Spring Clean Your CV

Spring has well and truly sprung here at Simply360! We’re loving the lighter evenings and slightly warmer days. Of course, it wouldn’t be spring without a good old spring clean – here are our top tips for keeping your CV fresh!

Cut the Clutter.
If you listed every job you’ve ever had—including that three-month stint as a barista in college or the temp job you worked 15 years ago—it’s time to ditch the irrelevant details. A CV isn’t meant to be an exhaustive accounting of every job you’ve ever held. It’s a marketing document designed to present you in the strongest, most compelling light.

In other words, examine all of the content on your resume and make sure that every piece of information you’ve chosen to include demonstrates your (current, relevant) value to your target employer. Yes, this can be tough, especially when you’re proud of your past accomplishments, but don’t let emotional attachments get in your way. You can still be proud of that award you won or club you started in college, but don’t let it clutter up the page and prevent readers from seeing your strongest selling points today.

Show, Don’t Tell.
Your CV should provide details and examples of your achievements so that the employer can see what you could potentially bring to their role. If you are innovative, don’t say it – prove it. Describe the processes you have modified or ideas you have developed.

Think about your own results. If you’re responsible for accounts receivable, for example, did you decrease the number of outstanding accounts? If so, by what percentage? Did you increase cash flow? If so, by how much?

Smarten up the layout
Tidy up your contact details. If you’ve got four lines for your street address, town and postcode, phone number, email and LinkedIn profile, adapt your format so it takes up less space.

Choose a font that is easily read on screen, avoiding fonts such as Times New Roman, which look dated. You could experiment with font sizes (smaller for company details, for example) and use bold to highlight key information, such as numbers. Two pages of easy-to-read and visually appealing text is preferable to one page of densely packed paragraphs with key information buried.

A final word of caution
Every time you revise your CV, you risk adding a mistake to the document. Proof read after every update, and don’t rely on your word processor’s built-in spell check, which ignores common problems like contextual spelling errors. After all, the best way to show that you’re detail oriented is to have an error-free resume!

If you’re a Finance candidate within Media, Marketing, Publishing or Entertainment and are seeking a new role, please do get in touch: hello@simply-360.co.uk