Writing Your CV:

Generally you will find that the layout described here will work for most senior positions. Feel free to add other sections or change the ordering to suit yourself.

Front Page...

Profile/Summary - This should be a short summary of your experience and abilities, and be contained in four to six lines of text. This section should also indicate what sort of a position you are looking for. List only those attributes that will be of interest to your next employer; exclude any irrelevancies.

Achievements - Key Skills In bullet format, detail things that you are really good at. List 3 to 6 achievements, which you can deliver on and which you feel are relevant your next position. Once again, do not list achievements, which are not in line with what you want to do next. Start with the strongest point in your favour and then work backwards from there.

Career Summary - This should summarise your job history in reverse chronological order (starting with your most recent job and working backwards). You only need to include the year you started and the year you finished each job, together with your job title and your employer's name.

Note: Page 1 of your CV is now a resume. When you circulate your details to your network of contacts, you need not send out the whole document, but can send page 1 only. The full document can be sent on if interest is shown, or presented at interview

Pages 2 and onwards…

Career History - Once again, this should be in reverse chronological order i.e. starting with your most recent job and working backwards. You only need to include the year you started and the year you finished each job. You do not need to include the month or day, e.g. put 1993 - 1995 rather than 1.8.1993 - 4.6.1995.

Always give a brief overview of the company you worked for; its size, numbers employed etc. You may know the intimate details of Brown's Widgets Plc, but your reader will not necessarily understand who they are and what they do.

Describe the responsibilities for each position that you have held, starting with the strongest point in your favour and then work backwards. If you have a lot of points to put under one specific job you may want to break this description into two or more sections, or at least be careful not to use too many words.

Separate responsibilities and achievements. Anyone doing your job would have had the same responsibilities as you; the thing that differentiates you from anyone else is what you actually achieved. Remember, this is absolutely vital to your success in securing a senior role!

If you have had a number of positions for a particular employer you may not want to include every individual job (in which case leave out the year designations for all jobs titles and just include the start and finish years for this employer), or you may be able to combine one or more of the jobs.

Do make sure that you stress your responsibilities and achievements under each job (these should be relevant to your next job) but do not repeat information too often; this will just bore the reader.

Training - Only include the most important training courses, you could combine it with the section on Education and Qualifications, depending on how much space you have.

Education/Qualifications - Only list your most important qualifications. 

If you are a graduate you do not really need to list your 'O' Levels/GCSEs, just indicate the number of 'O' levels gained.

Unless you have just completed a degree or MBA, this section should go after work experience, because your work experience is more likely to be of interest to an employer.

If you have qualified recently, you could mention your recent qualifications in your covering letter.

Personal Details - Include your date of birth, marital status and driving licence. If you have a clean driving licence, say so.

Interests - Keep this part fairly short, but make sure you list any current positions of responsibility. If you do not currently have any management responsibility and you are applying for a management position you may want to include positions of responsibility that you have held over the last few years, e.g. Play football for a local team - Captain, 1993 - 1996.

If If you would like to arrange a no obligation meeting to see how the Xecutive Search team can help you, or if you would like to apply for one of the positions advertised, email us at: mail@xecutivesearch.com

Alternatively, ring or write to: Xecutive Search, Regus House, Central Boulevard, Blythe Valley Park, Solihull. B90 8AG

Telephone: 01564-711053    Fax: 01564-711381

Copyright © 1999 Xecutive Search. All rights reserved. Revised: November 11, 2007 .