Students – perfect your C.V.

By Corinne Mills

How do you convince an employer you are a great person to hire when you only have limited work experience to draw on? 

Employers understand that everyone has to start somewhere. However, they will need to believe that you have the potential to become a high performing employee and that you are genuinely interested in working for them, before they will invest time in hiring and training you. 

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This means that in your CV or application, you must make it as easy as possible for them to see that you have the required natural abilities for that particular role, for example, communication skills or analytical thinking, as well as the attributes required of all good employees such as reliability and flexibility. 

So let’s look at how you can do this with your CV. 

 Your first step is to carry out some proper research. Find out as much as you can about the type of job you want. Study advertisements and job descriptions, then talk to recruiters and people who work in a similar role to make sure you understand what the job entails and what employers look for in their candidates. Too many applications reveal a candidate's naivety about a role rather than their suitability. 

Identify your relevant experience

 Recruiters decide very quickly whether to reject a CV or read it further, so you must make sure that the first half page of your CV highlights any paid or unpaid work experience, placements, voluntary work or elements of your academic studies that are directly relevant to the role you are applying for. 

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You can also use other work experience you have gained to demonstrate key transferable skills. For instance, if you have worked in a pub or stewarded at a concert then this may not be directly related, but it can be used to show effective team work, clear communication skills and your ability to deal with customers. 

Don’t forget to include any positions of responsibility or projects you have been involved with, such as being a student representative, running a university society or participating in entrepreneurial ventures or artistic endeavours. You can use these to demonstrate your leadership potential, organisational abilities or creativity. 

Voluntary activities such as fundraising, youth work, or conservation projects can be used to show your energy, work ethic and community spirit; all attributes that suggest to the employer that you will be a good team player. 

Even with limited work experience, you should be able to find examples that show your capabilities. However, keep looking out for further opportunities to enhance your skills and experience. 

Describe your experience in appropriate terms

 Emphasise the relevance of the examples you have chosen to include on your CV by describing them in ways that are appropriate to the role you are applying for. 

For instance, if you have been working in a mobile phone shop and are interested in working in sales or marketing roles, then you could describe yourself in the profile on your CV as follows: 

“Business graduate with excellent retail experience who enjoys working in highly customer focused sales environments. Acquired in-depth product knowledge which meant that I could quickly advise customers on the best solutions to match their needs. Consistently achieved personal sales targets and actively helped others in the team to meet theirs".  

However, if instead you wanted to apply for an accountancy role, you could use the same work experience to highlight different relevant skills, for example: 

“Business graduate used to dealing with cost calculations, payment processes and complying with strict financial procedures as a result of my experience working in retail sales for a mobile phone store. Enjoyed advising customers on the different cost models and the plan which would work best for them given their needs and budget”.  

You can see from the above, that the same experience is used very differently in line with the skills that are most likely to be of interest to the employer. This is far more effective than just writing on your CV, “worked in a retail store”. 

CV presentation

 Once you have the decided on the relevant content of your CV, you must make sure that it is well-presented, and error-free. A recent Personal Career Management survey revealed that 9 out of 10 CVs have spelling or grammatical errors in them. 

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If you are seeking to convey to an employer that you have excellent communication skills then you need to make sure that any written content you send them is perfect. 

So, regardless of whether you feel you have good written English or not, you must always get someone else to check your application before it is sent, if you don’t want your application to make an early exit from the recruitment selection process. 

Get help if you need to

 Writing a CV can be trickier than it looks. If you are struggling to either decide what role you should be going for, or are simply not having any success with your job search, then it is worth talking to a professional career coach, or perhaps your university careers service. 

There are also many articles available online and books on CVs and job searching, that can be of help. 

Corinne Mills is Managing Director of Personal Career Management