Oh yes, its a CV Question

GT_TDI_150

Ok,

A role has come up that I'm interested in ...

so when I left college 12years ago I got a CV done professionally and have ammended it as Ive moved jobs since.

I just have some questions. The guys that did my CV advised to keep it so a single page with a second page on request with references ... Does this make sence?

I've now held 4 roles within my current company, add to that a few part-time jobs, some college courses, some courses within work and the 1 page doesnt be long getting cluttered.

Is the LC still expected on a CV when it was 1998 when I sat mine?
Do people still include hobbies /interests?

Currently its structured as follows

Name
one line for adresss,
one line for phone no., marital status and health

---

one line on my aspirations
couple of lines on my attributes
one line on my languages
2 lines on my College qualifications
few lines on computer applications I've worked with

---

5-8lines on each of my fulltime jobs (4 blocks)
2-3lines on each of my parttime jobs (3 blocks)

---

one line on LC details
one line on interests.



Any (swift:D)feedback greatly appreciated!

MouseTail

2 pages is fine, at your stage in your career you cannot showcase yourself on one page. Get rid of marital status, that is a really dated thing to include. I don't think there is a need for leaving cert results if you have college or further education.

Eoin

I'd agree that 2 pages is fine.

I think you can save aspirations for a cover letter.

I'd have work experience ahead of qualifications.

Unless attributes means specific skills, rather than vague things like "hard working / attention to detail", then take them out.

Also, unless your interests are related to the job or demonstrate a relevant skill, I'm not sure that they're needed. I honestly don't care if a candidate likes music, for example. Others may disagree.

"References available on request" is all you need - I don't know if anyone would give much weight to a page of written references from a candidate.

Mr. Loverman

Agree completely with Eoin. Follow his advice and you will be fine.

Mrs OBumble

And remove health too - it's irrelevant.

seamus

As said above, get rid of marital status & health. Other things you should not put down are date of birth, sex or nationality. While it's illegal to discriminate against you on the basis of any of these, having them on your CV leaves you open to having your CV silently rejected.

I would also avoid putting your address down. Providing an Irish phone number is adequate evidence that you live in Ireland. Some employers may reject you offhand out of snobbery or because they think you live too far away. That's technically not very legal either, but if you provide that information, then it's harder to prove discrimination.

One thing I see a lot of CVs doing is going into too much detail about old jobs. If something was 3 jobs and eight years ago, then it's probably not something you recall very much of or which has much relevance now. So the more distant the job has been, the less information you need to provide. If the role title of these old jobs is self-explanatory, e.g. "Junior software developer at Sage", then you probably don't need to include any other information at all.

When you start getting back to part-time jobs in college where you worked a till, consider whether you need them at all or whether they're just taking up space. If you worked some stopgap jobs to earn some cash while you were job hunting, but which are completely irrelevant to your actual career, then include them in the CV in the correct place, but don't waste space going into great detail about it.