CV overhaul imput greatly appreciated

travnett

Hi Guy's

So I have a query regarding my CV. I am in the proccess of a major overhaul of my CV, basically for the last 5 years I have been working as a contractor and have had a lot of short to medium term contracts in different companies all doing the same work. I have worked 10 different periods in 5 different companies and in each company I did the same job Aircraft Engineer/Mechanic.

Now I am looking to move to a permenant position and as such I need to gear my CV towards the permenant market i.e including skills, objectives, qualification etc.. on my cv which is not on it already. The problem I have is that I have too much to write under the Work experience due to the constant moving between companies and therfor my CV runs between 3-3.5 pages.

Would it be ok to block my work experience according to companies I worked for and put down all the dates I worked for them under the company name e.g

Company; XYZ
period: jan-march 2008, february - september 2009

company ABC
Period: april - july 2008, november 2008 - january 2009, september 2009 - february 2010.

if I can do this then it will free up a lot of space on my cv and also avoid repeating the same work over and over.

Any advice would help guys thanks.

travnett

So I just saw that the spelling of "input" in my title is wrong sorry about that, I was typing fast.

DublinWriter

I was a permie for ten years and a contractor for ten, I know it's hard to squash everything in.

Golden rule is *never* go over 3 pages for European countries and *never* go over 1 page for the states.

Basically look at your CV from the perspective of the non-technical agency/HR bod - they are scanning your CV amoung dozens of others and looking for key skills and experience. Make it as succinct as you possibly can.

woolymammoth

DublinWriter wrote: »

Golden rule is *never* go over 3 pages for European countries and *never* go over 1 page for the states.

travnett, don't pay too much attention to "golden rules" of CV writing! Sure, there are formalities you should follow, but these are guides.

here are two sites that have helped me in the past;
http://www.squawkfox.com/2008/11/17/10-things-that-define-a-killer-resume/
http://www.rockportinstitute.com/resumes.html

That second link is a long read, but it has some really good advice. As for my 2 cents worth, write 3-4 pages, if your experience warrants that. But try your best not to go past 3. Make your first page an attention grabber, with summaries of your work history, and lists of skill sets. Use your other 2 pages to detail your experience and qualifications. Be selective in what jobs you decide to include, or group the information if all of your jobs were 90% similar. Just remember that you should make your CV your CV, the "rules" are only guides, and the best CV will still be ignored and hated by some!

Thoie

I'd be inclined to put in

Company: Travnett Ltd (or whatever your contracting "company" was)
Dates: 2005-2010
Working for clients such as ABC, UVW and XYZ I successfully ran my own waffle tossing company, managing waffle tossing from batter mixing through to tossing, and handling marketing, billing and accounting. Blah blah blah.