Is it time to Spring clean your CV?

Even the most attentive recruiter will admit that their own CV probably needs some love from time to time. We’ve all been there, you stumble across your dream job when you’re not even actively looking but the deadline is right around the corner, so you shove in your most recent experience and ping it over. 

With Spring, comes a time for fresh starts, spring cleans and breathes new life into every area of your life, so it’s the perfect time to give your CV some love. Whether you’re actively seeking roles or not, why not get into the habit of giving your CV an annual refresh? You’ll thank yourself later!  

Don’t just add your latest experience

We have a tendency to talk about our current experiences in the present tense. Therefore, you may suddenly realise that jobs of the past are still in the present tense, not the past. An easy mistake to make that shows a lack of attention to detail to a potential employer. 

And that’s not the only thing you should be changing. Where your career is now, and your career goals, change over time. You should therefore adopt what elements of past roles you talk about in your CV to showcase why your previous experience has made you perfect for current and future roles. This will probably mean that the further back a role is, the less you have to say about it, so keep it brief and relevant.

Have a clear format

A CV doesn’t run in chronological order. The most recent experience comes first. However, don’t mix volunteering, work, and education, keep them clear and separate. 

A good CV should have your contact details marked clearly at the top. This should be followed by a short professional summary. Your summary should cover any key career highlights and use any words and phrases you regularly see on roles you’d like to apply for. Not applied for a job in a while? Have a look on Indeed, Total Jobs, or LinkedIn and find five jobs you like the look of. Are there any skills they’re looking for? Add these in. 

Next, add in your key skills or your career highlights. A key skills section is particularly beneficial if you don’t have a lot of work experience, so examples of leadership, teamwork, organisation, or academic success could all be bulleted here. If you have more experience, add a few bullets of some career successes such as generating growth or creating business efficiency. 

Your work experience should be the bulk of your CV. Make sure you include your role, the company, the dates you were there, and the location where relevant. Only your current experience should be in present tense. The rest should be in the past tense. Bullet points are an easy way of concisely covering your responsibilities and achievements. 

It’s worth making sure that volunteering is either clearly marked or in its own section. 

Education comes next. Again, state clearly the qualification, where you achieved it, and when. You don’t need to provide specific information regarding what you did unless it is relevant to the roles you are applying for, or you’ve only recently completed this. 

Finally, simply state that references are available on request. 

Use a template

If you’re not a design whiz and you’re struggling to make your CV look neat and tidy, use a template. These are available within your word processor or you can find and download templates off the internet. When using a template make sure you fill in all of the gaps and don’t leave any accidental stock text. 

Give your CV a proofread 

Read, and then re-read your work. If you have someone who you trust who can give it a read through, then ask them to help you. Tools like Grammarly help to proof your work for you and will spot any glaring typos or grammatical errors. During your annual CV spring clean, it’s a great idea to at least re-read your CV, in case you spot something you haven’t noticed before.  

Should you have a picture

This is something that fewer and fewer companies are looking for. Now, employers are trying to make their recruitment processes as unbiased as possible so photographs are a big no-no. 

It’s worth making sure you can easily edit your CV so that you can remove any identifying information if a job asks you to. 

Have your CV in multiple formats 

Following on from this, make sure you have your CV available in both PDF and Word or Docx so that you or a recruiter can easily edit information.

A lot of larger employers use CV scanners which will just be looking for keywords and certain years of experience. In cases like this, they’ll ask you for a specific CV format. 

Things to avoid 

Don’t make your CV too long. Two pages should be plenty. 

Avoid linking to any personal social media accounts. Don’t let your potential employer stumble across some embarrassing holiday snaps. 

Don’t lie. If you don’t get found out at interview, it will become very apparent once you’ve got the job that you’ve exaggerated your skills and experience. 

Finally, edit your CV for the role

Having a CV on file is great, but you’ll normally need to tweak it for a specific role. Even a few tweaks to use some of the same words as the job description can make a big difference to an application. So always spend a bit of time on your CV before you send it in, a small amount of time could have big rewards. 

So that’s it, some easy ways to spring clean your CV from thinking about formatting, looking out for errors, what you need to include, and things you should be looking out for. If you found this blog post helpful then we’d love to hear from you.

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