CREATING YOUR RESUME

What is a resume/CV?

CV's and resumes have similar purposes; they are marketing documents that provide key information about your skills, experiences, education, and personal qualities that show you as an ideal candidate. When you apply for a job, you send a CV, because your CV tells potential employers who you are, what you can do, and provides a positive presentation of your skills and experience.

Your CV must be well written and professionally presented. You need to walk the line between providing a good quality of depth to display your qualifications and attract potential employer interest and providing too much information thus appearing wordy and turning off potential employer interest.

Typical categories or headings may include some or all of the following:

Personal/contact information:

• Full name.
• Contact information including your address; phone number(s); e-mail.
• If you are an immigrant to New Zealand, include your residency status.
• Interests.
  

Profile:

• A brief paragraph summarising yourself as a professional, to introduce the reader to the document.
• A list of your strengths and professional interests.
• Any exceptional professional achievements or rewards.
  

Academic background:

• A dated list with your educational details, with the most recent degrees listed first (in order of importance i.e. postgraduate, then graduate, followed by undergraduate degree).
  

Professional licenses/Certifications:

• Technical certifications.
• Memberships and affiliations with any professional organisation.
• Professional development.
  

Technical and specialised skills:

• Computer skills including software programs; programming languages; hardware capabilities; and whether you work with PCs, Macintoshes, or both.
  

Foreign language abilities/skills.

Volunteer work.

Work experience:

• Previous positions, in chronological order, with the most recent positions listed first.
• For each position, a bulleted list of the tasks and responsibilities of that position (think of your day-to-day duties).
• Other work experience.
  

References:

• Full names, addresses, and contact information for your references.

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Your CV should not include any excessive graphics, and should not include data in a long paragraph format, instead content should be in bullet-point lists and short statements.

The writing style in a CV should be brief and concise, easy to read and understand. It is helpful to ask a friend or your agency representative to review your CV and give you feedback. Please look at our sample CV for an example of good writing format and style.

Make sure that your CV reflects the person that you are today. Some people still include extensive details of their student days in their CV, a leftover from when they were first looking for jobs. If you have been a professional for 5 or more years, your CV should focus on your professional life, not your student life, unless you recently added another diploma or a graduate degree. If you have not been looking for work for 2 or 3 years, your CV will need to be updated, both with your additional work experience and with a fresh perspective on your previous work and qualifications.

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PRESENTING YOUR CV

A paper copy of your CV should be neatly word-processed and printed on one side of good quality paper. Before you create a final copy of your CV, run a spell and grammar check on it, and proofread it to make sure that there is no spelling or layout errors. Putting it in a binder or light folder will also make it more presentable. Take this along with you to your first interview.

An online copy of your CV should be easy to read and download. It is best to format it as a text file, such as a Microsoft Word.doc. If someone has asked you to e-mail him or her, your CV, you can ask them if there is a file format they prefer, but a Microsoft Word.doc should be suffice.

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