What should a CV look like these days?

Looking at a possible role outside the Civil Service that requires me to provide a CV – not had to produce one for over 20 years as the Civil Service doesn’t use them.

Any templates and tips would be gratefully received!

You could try Canva

There’s no single CV format; It really depends on what you’re applying for.

You sound like an experienced person, so obviously you don’t need the basic stuff describing, however “CV Type” is definitely a thing, and might vary by your work area. I actually think the Prospects site does a pretty good job describing that and giving examples of different approaches, as it gets you thinking about your own specific industry.

https://www.prospects.ac.uk/careers-advice/cvs-and-cover-letters/example-cvs

Obviously plenty of online places threatening to write a CV for you for money or ‘free’, but (maybe I’m a luddite) as someone who is regularly re-writing my CV for work bids etc, i dont think it’s necessary to pay for it if you are happy being reasonably articulate.

Recent advice was to provide a detailed list of skills and attributes providing evidence from your experience as the main focus, rather than just the old fashioned list of jobs and dates. Obviously tailoring that list to the job spec using their lingo.

Chatgpt is your friend here.  It helps you write, make sure you proof what it has written and make it your own.

Many of the jobsites will have stuff like this

https://uk.indeed.com/career-advice/cvs-cover-letters/cv-styles

Even if you do enjoy socialising with friends, don’t put that.
Use normal language.
I’d do a one pager with the relevant stuff with detail after.
I can do blah blah blah, fluent in whatever, awesome at that, ran a team of x.
Put a couple of jobs in detail relevant to above then just list the others.
Your communication and organisational skills are right there in front of them, but also show a bit of personality, ‘I absolutely loved this job, or this role, or this project’.

20 years in recruitment (don’t hate me) and the current thinking is roughly:

Name, contact details, location (not address, just a town is fine). Don’t put your DoB or any think else irrelevant here.

3 or 4 line personal statement. This should state clearly what you do and what you’re good at.

Career history, newest first. Focus on key skills and tangible achievements. “I’m a good salesman” is less powerful than “I sold £1m worth of products in a year, 110% of target”. You’re selling yourself not writing your job description.
Include dates of employment and dates of significant changes in role
Only put your experience from the last 10 years, no-one cares what you did before then. Put a line like “details of employment prior to 2005 are available on request”, no-one will ask for them but at least it shows willing.

Professional qualifications. If you have any…

Academic qualifications. If they’re relevant, but feel free to leave off if they’re not.

And that’s it. 2 pages ideally, 3 if pushed, no-one will read beyond the 3rd page anyway. And make sure the interesting stuff if at the top of the front page to ensure people read the rest. I’d generally suggest either tailoring the CV to each application but if that’s no practical think about having 3 or 4 different versions that emphasis different areas of skill and/or are aimed at different job types.

I agree with the above, but I wouldn’t go past two sides:

Best and most necessary on page 1, other needed but dull stuff  page 2.

You don’t need 3 pages unless you are Brian Blessed

Lunge is (unsurprisingly) correct. No academic details mean you won’t get considered in my field, but maybe others are more flexible.

You also need to have a good LinkedIn page. Possibly this is more important than a CV now, as it is what enables recruiters to find you, and because many online application engines allow you to import your LinkedIn details directly.

Only put your experience from the last 10 years, no-one cares what you did before then

Except you’ll find that your CV goes to someone who disagrees with ‘lunge’ and wants to know…

There isn’t an ‘agreed’ standard, that’s the only standard.

You also need to have a good LinkedIn page. Possibly this is more important than a CV now, as it is what enables recruiters to find you, and because many online application engines allow you to import your LinkedIn details directly.

Agree, first thing I do when looking at a CV or application is go and check their LinkedIn page, so make sure there are no ‘contradictions’.

Both my CV and LinkedIn page go back years, as what I’ve done across my career is still relevant now for my type of role (Auditor) and everyday I identify issues etc that colleagues miss because of stuff I did decades ago.  For other roles, probably only your last ‘game’ counts etc.

I imagine we’ll be seeing quite a few shortly that include details of their last constituency as a Tory MP.

Except you’ll find that your CV goes to someone who disagrees with ‘lunge’ and wants to know…

Oh yeah, you’re absolutely right. Some industries want a full career history including all academic qualifications, but most don’t and the format I posted is fairly solid “best practise” format.

Agree on LinkedIn as well, in fact there’s probably a whole thread on how to get the best out of that platform. Happy to put that in writing if anyone wants to read it. But generally, get it up to date, make sure it mirrors your CV and try and interact with the platform a bit. Oh, and check the messages regularly.

I’m a civil servant and have used CV’s for years 😋, in my area we tend to have to submit our CV’s to provide evidence we’re suitably competent for the tasks, think i have 3 CV’s on the go just now, two for the different branches of engineering i do, and a third holistic one that covers any required job applications if i ever do it.

Best advice i can give is not to have a ‘generic’ CV, tailor it to the job, have a CV template that has all the info required, it can be 3 or 4 pages long, you’ll tailor it for the job you’re going for, just cross reference the job application requirements against the template and make it suit the application, the amount of times i’ve seen CV’s being submitted that are generic and miss out a key requirement, or not achieve the minimum criteria is scary, if you’re going for a job, put a little effort in to each application.

