CV question

breadmonkey

I'm in the process of updating my CV and I have a few questions if anyone can help me out.

I attended a lecture in college yesterday about CV layout and other job related matters. One thing the guy mentioned was that everything should be in bullet points as opposed to sentences and that one should avoid the use of "I" and "s/he" on the CV.

I currently have a a small written section describing my role and responsibilties in each organisation listed under "work experience". This is written in the first person and in paragraph rather than bullet point form. Each "paragraph" is only three sentences but covers pretty much everything. Is changing this to bullet points really necessary/advisable?

I'm particularly reluctant to do it for my most recent position as the company itself is quite obscure and actually requires a sentence to define who they are and what they do. I think this would be pretty hard to express in bullet points.

In short, I believe that what I have is complete, concise and fairly well written. I've used the CV in that format for a few professional and academic applications and never had a problem.

Thoughts?

woolymammoth

Ask 100 people for their thoughts on CVs, and you'll get 100 different answers.

Personally, I follow the bullet point layout for the most part. I've spend quite a bit of time on mine in the past, and i believe there are do's and don'ts as with everything.

Two articles i've found very useful before are these:
squawkfox » 10 Things that Define a Killer Resume, and
RESUME WRITING

I think a CV should have a large degree of 'you' in it. It's you on paper, selling yourself. The thing with bullet points is that it's easy for the reader to skim over, taking in a lot of info very quickly. more quickly than reading a sentence perhaps. In my own CV, I have a 2/3 liner professional description of myself, followed by a section of skills, followed by my professional and educational histories in chronoligical order, with duties bullet pointed and as close to 1 line as i can with descriptive action words. I've been told before by recruiters that i don't need to make any changes to my CV!

But what works for me doesn't necessarily work for everyone else.

Eoin

It varies from person to person, and especially from industry to industry.

I'm in IT and have a few lines that summarises me and my team's role, and then under that I have bullet points that list my main areas of responsibility and achievements etc.

zudomon

woolymammoth wrote: »

Two articles i've found very useful before are these:
squawkfox » 10 Things that Define a Killer Resume, and
RESUME WRITING

Thanks for that squawkfox link - lots of really interesting info on there.