#72: Not all CVs are made equal.
How to approach writing yours
I’m writing this at midnight. Because I’m awake, and I often do great work late at night. Though you’ll be the judge of that.
And just like different people can work better at different times, your CV will need to look slightly different at different points of your career.
Here’s a whistle stop through five career stages, and tips on what you should consider including—or not!
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1 - School age students:
Just because you don’t have much experience, it’s no excuse for using a massive font and gallons of space just to spread your 2 weeks’ work experience on to two pages.
Still, you should include a profile that says what you’re good at, what people know you for, and what you’re like as a person.
Organise your experience like a normal CV (that is, chronologically), and keep it simple by adding any work you’ve done alongside positions of responsibility you’ve held (or voluntary roles).
Ideas include school prefecting, DofE, being a Young Leader at your local Scouts, helping out with household chores, anything proactive you’ve done to earn extra money—include it with an entry for each one.
Remember involvement in any after school or extra curricular activities. For example, my daughter is working in the set/tech team in next years’ big school musical production, so we’ve included that in her CV.
Education? State what you’re studying, where, what grades you’ve received to date, like in your GCSEs/equivalents—and/or say what you’ve been predicted).
2 - Early careers:
Whilst you’ve held junior or entry-level roles, you’ve still been there to solve a problem for your employer. What is it you’re there to do, and can you provide any measurement of success?
You’re going to need to go to town on what you’ve achieved, and though it still might be tempting to focus on your responsibilities, you must try to work out what you’ve delivered, and the impact you’ve had.
Still include all your education, grades, and establishments. Not your swimming certificate though.
If you went to uni/college, let the reader know about the clubs you were in, sports attainments, and any informal leadership roles you held.
The same applies to your jobs—if you’ve led small teams on specific tasks, or supported others, include it.
3 - Pre-mid careers:
It’s time to lose the earliest/secondary education and leave on your highest level of attainment—whether that’s a degree or two, or your A levels, or something else.
You should have plenty of examples now of real impact you’ve had on your area of responsibility, teams, clients. Make sure you are clear on those outcomes, using numbers.
You may have already had a team leadership or managerial role. Give an idea of the scope you had—how many people in your team, that kind of thing.
Mention any budgets you hold, and how much. Did you manage to save money by being clever with the budget ordoing things more efficiently?
If you’re contributing strategically to the business (and directing rather than doing), you want to get this out too.
4 - Mid careers/Leadership roles:
More of the same at this point—particularly around leadership.
Most leaders still have elements of their own work to deliver over and above the stuff their teams are doing—what is that?
Typical deliverables could include leading/planning change programmes and transformations, cost down exercises, and restructures.
Others might be writing and presenting strategy papers and business plans.
With all of these, be clear on the output—money saved, processes improved, sales revenue generated.
Also bring out the people management part—leadership, mentoring, coaching, and knowledge sharing/training people in your sphere of influence.
5 - Later careers/Non-Executive Directorships (NED):
This is where your years of experience come to the fore—and that might mean that you work in an advisory capacity some or all of the time.
You need to demonstrate that you’re not so sleeves-up now, but helping businesses and teams in the ways only you know how.
That might be strategy advice, holding business plan reviews, and/or coaching leadership teams—or something else.
Whilst you’re not directly responsible for generating the gains/improvements and results, you have been key to helping teams decide their approach or define the strategy.
That means you can still call out the results in your CV, just make sure it’s clear you didn’t do it all!
Obviously there are some generalisations here, as many people take on big leadership roles quite early in their careers, and not everyone in their later career is exploring becoming a NED—so take the bits that are relevant to to you and add them to your own CV.
99.9% of my CV writing clients are in the last two categories above—the remaining 0.1% being my 17 year old daughter. I mean what kind of dad would I be if I didn’t help her write her CV and show her how it’s done?
If the thought of writing your CV and getting it ‘right’ (so it actually generates interviews) fills you with the sort of feeling you get while trying to remove a splinter from your finger, we should talk.
I hold initial consultations every week with new clients exploring working with me 1-1 to get their careers moving in the right direction—you can find out about that here.
That’s it for now,
Phil
PS - Think of someone you know in one of the career stages above who is looking for a new role—share this with them!
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Phil supports leaders all over the world reclaim their mojo both in their career and in their life.
With a 22-year background in all things recruitment, Phil set out as an independent CV writer in 2020, building a careers and life strategy practice that has helped approaching 1,000 people in 1-1 and groups, plus countless thousands through his daily LinkedIn posts, blogs, and webinars.
He’s also the author of ‘Escape Corporate W@nkery: Build Self-Belief and Go It Alone’—218 pages of relatable stories, guidance, and coaching to help would-be solopreneurs make their first steps to winning their first clients. [Available on Amazon]