A candidate’s CV is the first thing that anybody sees in the recruitment process. That includes the agency as well as any clients or prospective employers. We all understand the importance of making a good first impression, and in terms of finding that perfect job, your CV is the first impression. Despite the importance of possessing a well written CV there is a growing trend of CVs which are poorly constructed and quite often, have not been proof read.

That being said, CVs are not the be all and end all of your job application, but it can be the difference between getting an interview or not. It is therefore vital that you portray yourself and your work history in a clear and concise fashion. Long CVs inflated with large amounts of content may seem like a great idea and we appreciate that you want to convey as much about yourself and your work history as possible, but in our experience, less is often more here. Recruiters can potentially read thousands of new CVs each week. This ultimately means your CV needs to make an impression in the first 20-30 seconds. That’s not to say recruiters will ignore a lengthy CV, far from it, but you don’t want to make this process more difficult than it needs to be and if you are going to provide lengthy information, pay close attention to how the CV is laid out so that the recruiter is able to quickly build a picture about you without necessarily needing to read the CV in its entirety.

The best CVs we receive show comprehensive contact information (believe it or not, this is often overlooked) and clearly lays out previous work experience with accurate dates, easy to read job titles and concise descriptions of the roles. Any qualification or education information should be listed in a similar and concise fashion. Skilful use of proper fonts and strategically placed bold text can also help to draw the eye to important information quickly and easy. Ultimately you want to get the point across as quickly as possible and make sure the content is easy to understand and informative.

Personal profiles and summaries can be useful, however avoid using repetitive terms that probably appear on everyone’s CV. “Trustworthy” or “hard working”. One would hope that these things go without saying. So ask yourself if you really need to put it on your CV. After a while recruiters and employers start to look past these repetitive phrases. We aren’t saying that you shouldn’t include a profile summary, but keep them short and sweet and avoid repetitive ‘buzz’ words that probably appear on everyone’s CV. Try and use this space to convey something truly unique about yourself that may genuinely be relevant to the type of job you are applying for. If it’s starting to look a bit generic, we would suggest you leave it out and just focus on the facts of your employment history instead.

Lastly, and we can’t stress this enough… Proof read, proof read, proof read! It still astonishes us how many CVs we receive with glaring spelling and grammatical errors. We live in an era of spell check and the internet. There is really no excuse for this and it is important to keep in mind that the person reading your CV will notice any errors like this and will assume that if you can’t be bothered to double check your own CV, how much due care and attention will you be applying to the job they are recruiting for? 5 mins to double check your CV will pay dividends in the long run.

Marshall Harber does provide a CV advice service to all successfully registered domestic household staff. For more information please ask your consultant about this during your registration interview.

For further information about Marshall Harber’s registration requirements for candidates you can view our Candidate page.

For a full list of our currently available vacancies, you can view our Jobs Page.