{"id":128,"date":"2010-07-22T12:56:07","date_gmt":"2010-07-22T12:56:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monsterindia.com\/career-advice\/writing-your-first-professional-cv-128\/"},"modified":"2024-07-17T12:05:43","modified_gmt":"2024-07-17T06:35:43","slug":"writing-your-first-professional-cv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.foundit.sg\/career-advice\/writing-your-first-professional-cv\/","title":{"rendered":"Writing Your First Professional CV"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
Young graduates face one of the hardest tasks in all CV<\/a> writing,
\nwhich is how to differentiate themselves from everyone else and not come across
\nas a wannabe with overblown intentions but little to offer.<\/p>\n

Contrary to
\npopular belief, naked ambition is not highly regarded by recruiters, who are
\nactually looking for evidence of maturity and judgement, at least an appearance
\nof originality and creativity and the definite hint of potential commitment.<\/p>\n

Your challenge is to imply all of these things without being so crass as
\nto actually say them. This is where intelligent candidates can score highly by
\nmaking the most of their NON WORK activities and interests.<\/p>\n

Young
\ngraduates rarely have a great deal of work experience, and if they do it tends
\nto be irrelevant to their future career. I often see long CVs that ramble on
\nabout the communication skills the person learned selling burgers and the
\nnumeracy skills they acquired at an all night petrol station.<\/p>\n

This sort
\nof information cuts no ice with anyone. Important things about work experience
\nmight be whether or not you did it to fund some amazing trip around Europe or
\nwhether you did it to pay for your university tuition fees and then managed on
\nsheer talent to convert it into degree….<\/p>\n

Years ago, milk round
\nemployers started introducing trick questions on their graduate trainee
\nrecruitment applications. They asked things like: What is your worst mistake and
\nhow did you recover from it?<\/p>\n

Think about that question and what it
\nimplies about the people they are searching for: people who can first of all
\nrecognise an error, then come up with a strategy to deal with it, then manage a
\nproject that gets the result.<\/p>\n

What this means in CV terms is that it is
\nthat you need to be reflecting on where you are now, not pretending to be
\nRichard Branson.<\/p>\n

Avoid using the word ‘I’ at all costs but describe the
\nexperience you do have in such a way that brings out all its value.<\/p>\n

Examples:<\/span><\/p>\n

You chose your
\nstudy path <\/span>
\nTell them why, what was in your mind, what evolution there
\nhas been in the light of experience, what skills you believe it has given you,
\nappropriate to what kind of roles in real work. Do this in a concise and
\nintelligent way that tries to imagine what they want to know about you (see
\nabove). Make sure it is not merely blind ambition but also shows judgement,
\nknowledge outside the syllabus, awareness of modern developments in culture and
\nbusiness.<\/p>\n

You have non work
\nactivities<\/span>
\nDon’t just list them in a dull way; if you practice martial
\narts mention the resolve and inner calm they help you achieve; if you have
\nparticipated in voluntary work say why you did it and what you got from giving
\nyour time; if you have rebuilt a VW Beetle from scratch and supercharged the
\nengine, you can describe your engineering achievement; if you have travelled and
\nworked abroad, make the most of it by laying down at least one interesting piece
\nof bait for people to connect with at the interview.<\/p>\n

The heart of your proposed CV<\/span>
\nThe focus is bound to be
\nyour studies, and for some professional starts it is essential to achieve high
\ngrades, which can justifiably be mentioned in detail.<\/p>\n

I often advise
\npeople to say why they chose specific courses, who their tutors were (if famous)
\nand what they learned, specifically, from that branch of study. If you fancy
\ninvestment banking, for example, and have experience in using the same appraisal
\nsystem that top trading organisations actually use, then mention it and say what
\nyou did with it. If you haven’t, and you expect to break into a golden career,
\nfind out quick!<\/p>\n

Your knowledge<\/span>
\nYoung
\npeople without maturity, and who are unlikely to be of any use to an employer,
\nexpose themselves at once by expecting everything to be done for them. I get
\nenquiries from History graduates who vaguely fancy a career in e-commerce
\nbecause it pays well (they imagine). Forget it – unless you are a History
\ngraduate who has spent hours on the Internet, read the e-business gurus and can
\ntalk convincingly at the interview about the future. If this is you, say so in
\nyour CV; if it is not you, then you aren’t much use at the moment and you need
\nto use your initiative to acquire information that wasn’t handed to you on a
\nplate.<\/p>\n

That rule applies to every field of activity. People with 1st
\nClass Honours degrees can almost ignore it, but everyone else can benefit from
\nhaving gone beyond the narrow confines of academia and well beyond what the
\nuniversity careers service has ever dreamed of.<\/p>\n

If you have knowledge,
\nflaunt it and get it out there. Locate your employment targets on the Internet,
\nresearch the company in detail and contact them direct. Don’t expect to follow
\nall the other sheep through an easy gate marked “A graduate career”. It isn’t
\nlike that any more. People with training who left school at 16 can be just as
\nhighly regarded as Computer Science graduates who have no idea what they want,
\nwhat is possible and how to move themselves forward.<\/p>\n

It’s a tough world out there<\/span>
\nIt is entirely
\ncommercial. All careers in the future will be sales related in some sense. Wise
\nup to that fact immediately and be prepared to develop your career from whatever
\nangle you can gain entry into the world of your choice. Many of the most
\nsuccessful people I write CVs for started life by leaving school at 16 and
\nshowing initiative at every step of the way. Bear in mind that as a young
\ngraduate you are untried and unproven and that the world does not owe you
\nanything. You have to prove yourself and make yourself valuable enough to
\nemploy.<\/p>\n

The way to start is by showing that you can actually sell
\nyourself, getting the message right, positioning appropriately, not producing a
\nbombastic imitation of a mature career CV.<\/p>\n

Snappy
\nletters work wonders <\/span>
\nSpend time on your application letters and throw
\nthe first 25 you write away. Until you have one that sings, that is less than a
\npage long, that excites interest, that does not repeat your CV and is not soured
\nby blind ambition, you have not yet written the letter. When you have written
\nthe right letter it will open doors and you can adapt it for application form
\nstatements.<\/p>\n

I cannot tell you how to write a letter. It’s a creative
\nprocess, par excellence. You need to throw away your constraints and start by
\njust saying what you want to say in plain English. Then tidy it up and add a few
\nchoice buzzwords. Then cut the ones that go too far. Then write it again, and
\nagain and again and again until it feels just right. Then try it out and revise
\nit if no results come back.<\/p>\n

Like your proposed glittering career, your
\nvery first application requires some hard work, commitment, maturity,
\nwillingness to get your hands dirty, admission of ignorance, capture of new
\nknowledge and all the creative flair you can muster.<\/p>\n

Good luck.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Young graduates face one of the hardest tasks in all CV writing, which is how to differentiate themselves from everyone else and not come across as a wannabe with overblown intentions but little to offer. Contrary to popular belief, naked ambition is not highly regarded by recruiters, who are actually looking for evidence of maturity […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11425,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-128","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-resume-cover-letters"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.foundit.sg\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.foundit.sg\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.foundit.sg\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.foundit.sg\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.foundit.sg\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.foundit.sg\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39415,"href":"https:\/\/www.foundit.sg\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128\/revisions\/39415"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.foundit.sg\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.foundit.sg\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.foundit.sg\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.foundit.sg\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}