery store, but nonetheless, you are an expert at that job. Highlight it in your profile statement. In this digital environment, you need to be very focused and targeted in your approach to land the job.

Some candidates try to write everything they have ever done and everything they can do in their profile statement. I have seen some as long as a page long. This indicates that the candidate has a lack of focus, a lack of direction, a lack of vision, low self-confidence, and low self-esteem. Therefore, candidates who are applying for a leadership role and have a long profile statement will be disqualified.

Your CV must be your ultimate identity statement and a long profile statement is really saying “I don’t know who I am, I can be anything you want me to be, just give me a job please”. A short profile statement says “This is who I am, I can accelerate your success in this area if you are headed in the same direction as I am. Hire me and I will take you to where you are going, and by the way, I am going to get there anyway with or without you.”

A short profile statement indicates the candidate has focus and a professional vision of who they want to become. People who do not have a vision of who they want to become usually suffer from low self-esteem and low self-confidence. If we are hiring for a leadership position, we will be looking for high self-confidence and high self-esteem. Another reason why we will disqualify candidates with long profile statements and be more inclined to interview candidates with short profile statements.

Finally, a run-on candidate profile statement is also highlighting a lack of organizational skills and a lack of time management. Their value of time is very low. They have no value for how they spend their time professionally as long as they are getting paid. They are happy to do a myriad of different things to get a job, versus someone who has a high value for their time, very high self-esteem, and high-self confidence will not invest their time in just anything. They will focus on tasks which have a deep sense of meaning and purpose.

Gandhi, for example, would not work at any job. Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, and Einstein, these leaders refused to work on anything outside of their sense of purpose, their vision, and the overall direction they had in life. So, when we see a long profile statement it raises a flag that this candidate does not have a high value for their time and is willing to invest their time in anything.

The best thing you can do is keep your profile statement short.

Your First Work Entry

Here start with the date, the name of the company, and then the last and most senior title held.

2017 to 2020

Blue Widget Company Inc.

Head of Sales

If you want, you can add the months but the years are enough. If you have worked for one company for twenty years you can mention each role separately if you would like. If you have worked there for ten or fewer years you can just mention your last and most senior role. For example, if you had worked there for twenty years you can write;

2000 to 2020

Blue Widget Company

Various Positions as described below

Then you can write out your top three positions, max four, so you can keep your CV short. Try to keep it 2 pages or less if you can.

Next, under the date, company name and position title, write a one-liner about your company to give the interviewer an idea of the size and stature of the business. Such as;

Blue Widget Company is a leader in PVC piping with 25 offices globally and a staff size of 1350 employees.

So it would look like

2017 to 2020

Blue Widget Company Inc.

Head of Sales

Blue Widget Company Inc. is a leader in PVC piping with 25 offices globally and a staff size of 1350 employees.

Next you want to list your accomplishments and responsibilities. This will keep your CV short and sweet. List your top three accomplishments and highlight your result in numbers.

Accomplishments

Delivered 100% sales growth in 12 months. Sales in 2017 were $200 million USD, and by the end of 2018, we surpassed $400 million USD in sales.
Achieved record gross sales of $600 million USD in 2020. The highest ever in the 30-year history of the company.
Recipient of President’s Award for employee of the year in recognition of best-in-class leadership skills complimented by business results.

Responsibilities

Led a team of 565 sales professionals across 8 countries.
Responsible for the sales strategy, sales forecasting, and business plan to grow revenue and market share.
Champion of sales succession planning program while institutionalizing our “Seek and Seed Leaders” at all levels in the organization.

Your accomplishments must be stated in numbers. You can use ratios and percentages if your company is private and the details are not public information. Your integrity is the most important element of your professional brand, without it no one will want to work with you. For example, the statement below can be changed to percentage with ease.

Delivered 100% sales growth in 12 months. Sales in 2017 were $200 million USD, and by the end of 2018, we surpassed $400 million USD in sales.

This becomes;

Delivered 100% sales growth in 12 months surpassing all sales targets and budgets.

The next statement is;

Achieved record gross sales of $600 million USD in 2020. The highest ever in the 30-year history of the company.

This becomes;

Achieved 300% sales growth from 2017 to 2020. The highest ever in the 30-year history of the company.

You can see that the actual numbers are not needed. You can use a percentage or ratio to highlight your results. Always use numbers that are punchy, and succinct, and create the look and feel of a high-performance executive.

Your responsibilities are usually across three key areas, human capital, finance, and geography. You should focus on the size of team you manage, the size of P&L or the size of budget you manage, and geographic span of control you have. You want to highlight your span of control but touch on these three elements.

In your responsibilities you only want to highlight the top three and you only want to highlight those elements which highlight your span of control and level of authority in the organization.

Your CV will look something like this if you follow our suggestions;

Jane Smith

Email : Jane@smith.com , Mob: +971 50 940 7766

Meadows 2, Street 15, Villa 22, Dubai, UAE

2017 to 2020

Blue Widget Company Inc.

Head of Sales

Blue Widget Company Inc. is a leader in PVC piping with 25 offices globally and a staff size of 1350 employees.

Accomplishments

Delivered 100% sales growth in 12 months. Sales in 2017 were $200 million USD, and by the end of 2018 we surpassed $400 million USD in sales.
Achieved record gross sales of $600 million USD in 2020. The highest ever in the 30-year history of the company.
Recipient of President’s Award for employee of the year in recognition of best in class leadership skills complimented by business results.

Responsibilities

Led a team of 565 sales professionals across 8 countries.
Responsible for the sales strategy, sales forecasting, and business plan to grow revenue and market share.
Champion of sales succession planning program while institutionalizing our “Seek and Seed Leaders” at all levels in the organization.

You can then repeat the process for each of your positions. Those are few top tips for your CV or Resume. I hope that helps you while writing your resume but keep in mind in our course we profess that the CV is one of your least effective tools. While you need to write a CV or Resume, you cannot rely solely on your CV to help you get a job. You need to use more effective techniques which are highlighted in our VIP course on www.ownmycareer.com.

Also join our weekly call on Monday at 5pm Dubai time if you would like some more tips.

Thanks,

Shane