CV tips

• You think internationally!
If you are looking for an international job or internship with the worldwide companies, then these advices on writing an excellent CV are definitely for you!
At the beginning of writing a CV you could meet some difficulties, such as:

1. Understanding what the CV is for!
   Actually in writing a CV you are doing an effort to make it possible to call you for an interview! Since the companies are on the look-out for a number of people who can bring in the skills they need to help move their companies along, it would be very expensive to interview all the applicants!
2. lack of training
   
• students write CVs that are simple lists of activities because they think everybody does this way, but simple list of activities teaches nothing recruiter about us;
• often students have no idea whether CV should be organized chronologically like history or start with the most recent events first. You should talk about your skills now! Recruiters are not necessarily interested in history of your work experience.
3. There are several other difficulties that arise in writing a CV:
• the feeling that you have a little experience to show in the field you are applying for. This is the main feeling that you should overcome because experience not necessarily comes from the work but also from the other activities that could have taken place in your life.
• the dislike of being judged on so little information, because there exist a one page rule for the CV. It should be summed up in your CV a variety of results attained by you!
• the difficulty in showing your worth. You should recognize your own worth and learning to express it in ways that others understand.
• the trouble of getting employer to understand what you mean. Most of the difficulty comes from not really thoroughly analyzing ourselves, what we have done and how to relate it to recruiter?s value system.
• the trouble of communicating transnationally. When applying to global countries, local differences should not be stressed on! You should talk in universal terms.


• Preparing to write a CV.
1. Find out about the job. That means that you have a pretty good idea about what kind of activities are carried out in any department, even you have never worked in the one!
2. Study job descriptions. Any job could be described with the responsibilities, skills required, education and outlook for the profession.
3. Find out about the company. Your knowledge in potentional customer will assist you in addressing problems that interest him, in putting yourself on the same wave-length.
4. Find out about yourself. Research into yourself all your abilities that could be put in CV.
5. Think in terms of sale. As in terms of sale, the customer does not want to have ask you a lot of questions about all the characteristics of your product ? yourself - but expects you to relate your characteristics directly and immediately to his needs;
6. Knowing what you can do! You should have a strong image of all your skills that could be related to a job you are applying for!
7. How you learned! You must be ready to show your awareness of having learned in the past. You must also be aware of how you learned. This is important in order to communicate your capability of learning in the future.
8. What you have done. For the recruiters there is a strong link between what you have done in the past and what you are able to do in the future. You should show your skills that have produced results. Accomplishments come from on-the-job activities, outside activities, hobbies and school.


• How to structure the CV.
Education: You should decide if you put your education first or second!

• Put your education first:
  • when you feel your education says the most about the skills you are trying to sell!
  • when you have made a career change, be re-trained for a new profession.
• Put education second:
  • when your experience shows more about your skills that your education does;
  • when years of work experience separate you from your school or university years.
  
