Tuesday 20 September 2011

CV Workshop - 'Employment History' heading

If this is the first time you are viewing this blog series, please refer back to the first summary post called ‘CV Workshop - Top 5 Headings for your CV’.

I’m going to discuss another compulsory heading that should be in your CV, employment history. This section will range in length depending on how many different employers you’ve had. It was only yesterday, when I was having a little read about CV’s and finding out some more common errors that people seem to make with their CV’s. The main error that stood out was the chronology aspect of a CV. For instance, I’ve already spoken about the ‘education’ heading, and organising it with the most recent qualification first, so in my case that would be my degree. This organisation should work in the exact same way throughout your CV. Therefore, you should start the employment section making sure that the most recent employment is listed FIRST, and then you should work back chronologically. So below I have created an example line, which can be incorporated into your CV if you like.

{Start date} – {End date/Present} COMPANY NAME, company ADDRESS, company contact NUMBER

Above is a simple outline to how you may like to layout each employment. Of course, indentation, bullet points and bolding of the font can be used for added finesse.

Depending on how much employment history you have, you can also add a line or two below about what your role was and what you did. Though, I think this is more significant to do so, when it’s a full time job listed, rather than a student’s part time job. In addition, you can put a reference here, or you can separate and create a references section. However, you can leave references off your CV and ask employers to request references, if they’re desired.

If your anything like me, I lack room on my CV as I have been in and out of part time jobs since I was 16, and I also have done a lot of work placements over the past year and a bit. So, I haven’t included what my role was or references in my employment section, but I have created two versions of my CV (shorter and a longer one). I’ve also separated my employment history (part time jobs) with my work experience in publishing (I’ve created a separate heading called work experience). I did this to make sure all my information was organised and concise, so that reading my CV won’t be hard work for my potential employer.

Anyway, do pick and choose from the above if there is anything you’d like to implement to your own CV. Also, do some online research about CV’s, it won’t take you long and you’ll probably learn a lot in very little time!

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