The Curriculum Vitae or CV is a document used to share your history as a student, employee and a person with possible employers.

Writing a CV is vastly different from writing the standard Resume. The CV allows you to give a lot of details about more subjects than a Resume. Although in the United States and Canada a CV is rarely used it is still a good practice to learn as much as you can about how to prepare one. These are the main subheadings used in the body of The CV

Focus
Education
Job Description
Keywords
Your Jobs
Duties

The CV should have a focus if you are looking for employment in a given area your focus statement should reflect this. Once you have your focus or mission statement in line you will better be able to fill in the rest of the headings with items relevant to the type of employment you are seeking.

The education section should include all the things you have ever done to increase your knowledge of the field you are in. If you took extra courses or attended seminars this is the place to note that. If you had courses connected with in-house training with a previous employer that information goes in here too.

Skill is a very important part of the CV. Any skills you have you should list them. This includes things you taught your self to do. If you volunteered building houses in Guatemala list those skills. This could also be useful to list in a separate section on civic duties. This will show an employer that you are civic minded and sacrificing.

Using words that are positive and shows action can go along way in your CV and in your Resume. One of the best ways to find the most popular words to describe what you did is to get the actual job descriptions used by the companies you worked for. You can also find useful job descriptions the Internet.

Use of certain words and phrases always catch the eye of a reviewer. Things like self-starter, motivated, go-getter and the like. using industry jargon when appropriate will be useful in the CV. It is not a good idea to use a lot of pronouns in reference to your self but use as many nouns, adjectives, verbs and phrases as necessary to describe your job and your duties.

When writing about your accomplishments you can say, ” was instrumental in appropriating funds for ” instead of beginning with “I”. The use of this pronoun can make reading a CV a bore for the reviewer. Also restrict your use of acronyms and abbreviations. Write as if you are sending the CV or resume to someone who isn’t in one the secret.

Finally go into detail about the duties you performed using the tips about adjectives and other parts of speech mention in a previous paragraph. These are the basics for writing a CV. The document varies only slightly from a resume but that difference can be important when it comes down to it.

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Category: Career
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