How To Improve Your CV

Your resume is the first thing potential employers see of you so it’s important to get it right, but it can be difficult to know how to improve your CV.

Ideally, you need to be revising and improving it regularly throughout your career, tailoring it to the job you want, and creating the perfect introduction to you.

We’ve come up with some tips and tricks to improve your CV, let us know if we missed any!

Check your grammar, spelling and punctuation

We’re going to start with the one that seems the most obvious, but it’s the problem we see the most often in the CVs we receive.

Make sure to run your CV through a grammar-check tool, or ask someone to look over it just in case you’ve missed a rogue apostrophe, or spelled a word incorrectly. It’s easy to make a tiny mistake, and we guarantee that you will only spot it once you’ve applied to your dream job!

Add a summary to each experience about what you learned

As well as covering the details of your previous roles, it can be a good idea to add a summary of what you learnt from your time there. For example, if you worked as a Marketing Manager, you could write: “During my time as a Marketing Manager for Company X, I developed my experience in digital marketing strategies, learning how to integrate them seamlessly into the wider marketing strategy of a business.”

Incorporate keywords that relate to the job you want

Using the right keywords for a role is a great way to catch the eye of a recruiter who has a pile of CVs in front of them. In addition, some employers use applicant tracking systems which are programmed to highlight CVs that contain relevant words and phrases from the job posting.

To find keywords, you can check through the job posting for the skills and qualifications they’re looking for. For example, if they’re looking for an organised team-player, make sure you use those exact keywords somewhere in your CV.

Create different CVs for different industries

If you have experience in different fields, and are not applying for a very specific role, then it may be a good idea to create slightly different versions of your CV to better target different industries or roles. For example, if you had a lot of experience in sales, then you’d focus on sales-based skills if you were applying for another sales role. However, if you were aiming to move to a customer services role, you would reframe those same experiences to suit the new job description.

This isn’t an exhaustive list of course, there are plenty of little tips and tricks to improve your CV and give potential employers the best possible first impression.

If you’re looking for a new role, the team at P3 Search can help! Get in touch to get started with your job search!