You CV is a sales document – it is written to sell you, and a good CV is crucial for securing your next opportunity.

It needs to be clear and concise but with sufficient detail on your technical and business experience.

We suggest one page for those early in their IT career, and up to three for those with many years’ experience.

Before writing your CV, it is important to put yourself in the position of the person who will be reading it and tasked with short-listing candidates.

They may have many applicants and you need to make your CV stand out.

CV Layout:

Think about your skills, experience, competencies, unique selling points and achievements.

You should not only tailor the CV to your own personal skills and achievements, but also the company and role you are applying for.

Use a structured format with clear fonts and short succinct sentences, using bullet points to draw the eye to pertinent information.

Do not overuse jargon or confusing terminology. We would also recommend that you do not include a photo.

The CV should be well-presented with sufficient page margins to allow easy printing.

Do carefully spellcheck the CV and ensure that any spellchecker is set to UK rather than US or international settings.

We recommend that you create your CV in MS Word or PDF format and that when you apply you include a short covering note in the body of the email.

CV Layout:

The format of a basic CV is below:

Finally, and most importantly, we recommend that you ask a couple of people who work in a similar field to proofread your CV before you submit it. Simple mistakes can let you down and prevent your CV from being shortlisted. Quality should not be rushed, and time spent proofing your CV will pay dividends.