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The Structure
Personal Details
Your name and contact details e.g. address, telephone number, mobile and email address.
A common style is to put your name on the top line in bold, and on the next line your address. On the third line you write your telephone number, mobile number and your email address.
Career Objective
This is a short paragraph detailing what position you want, and how your skills can be used to benefit the company that you want to work for. It should not exceed 5 lines.
Career Summary
Here you write a few lines summarising your whole career, highlighting your main achievements and responsibilities. It should contain a compact paragraph of all of your past achievements and contributions and your skills and personal attributes that will entice the reader to employ you.
Functional Headings
Make sure that the headings that you use are relevant to the job that you are applying for e.g. "sales", "management", "marketing", "organisation" etc. These should be ordered in decreasing order of importance and should be backed up with proof of your skills in those areas. Technical (IT) people should especially use a “skill grid” detailing the technology used preferably with their experience level.
Include approximately 3 functional headings. Here are some common ones used:
Administration Advertising Communication Consulting Counselling Customer service Designing Editing Education Electronics | Engineering Human Resources IT experience Journalism Law Leadership Management Marketing Organisation Planning | Public Relations Publishing Research Sales Secretarial Supervision Training Travel Writing |
To save space or to really make your skills stand out, this section can be replaced with a simple list consisting of a few words on each line, of your key skills, attributes, major achievements or specialised fields. This will immediately be brought to the reader's attention by its prominence on the page and compact appearance.
Work Experience
In reverse chronological order, detail work experience including names of companies and dates worked. Under each employer, you should have a number of bullet points which describe your key achievements. Make sure you use power words.
Education and Qualifications
Key qualifications Education and qualifications in reverse chronological order. Include dates, name of the course, name of the educational establishment and the grade achieved.
Professional memberships
Optional
Hobbies and Interests
Optional but only add some if they relate to the post or if they show off other aspects of your personality.
References
It is fine to put “Available on request”.
