Building a strong contractor CV is important to ensure you stand out from the crowd and ensure you will be reviewed by recruiters. This can be challenging when you have years of experience with limited space on the CV. Structuring your CV well will be the difference to having your CV seen, landing more interviews, and securing your dream job. If you review the job requirements initially then you will have a better idea on how to tailor your CV accordingly for your captive audience by packing it with relevant sector- specific skills and results. Remember to check for spelling and grammar before hitting the send button.
Length: Having a lengthy CV will put off hiring Managers and Recruiters as they simply will not have the time to sift through several applications. A short, snappy, and relevant CV is far more likely to lead to success with two A4 pages being sufficient.
Readability: The key objective here is formatting your CV for easy reading. Using bullet points and lists that will allow recruiters to skim through your info and clearly formatted headings to allow them to navigate towards the content that is most useful to them.
Design: It is best to keep things simple and sleek when it comes to CV design. Elaborate designs may command attention but not always for the right reasons! The main objective here is to prioritise readability over everything else.
Avoid Photos: Please leave out photos, images, or profile pictures on a CV as they will not add any value to your applications.
Structuring your CV
When laying out a CV it is important to break out into the following key sections
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Name & Contact Details – Place at the top of the CV so that employers can contact you.
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CV Summary – A good punchy sales pitch of your key experience, skills, and achievements to make an impression on your readers.
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Key Skills section – A bullet point view of your abilities
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Work History – A well-structured list of relevant work experience
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Education & Certifications – An overview of relevant Education and professional training
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Hobbies & Interests – A summary of any relevant hobbies and interests
CV Contact Details
Mobile Number - This is essential if you want to be contacted.
Email address - Professional email address avoiding nicknames.
Location - General location will suffice.
LinkedIn Profile - Please ensure your LinkedIn up to date with a professional photo.
CV Summary
The CV Summary will be the first thing read by recruiters, so you need to reel in your reader to ensure they will read the whole document. It is about creating a short snappy paragraph that encapsulates your relevant skills, experience, and accomplishments to date. This should prove to the reader you have what it takes to do this job.
Key Tips to creating an impactful summary.
Keep it Brief:
Please ensure you highlight your abilities in as few words as possible.
Tailor accordingly:
Make a list of the skills, knowledge and experience your potential employer is looking for and then ensure to mention them here and in the rest of your CV.
Do not discuss career objectives:
It is better to save them for the Cover letter.
Avoid cliches:
Using generic phrases like being a team player and always giving 110% will not land you an interview.
Use hard skills and tangible achievements to create the greatest impact.
What you should include:
Summary of experience: You should outline key industries, types of employer and types of roles you were in before.
Relevant Skills: Please outline the relevant skills you have that match the job vacancy.
Essential Qualifications: To ensure visibility by hiring managers it is important to include them.
Core Skills section:
It is important to include heavily targeted skills and particularly those that are essential. This will help the reader to see you are a perfect match for the job.
Technical Skills:
You need to firstly emphasise the core technical skills you have that are related to this job followed by calling out the other skills too.
Flexibility:
You need to be able to demonstrate that you can apply your skillset quickly and appropriately to meeting organisational objectives.
Communication:
You should highlight how you use varied communication with co-workers, customers, and senior leaders.
IT Skills:
You need to display a comprehensive range of IT skills across various platforms on your CV to inspire confidence that you can work with new systems or adapt to different processes using existing IT knowledge.
Writing Skills:
Drafting reports is an essential skill which should be clearly shown within the CV as well as for writing email communications to different parties.
Work experience/Career History
You should start with your most recent position and then work backwards through your history. Voluntary and freelance work is ok to include as long if you are honest about the nature of the work.
Structuring your roles
It is important to have a well-structured career history so that it does not become bulky and overwhelming.
Outline:
Start with a summary of your role, outlining the purpose of your job, who you reported to and what the size of team you were part of or led.
Key Responsibilities:
In bullet format outline your day-to-day responsibilities of the role. Also, how you used your hard sector skills and knowledge.
Key Achievements:
You could finish by highlighting 1 - 3 key achievements accomplished within the role. This could be from clients or customers such as saving time or money, receiving exemplary feedback, or receiving an award.
Education:
You need to list your formal qualifications as well as sector specific contractor qualifications and or training. When listing qualifications please include educational Institute names, dates attended, and qualifications obtained. Experienced candidates will rely more on their work experience and can have a shorter education while graduates and school leavers need to include more information here to make up for a lack of experience.
Interests & Hobbies
This is an optional section but can be a good place to highlight interests related to the sector you are applying to, or which show transferable skills like leadership or teamwork can be worth listing.
Start applying today!