Tips from Oxford HR Consultants
Oxford HR Consultants look at hundreds of CVs each year. Their importance cannot be overstated; it is often a future employer’s first impression of you and it needs to clearly illustrate your experience and relevant requirements for the role. See our consultants’ advice below on how to enhance your CV and increase your chance of success when applying to your next senior role.
1. Layout
- The layout of your CV should be clear and not cluttered. Ensure you have all contact and personal information listed at the top of the page, and avoid imagery and extraneous information such as marital status and religious affiliations.
- Try to keep the document to 3 pages or less in length. Any longer than this and important information might get lost.
- If you’ve previously used a standardized template (e.g. Europass for a previous post), be sure to use a more engaging format if you haven’t been explicitly asked for this.
- Use a simple font consistently throughout, be sparing with bold, italics and underlining, and try to keep the minimum size at 11.
2. Experience
- List your experience in reverse chronological order, with the role, dates and organisation clearly stated. Try to avoid listing all of the responsibilities for each role as this can make the CV very long and key points difficult to identify. Instead, try to keep core responsibilities and your main achievements in the role to one or two concise sentences.
- Avoid using abbreviations that are organisation specific or only used in a niche sector of an industry.
- If you have any overlaps or gaps in your experience, make sure to explain them.
- You don’t need to include every training course you’ve completed/every publication; just those that are relevant to the opportunity you are applying to. Listing everything runs the risk of looking like you haven’t tailored your CV and have just sent your generic experience.
3. Finishing touches
- It’s worth checking that your CV is aligned with your LinkedIn profile, as recruiters and hiring managers will often check both.
- Take the time to edit your CV for the role you’re applying for; if it’s too generic, your experience relevant to the specific role may not shine through.
- Download Grammarly or a similar spell-check/grammar tool – often a spelling error will be the first red flag. Friends or colleagues (anyone with fresh eyes) are good to proofread your documents.
- Keep both a Word version and a PDF file; be sure to follow the application instructions properly and upload in the correct file type/format.
