How to Write a Good CV Your CV is the story of your professional life and it has to look good and say the right things to get you noticed. Imagine it's a web page - use the same principles as meta tags or keywords; if your CV contains all the right keywords, it will make it so much easier for a recruiter to identify your experience from all the other hundreds of CV’s submitted for the same position. This becomes even more relevant when the recruiter is relying on job search engines to find suitable applicants for specific vacancies. Writing a CV sounds simple enough and there are many people who profess to know all there is to know about writing CV's. There are "experts" in their thousands. However, at RYCV we know from experience that it takes a long time to become an expert on writing a CV. A CV is not so much about how it looks, but more about what it says, although style and presentation are key factors. Just because your CV looks good, does not mean it's a good CV. It's not at all easy to write objectively about oneself. Awarding self praise and merit for good deeds and success in the work place is more to do with self-importance than using those merits to promote the individual. Which is why being factual speaks volumes and that's where you will get attention. It's a well known fact that 3 out 5 job-seekers lie on their CV. By bending the truth and adding falsehoods, does not make you a better candidate or person for the job. Depending on what the CV says and the impression that it creates, means lies will eventually be found out. Depending on how you’ve glossed over the truth, or whether you’ve omitted vital information because you thought it would go against you, then prospective employers won't take you seriously and you won't get interviews. A good CV takes time to create. On average, we carry out 2 CV's per consultant per week. Any more than that means that less time is paid per CV and mistakes will occur and the chance for creativity is put under pressure due to time constraints and a backed up in-tray. The CV's that RYCV produces market our clients in the best possible way. We go over career histories with fine detail. We gain insightful knowledge on the strengths and weaknesses of our clients allowing us to advise them what to say in certain circumstances. Styles of CV are also quite a personal thing. Some people prefer plain and straight forward documents, whereas others would like something more striking, depending on their background and specific skills and experience. That's why our CV's are all different. We aren't afraid to change and try different layouts, fonts or colours. However, we do ask that you trust our judgment since we have a very high success rate. We are able to gauge our success by the number of our clients that receive job offers and we have yet to experience a client who hasn't received a job offer through using our professional skills and experience. Personality plays a big part in writing a CV, which is why we don't use templates or formulae. Ours is a truly bespoke business, we fit the CV around the person, we don't try to fit the person around the CV. We like input from our clients, after all, it's their CV! Whilst we have examples of work that we have undertaken, we do not stick to a standard layout. After all, being different always gets you noticed. It's very satisfying to us to note that once our client reads their new CV they suddenly achieve a great sense of well-being and confidence. Your CV is meant to make you feel good. It's the document that markets you. If you don't feel good about your CV, then your interviews tend to be less than successful. Confidence goes a long way with a professional, striking and well written CV that is easy to read. So now that you have a little insight into the way we write CV's, we hope it gives you the information that will help you make an informed choice about what you want to do next. Please bear in mind that there are a lot of CV writing services out there, some good and some not so good. A good freelance consultant charges approximately £60.00 per hour. If you pay any less than that to have your CV completely re-written, question very carefully what is motivating you to have them create your CV. If it's because they are cheaper than anyone else, you would be better off uploading your own CV onto the Internet, because it's highly likely that the cheap service will only copy the content of your CV, change the font and the pitch and last but not least, change the order of information You can get to know how we work by taking advantage of our, no fee no obligation, Free CV Review, where we will analyse each CV on its own merits - providing constructive and helpful criticism. We'll get back in touch with you within 24 hours of receiving your CV with our unbiased CV Analysis. Your details are handled with the strictest of confidence and we are registered under the Data Protection Act 1998 so your personal information is not passed on to any third party(ies). We hope we've given you food for thought and that you’ve enjoyed reading about some of the tools we use to create eye-catching, professional and well written CV’s. If you have any questions or queries, please feel to contact us.