Agree, first thing I do when looking at a CV or application is go and check their LinkedIn page, so make sure there are no ‘contradictions’.

I don’t have a LinkedIn profile, too many colleagues have been hounded and threatened on there. I’m easily found on normal SM if they want to a fight.

Irrespective of what it looks like:

• get a LinkedIn profile if you don’t already have one
• be prepared to enter your CV content into various machines based on the awful WorkDay platform depending on the size of prospective employers

prepare for a variety of different application processes and interview formats

if possible, and you sound experienced, avoid much of the fruitlessness of the preceding points by speaking directly with the folks who you want to work with/for and may already know.

good luck!

by the way, if you’re putting together a CV in Word it will try and help by regurgitating LinkedIn content. Enjoy!

When I see CVs and applications:

has the application been screened to ensure the candidate at least meets some of my minimum requirements (‘needs a PhD in a scientific or mathematical subject’ – candidate has a low grade BA)

how many requirements do they meet? This sounds odd but despite my logic on ‘must, should, and could’  requirements recruiters sometimes set ‘purple cow’ expectations that no one could reasonably match all of.

how do they summarise their experience, capabilities, and aspirations?

what STARs do they offer on their most recent jobs that persuade me they can do what I need?

have they suitably elided the mundanity of their extensive career history and how many GCSEs, A levels and the like they have? If you are 10 years into your working life I do not care where you went to school or whether you got an A in general studies if you now have the right experience and education for the post.

have they avoided, or kept very brief, their extensive leisure pursuits? Only relevant if you have some experience that informs your work. And then of limited value imo.

and 2 pages at most! Your full publication record can be provided as a link or I can check out your LinkedIn profile.

I recognise that for some posts eg academic a voluminous CV is expected. and for teacher training you probably need to provide your GCSE maths and English grades and certificates.

What industries are actually looking at LinkedIn.  I found it an utter nuisance and didn’t touch  my account for 7 or 8 years.  Looked the other day, and still full of spam.

2 pages, as above.  Read what the application sounds like they want to know about.  Academic quals essential for me

Keep it succinct, not too flowery and no bullshit

Imagine Donald Trump designed a pair of sunglasses for Elton John, that is what your CV should look like.

@lunge, I’d be vaguely interested in knowing how to get anything useful out of linkedin, as it just seems a way for recruiters to connect me, regardless of whether they can help me or not.

Useful thread BTW

What industries are actually looking at LinkedIn.  I found it an utter nuisance and didn’t touch  my account for 7 or 8 years.  Looked the other day, and still full of spam.

My industry seems to get a good amount of recruiters searching through linkedin, they seem to use it as opposed to a CV and tend to fire through job vacancies at a regular rate.

The thing that drives me mad about job vacancies and interview offers being sent is the complete lack of salary information, when did that disappear?!

I get a lot out of LinkedIn and most of the stuff is serves me is very relevant to my work. LinkedIn is designed to serve you content so if you haven’t told it what you’re interested in, it’ll just serve you total rubbish.

Follow professionals in your actual specialty. Connect with good people in your field that you really know. Don’t just connect with your mates. Don’t just collect connections like they’re Pokemon. Don’t bother with the endorsements or testimonials for other people, and don’t accept them – they’re super cringe and no-one pays attention to them. Ignore the “you’ve been specially selected to co-author an article” toss: you haven’t, and no-one is going to read it.

Use the extra space in your profile to insert key words relevant to your job search. Insert links to articles, products, projects etc.

Don’t try to be an influencer and don’t get huffy when you see their nonsense on your feed. (www.reddit.com/r/LinkedInLunatics). It is not like STW where the objective is to set the world to rights. It is a classifieds site and you are the product.

Turn off all the notifications except for when you’ve received a private message!!!

PS 3 or 4 pages for a CV? Aim for 2.

Mine is a 1 page summary, Basically just my last couple of roles and the skills/experience from them.  Then the next 4 pages is a couple of paragraphs from each role I’ve ever done.  The first page fits the requirements of anyone who actually has to read it.  The next 4 suits the requirements of recruiters who speculatively look for key words on linked-in. If they get in touch I can just pull together the front page and those roles that were relevant into a 2-page document.

Depends on the job though.  If you’re a specialist in something then recruiters want to see a long list of work within that specialism.  If it’s more general then the skills and qualifications are more important.

PS 3 or 4 pages for a CV? Aim for 2.

That was my comment on having a generic catch all CV that can have 3 or 4 pages of information, that you then tailor to 2 pages against the job specifications to make sure it captures all the required information against this specification.

Having done a lot of job sifts, i’ve seen so many CV’s that are rejected due to not capturing the required evidence in the job advert, simple stuff, but amazing how many folk have one CV they use for everything, just had one this week, the person provided a great CV, but for the wrong job, scored low and a fail at sift.

Top tip – make it easy for the recruiter by showing how your skills and experience align with what they’re after. If they’ve said “must have experience of removing sudocrem from a cat” then don’t expect them to understand that this is what you mean by “I was responsible for washing small mammals”. (like ^ just said!)