i think this discussion is great. there seems to be a different point of view from almost everybody. as we say in the industry, the best type of CV is the one that gets you the interview :-)
i have done over 1000 cv's over the last 5 yrs as a trainer working with the ORP's in the canton of VD and GE.
the most important elements in today's cv's ( be it here or elsewhere) is that they must have first and foremost
1: a title ( the profession you have or want)
2: your personal qulities
3: your skills
remember, your Cv is like a menu in a restaurant or a shop window.
you want to arouse and incite the curiosity of the viewer.
it should have impact and crediblity.
it should be easy to read ( that means short winded, and it should not recount your life story... save something for the interview)
and also, i always tell my candidates, "you must not only KNOW your CV, you must BE your CV"
best of luck to all job seekers. times are hard and don't wait for 20 rejections to figure out that maybe you aren't doing something right. seek advice and ask " what is the success rate of your candidates".
no, it is a simple explenation how you have to work out your profile matching to the advert, the job. i havent applied for a job since 6.5 years before in 2006 i was looking for a job in zurich. i had no clue about how the way of writing a CV and application has changed over the years. email application, word file vs. pdf, size, attchments...everything i had to learn again. and first i tried to get a coup with writing an impressive cover letter, send all certificates in etc. the result was first a ratio 10:1= 10cvs, 1 interview. after i learnt how to read an advert, how to get more information from HR in case the requirements were not clear, the ratio improve from 8:5=8 applications turned to 5 interviews out which i got offered 3 contracts.
thats how i did it. if you do it different and you are successfull with it...great. if not...take this as advice. or leave it and try like you think is right.
I have to admit I am already on the denial phase of CV critique and CV advise. Everyone has an opinion on how the CV should look like and an hiring experience to tell. Too many of these, and trying to accommodate everybody's advise will end up in the camel-CV (a camel being a horse designed by committee). Your CV is your CV, you are who you are, and the hiring person is who she is. If all those 3 are not in agreement, expect a catastrophic effect during the interview. And, I am in totally agreement you have to match your CV and your cover letter to the job description. Generic stuff gets generic answers...
As an anecdot, a (Swiss) HR person who recently read my CV, told me very confidentially and because she was my friend, that I should remove ASAP two lines of my CV. Those, she said, have nothing to do with job and are of no interest. They should be removed at once because they were harming me. I said yes, sure, but thought that those 2 lines had very important achievements for me, and told a very good story about my personality and soft skills. Later that week, I got an interview with a person that was extremely impressed by one of these achievements and thought this was the sort of thing the job required. It just took that to make me different from the other 200 applicants.
I would however, strongly advise you to revise carefully all typos and inconsistencies (are the years all in the same format - eg 2006 - 2008?, are all the brackets opened and closed? are all capital letters on its place? does the stats in the CV the same than in the reference letter?). There is nothing more unnerving to a Swiss person than these sorts of flaws, and this can easily disqualify you. Also, do the same with the interview.... if you managed 28 people, don't say you handled 30 during the interview.
exactly! it is simply because along with your application the HR person will receive a massive number of applications and wont read them through! if you dont match the description, if your CV contains non job specific information...youll be going into the bin. one more advice is always try to find the name of person you are writing to. if you have called, make sure you understood and spelled the name right. you need to have a drawee...
grammar, punctuation, spelling, factual correctness throughout all your papers handed in -like lucy already said- are an absoltely must!
what is happening these days is that there are so many really well qualified people looking, who have not been on the job marketin recent times. so, they believe that their CV and cover letter is just a formality and all will work out for the best. they wait until they have about 10 or more "no replies" or negative responses before they may ask themselves "is there something wrong". as you say, times have changed and the competition is really out there. i almost feel that if a candidate comes to me for help, after 20 or so negative replies, that they are already feeling desperate. and, nobody wants to have someone who is desperate as an employee. ( or a girl/boy friend either.....it's all about seduction, isn't it.
I don't think this is true (well, it might be in the very short term - say the last 6 months - but no more).
