Curriculum Vitae Writing Advice
You will find lots of free resume / CV writing advice and tips on these pages so please bookmark this site now so that you can return to it in the future. On our other pages you will find tips and advice on how you can successfully find a job and handle interviews, links to over 200,000 jobs and much more.
The word Curriculum Vitae literally translated means the story of your life. The words Curriculum Vitae are usually abbreviated to CV or C.V. and you will sometimes see it incorrectly written in lower case as c.v. or cv. The possessive form of Curriculum Vitae / CV should be written as Curriculum Vitae's or C.V.'s or CVs, but not as c.v.'s or cv's.
Your CV is a very important document; with it rest your hopes and dreams for the future - that next step up the career ladder, a better position, more money, new challenges, etc. Your CV therefore has to represent the best you have to offer if you do not want to miss out on that job you saw which was 'perfect' for you.
These days employers often receive a lot of CVs for each advertised position - jobs advertised in national papers can often attract hundreds of applicants. So your CV has to be just that little bit special to stand out if you want to obtain interviews. The good news (for you) is that most people do not know how to write a CV and only spend a short time preparing a CV. Writing professional CVs is a skill, which these people have not learnt.
Of course your CV can continue to work in your favour even after it has obtained an interview for you. It can help you at an interview by carefully focusing the interviewer's mind on your good points and on your achievements. Once you have left the interview it will continue to work in your favour as the interviewer will probably reread it before making a decision, either on who should be invited to the second interview stage or who the job should be offered to.
When it comes to salary negotiations a well written CV can help. If your CV conveys your full worth you are likely to get a higher salary offer than you might have done with a poorer CV. So do not skimp on the time you spend on writing a CV as it will probably be a false economy.
In the following sections we will teach you how to write professional CVs and show you a number of CV examples as an introduction to the art of CV writing. Apart from our FREE email guide (which is emailed to you - see below) everything else can be found directly on this website.