CV writing advice?
 

Can I know what is the typical length of your CV? Mine is 5 pages long because I did a bit of elaboration at what I did at each workplace.

I've checked out some samples on the internet and it seems many don't; they just have a one liner showing their period of employment at various places. I feel that this approach won't make us look good and will not show our achievements.

For those of you who got new job offers that came with pay raises instead of pay cuts, can I get some idea of how you wrote your CV?

Showing a 10pages resume doesnt prove anything. I can write a 20page resume too. But I bet the employer will not have time to read thru your resume.

Short and simple, and explained them during interview.

My g/f is from HR, she say CV is the most over-rated thing candidates think they have. Many think CV is crucial to get good jobs, pay etc when in fact most employers dun even bother to read before interview. I never work in HR before, but I think what she say makes sense.

Think about it this way, unless you are applying for senior management position, every job posting got 50 to hundreds of CV. Do you think any employer going to waste time reading them? First round CV screening also normally done by junior HR staff or some junior manager for the job. The standard procedure is to throw out the obvious and just pick the first few randomly to do interview.

If can find good one, offer. If not, pick another few to interview again. A lot of companies nowadays outsource to recruiters to do the 1st round screening. No matter what the recruiters tell you about helping you to convince employers to see you, fact of the matter is they don't. They'll do essentially the same thing: Out of 100 CV, throw out the 50 obvious misfit, then pick 10 out of 50 and send the CV to client and do basic admin work like schedule for interview.

CV is not over-rated. A well written and well formatted CV gives the impression of meticulousness and conscientiousness that all bosses like. Anything that forms the potential employer's first impression of you cannot be over-rated.

The first CVs that I weed out from the pile are the badly formatted ones. If the candidate cannot bother to standardize the font and the format, then it doesn't feel like he takes pride in his work. We all want smart people who also take pride in their work, not just smart people who just do the thinking and leave the rest to others.

Then goes the under-qualified ones. Then those that are badly written: if, given all the time you want, you cannot write proper sentences or convey effectively what you did, then something is wrong.

Finally, if your working experience is less than 10years, i don't see why you need anything more than 1 page of CV. A CV is a succinct summary of the RELEVANT experience you want to tell me when you are applying for my job, it is not meant to be a brain dump of your life story; leave those for your biography's editor when you are 80. A long CV is invariably a brain dump that contains a lot of irrelevant information, and it is a sign of lazyness.

my advice is to maintain a master CV that can be of any page length. when you apply for a job, keep only those experience and education that are relevant to the job to 1 page. 4-page CV is an overkill.

For an example of a good CV format, see the standardized Harvard Business School MBA CV: 1-page; tight; no excessive spacing; relevant

This is all very sensible and logical -- if the employer bothers to read your CV. How many times people go for interview to realise that interviewers are asking questions as they read along your CV on the spot?

This is a clear indication that they have not read your CV and are whacking questions, reading your CV and hearing your answers at the same time. In short, even if your CV is fantastic, they are just starting to read it as you are being interviewed.

You can't blame HR or hirer actually, they see dozens of CV everyday and have many other things to do besides recruitment. Like I say, they will bump off the obvious CMI ones, but other than that it's just random numbers game most of the time. My ex-boss lagi best, he only read 2 things, current pay to ensure budget met and sum up total years of relevant experience, tell HR the ones he shortlisted and proceed to interview by saying "tell me more about yourself".

I never do recruitment before, but from experience going for interview I agree with above that most interviewer are clueless about my background before that.

Usual what happen is they ask me to describe myself or ask me what is my current job scope and I spend 10 minutes explaining while they eyeball the printed resume at the same time. I also notice a lot of them have my resume printed out, but made no notes before that at all.

I'm sorry you met all the lazy employers, or maybe you were interviewing at mickey mouse firms that don't really care.

From where i am and were, we do read the CV. And even if we employers don't read it beforehand, they will read it while interviewing you. That makes a clear and succinct CV all the more important. between a 1-pager that is clear and well written and a 5-page jibber jabber, you know which one the employer prefers, whether he is reading it before or during the interview.

First of all, the interviews I go to are mixed. Got SME and also have MNC, generally not much difference as far as I can tell. The MNC ones tend to be more structured, got fixed questions, behavior analysis type question or sometimes role play, but most don't really know or remember much about my CV.

That's the point. If you can already get an interview even when they dun read before hand, your performance or acting skills during interview are going to be much more important than how good you write your CV.

Of course broken English and crappy CV is big no no, but the point I'm making here is CV is not really a game changer, having a superb CV compared to a good CV is not going to make much diff. If you have managed to impress your employer in interview, they are not going to go back and read your CV and say "his CV not really impressive, so let's reject him".

Similarly if you failed to impress during interview, employer also not going to say "well at least his CV looks superb, let's hire him". A CV only useful in getting employer to call you down, all I'm saying is that most of the time they don't even have time to read in detail what your write, they will just throw out obvious lousy ones and tikam the remaining.

I don't think you got my point. My point is your CV forms part of the first impression that potential employers have of you. Even if he reads your CV while interviewing you, your CV will go on to influence his opinion of you. CV is not just to secure the first interview, it is a very powerful "impression" tool.

And you do agree that a well written and formatted CV is important for the right impression whether the employer read it before or during the interview. So I don't know what you are arguing about.

It's also impt to know the difference between CV and résumé. Using the wrong one in front of the HR / hiring manager ruins the "first good impression".

CV: focuses more on educational qualifications; for fresh grads or people with less than 1-2yrs full time working experience.

Résumé: focuses more on work experience; for people with more working experience.