One major problem I have perceived in recent years (really, going back to at least 2000), is an escalating "war of qualifications" between employers and employees. Employers are increasing the level of qualifications for given jobs to (relatively) ridiculous - if not impossible - levels, given the actual responsibilities and pay grade of the position in question (eg: requiring a degree for IT helpdesk staff, 5+ years of experience with Windows 2008). As a result, "deception" is becoming far more common on Resumes, as prospective employees try to get their foot in the door so they can actually accumulate some real experience.
The big downside, of course, is that when you're trying to hire for a job that genuinely does have high requirements, you're inundated with Resumes for people who aren't even remotely qualified for the job who are just assuming it's like every other low-end and mid-range job with a laundry list of requirements. This whole situation is exacerbated by the relative lack of "real" information that seems to plague modern Resumes, that I have already talked about, since all these people are just trying to put a bullet list that agrees with the job ad on their Resume, to get to an interview.
i know exactly what you mean. thing is, today you would be surprised by the number of candidates that actually do meet some of these "unbelievable" criteria. of course offering the salary that goes along with this is another question indeed. so, employers are getting rather demanding, because it's a buyer's market. as most of the jobseekers know, they are required (by the unemployment office) to have 8-10 job searches per month......regardless if it is in their field of competence or not. rather sad isn't it....it just makes life more difficult for everyone.
Europass Cv template has a field named 'Desired employment / occupational field'.
I 've done a lot of thinking about this field and if it is good to be completed or if it is better to delete it. After all, everyone should be free to a better building it's own cv, as he thinks about it.
I 've downloaded several europass cv's from internet. Most of them did not have this field at all, althouth every other element of europass cv template was there, as it should be. I think these people chose to omit it.
So I would like to have your opinion: is it better to describe 'Desired employment / occupational field' or it would be οf equal importance to omit it?
Go with the American version. I have worked for swiss companies for many years and had no problem with it. That being said, I must admit mine has morphed a bit in the past years. Now I list a few lines of personal data up top, which I think is ok.
Which is the maximum number of pages a cv should have in order to have possibilities to be seen from human recources staff?
The time goes by and I add several new qualifications to my cv. Should I start ommiting some of the elements of my cv? It is a hard choice what to include and what to omit though.
It depends. For a low-level job and/or an application with few qualifications or experience, I'd expect a short Resume to reflect that (1-2 pages).
However, as I've said earlier in the thread, for higher level jobs that require 5-10+ years of experience, then I'd expect two pages to be barely enough space for bullet-point lists of qualifications, skills and prior achievements, and preferably have another couple of pages after that to expand on those points.
This saves the guy looking for a new employee from having to waste his time getting you into the office, or on the phone, only to find out that when you wrote "5 years of experience with Microsoft Exchange" you really meant "5 years of creating user accounts with Exchange mailboxes", or something similar.
I will admit I'm something of a shrinking minority, however - just like people who think someone's job title should reflect what they actually do, rather than try to fool their next employer how important they were.
I've just come across this very long and useful discussion and would like to ask, given that the thread was started a long time back: is the general opinion a 2 page CV, brief personal info at the top, include some pertinent stuff re the job applied for, and just give detail on, say, my last 3 jobs and skip quickly through the previous ones?
I have been around for quite a while so hard to know what to cut back on. To quote a post, my app will only be for a 'low level job' but even so, I'd like to do it right.
And what about a photo and date of birth? Both no-no's down under but from what my Swiss friends said, required in CH. I'd rather skip both!
This is a very good point. If you give away too much information, you may be excluded as overqualified and it leaves less to talk about at interview. This is a personal judgement based on the job and your qualifications. You should say enough for the employer to know that you are capable of the role and wishing to find out more
Personally, I would not include date of birth or a photo unless it was a clear requirement. some professions do seem to expect photos but generally there should be no problem leaving it off.
For date of birth, I cannot see any reason to include it. Employers can usually make a close guess at your age based on other information if they are so inclined.