  You should also be careful in using the titles of your degrees! You shouldn't use the titles of degrees in your proper language but should use international names for this reason. You should also avoid labelling degrees. Degrees should be spelled out!
  The idea of majoring: if you have a deep knowledge in some field, you should stress this! For example: if you have graduated, you may add for instance "Majored in Finance". If you are still in the university, you may write down "Majoring in finance";
Work experience :
Under this label you can put the activities that gave you some work experience that is related to your targeted job. It could be internships, partial or full time jobs, summer jobs etc. Whatever your situation, experience of work is very important to talk about in the CV. If you have very little work experience, look for no-job accomplishments and achievements to sell your skills. They often provide training every bit as on-the-job training.
Languages:
It goes without saying that the languages heading is extremely important on CVs where applicants are offering skills to work internationally. When you are writing about your language skills, you should describe in details your level of the language, for how many years you were mastering it and so on.
Accomplishment and achievements:
Perhaps they come from the activities that are not work-related. If you create Accomplishment and achievements heading it could look very positive in the CV! Remember, however, that if you were a member of the group, this is not an achievement; you must show what you did as a member!
Interests and activities:
Heading of Leisure Activities and Sports should be omitted because if they contain many entries they seem to suggest that you are only interested in leisure and sports. Avoid using your last heading on the CV as a kind of trash can. Everything should go together with logic.
Exceptions:
• If you know how to use different software packages and internet, that often deserves its own heading. Computer skills with examples and accomplishments included, unless you have already put some major piece of work you have done under the Accomplishments.
• Sports activities need no detail unless they are related to major perseverance skills, organization of events or community service. Teaching sports to others is a very positive entry. This stresses patience, entrepreneurship and communication skills. Once again, this might come better under Accomplishments.
Personal interests:
You may feel like fleshing out the portrait of yourself at the end of the CV. Simply listing the three interests will suffice.
• What information you should give up?
Address:
Put only one address in the CV, the one where you want to get important mail! If you put your e-mail, read it often!
Your age:
Should you put it or not? One thing seems obvious: you can seem too young for a job or, in contrary, too old for the job. When it comes to career starters, their age is probably not a negative point, but probably not positive either. If you are not sure whether it is positive or negative, do not put it in your CV. For those who do decide that their age is a serious enough plus to put on the CV, just type ?25 years old? Do not put birthdays and birthplaces.
Nationality:
This is a piece of information all of us should be proud of and it may provide useful information to a cross-border hirer. If you feel your nationality, for some reason, won?t be a plus in getting you to the interview, then do not include it.
Mistakes to avoid:
• Using abbreviations and jargon from a company that cannot be understood by others.
• Touching on sensitive areas, like politics and religion.
• Trying to say everything: learn to put only the most important. Remember one page rule.
• Organizing badly: be careful in choosing your headings and what to put under them.
• Providing irrelevant and negative information, for example, being divorced.
• Four basic structures of CVs:
1. The chronological CV
   It is the best-known structure because it is easiest to organize. It represents no challenge-until they start running onto several pages. Actually there are many cases in which chronological CV is not a good choice, but at first let?s look at the cases in which chronological CV that work well.
   1. There are a limited number of jobs. If you have had a limited number of jobs, so you are able to develop a little "movie" that focuses into results.
   2. All the jobs are in the same field.
   3. The lessons of the "history" are clear. You put always what is recent at the top. If your last position is not the best, the Chronological CV is not a good one for you.
   4. The educational background is relatively important to the writer?s current career goals. Education is often on the top when the applicant is fresh out of school, or his work experience seems less related to the job he is applying for than his education, possibly in business or management.
   5. There are no missing years, if you not have breaks in your career.
   
   When NOT TO USE chronological CV:
   
   
   1. When you have had many jobs. A long list of jobs will not be interpreted by recruiters, because they spend about 20 second for reading a CV. If you have had a lot of jobs in the same field, you should relate them to the Knowledge or Experience Area CV.
   2. When you have worked in very different fields. This situation is typical of most recent graduates who may have worked in a variety of odd jobs to support themselves.
   3. When you are changing professions. Obviously a CV that shows a number of positions in a field that you want to move out of does not help sell skills that you feel you can use in a different field.
   4. When recent education is important. This may go hand-in-hand with a change in professions. Putting education on the top might be an option, but the jobs following on the CV may not seem linked.
   5. When the lessons of your history are misleading. If your professional career has not evolved in a straight line, the chronological CV will only underline the ups and downs.
   
   
2. The Skills or Experience CV
   This better, an interview-winning CV is often structured along with the lines of Skills and Experience Areas. It allows you to organize experience in categories of competencies, where the order in which things happened does not matter! This CV format is useful in 4 cases:
   1. When you want to free yourself from a chronology which is unattractive.
   2. When you are starting your carriers and want to stress only skills and experiences directly related to the job in order to present a focused portrait.
   3. When you are looking for an internship and want to prove you have background that would make you operational very quickly.
   4. When you are planning a career change and want to refocus your background away from your past career and show the skills you have for the new career.
   
   
3. The Abilities and Achievements CV
   With this kind of CV, the applicant lays out a direct offer of skills related to the requirements of the job he is applying to and then proves these skills by certain accomplishments. The skills are usually developed in a technical field different from his target position.
   
   
4. The letter/CV Combination
   
   It is often useful when:
   • You have confirmed expertise in a field
   • When you have very little experience
   • When you have been absent from the job market for some time
   • When you can find out the name of the person to address it to