[Closed] CV Advice

As you are applying for a job totally different to your previous experience it's all about transferable skills. Were you a self employed musician? As a delivery driver you'll be working alone and organising yourself so show you have experience of doing that. Planning, being on time, self motivated, working to schedules, etc. Try and think of other areas that overlap. Dealing with the public, dealing with money, physical fitness, driving to venues...

Does that info go on the CV itself then?

Yeah self employed musician, so well used to plenty of driving vans and dealing with (usually drunk) the general public.

Try to keep it to one page (two if really needed specific info for a specific job).

Basic name, address, dob, qualifications. Then meat and bones about previous work. Start with current job and work back in time. They won't want to know about the part time job you did in your teens.

I've always rewritten mine for specific jobs, so added detail where needed.

Think of it as a foot in the door for a face to face (or zoom call).

Can do in a profile. Keep it to 2 pages, make sure it reads well, space it out. I'm recruiting for a junior position at the moment, some ofvtge CVs are just word vomit, content and format.

PS where are you based?

? As a delivery driver you’ll be working alone and organising yourself so show you have experience of doing that. Planning, being on time, self motivated, working to schedules, etc.

Or just get a job with Hermes and throw all that out of the window 😉

As a person who reads CVs of candidates.

1) Present a list of Skills near the top (you can tune this to the job if you want)

2) Make sure the description of the jobs you have done justifies the skills you have claimed.

3) Don't bullshit, but also if you have done something I would recognise (a famous gig, band etc) then make sure to highlight that.

4) Include charity work if relevant.

5) It is nice to have a hobbies section in my industry, but its not an essential section.

6) Its fine to have had multiple responsibilities or areas of expertise in one job, tell us about them, sometimes a good generalist is what we are looking for.

7) Hi-lite where you have taken charge/leadership for projects/tasks if you hare that sort of person.

8) Spell and have better grammar than me (seriously nothing puts more chance of rejection than terrible spelling).

Ex delivery driver - the most important thing they want is reliability.
You've got that from teaching and gigging, sell it.
Most firms can afford a warehouse worker, packer, or loader phoneing in sick occasionally. The work can be shared out. But driving the van is usually harder for them to cover, your load is probably already planned and packed when you get there so they'd need another driver.
Sell your reliability somewhere on your CV / application.

Some really good advise on here so far.
I’ve helped a few people on here with their CV’s and happy to do so again (15 years in recruitment mean I’ve seen a few!). Drop me a DM if you want me to look over it or he’ll put it together.

Does that info go on the CV itself then?

Yeah self employed musician, so well used to plenty of driving vans and dealing with (usually drunk) the general public.

If it helps you get the job it goes on.

Just need to tweak your experience to sell yourself. I'm sure you have many skills from your previous work but you want to push the time management, reliability, driving stuff rather than reading music, tuning guitars, etc. (sorry no idea what a musician does day to day but I hope you get the idea)

Cheers for all of this, mega appreciated.

@stumpyjon I'm in Congleton, Cheshire. I'm well used to a bit of a commute though!

@lunge I'll see how I get on,thanks for the offer 👍

Is a template from the internet a good or bad idea? (Don't have MS Office)

Tom, sorry, bit too far.

No worries at all.

I posted this on a thread last week which disappeared, anyways...
I’ve been looking at CV’s lately, and it struck me how much more I liked some over others.
The main thing I dislike is typical CV talk.
Things like ‘target driven industry’, ‘highly motivated individual’ I mean the list is massive.
The ones I liked just wrote using normal language, ‘I really loved this job’, ‘I really like people’. In your case ‘I’m never ill’ and
‘I really like driving’.
The layout of one also stood out it was a block of colour on one side with a name and small portrait. Then on the other side, work experience and stuff about yourself. A separate plain sheet with more detail and the boring stuff.
The CV was printed on decent paper, whereas all the others were poorly printed on shit paper.

(Don’t have MS Office)

It's free online.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/microsoft-365/free-office-online-for-the-web

The problem with CVs is that they're highly subjective. You're essentially guessing what a given prospective employer wants to see, which is an impossible task. If you ask ten people for CV advice you'll get ten different answers often directly conflicting with each other. Here's my 2p.

IMHO the single most important point is one no-one ever really considers, and it's this: a CV is the first example of your work that a recruiter will see. Regardless of whether you're going for a job as a CEO, a secretary or a bus driver, it demonstrates your attention to detail and the pride you take in your work - or all too often, the lack thereof. If it looks like it's been written by a 12-year old or a moron, it's going in the bin. Remember, your CV might be one of five or one of 200, and if the latter then you're likely to be subjected to "any excuse" filtering before anyone even reads a word of it. Own any weaknesses you may have, if you know your grammar is lacking or you're dyslexic, ask a tame grammar nazi to proof-read it for you. Be consistent. Stick with the same fonts, use the same indentation across different sections. Make it look like a document you care about. I don't mind if you can't spell but I do mind greatly if you can't be arsed to press F7 occasionally. It's like turning up to an interview in jeans and an Iron Maiden tee-shirt - it's nothing to do with how you're actually dressed, rather it's demonstrably clear that you couldn't give a shit about the job. It's disrespectful - and so is a badly spelled CV in Comic Sans.

Ignore this "one page / two page" business, a CV is as long as it needs to be. The more appropriate advice here is to be concise and get to the point, no-one wants to sit through reams of waffle. I once had a CV from someone who'd obviously been told that their CV absolutely couldn't be longer than two pages, they'd achieved this by removing all the white space and margins and printing it in a Flyspeck 3 font. It was horrendous.

You want your most important, most relevant stuff front and centre. That usually means reverse chronological order. A graduate might have their Masters first up, whereas a time served electrician might list their last big contracts. The last time I touched my CV the first page was my skillset, listing technologies I was proficient with and tailored to match the job spec I was responding to. It's no good being the perfect fit for a role if you don't tell the reader until page three and they've already lost interest whilst reading about your O Level in Pottery for the last five minutes. (Unless you're applying for a job as a potter.)

In your career history, focus on what you've done, responsibilities you had, any achievements you're particularly proud of. "Performed on stage at the London Palladium" is way more compelling than "played fiddle in a band." This is no place for modesty - a CV is a sales document, its goal is to get you an interview and after that its job is done.

Any Other Business. This is contentious and many disagree - see my first paragraph - but I like to see a hobbies / interests section at the end. Are you a member of any clubs? Do any volunteer / charity work? Hold any qualifications that don't fit anywhere else (full, clean UK driving licence)? To my mind this elevates the document to being about a real person rather than a D&D character sheet. It helps makes you memorable, it's easier (for me at least) to remember "the footballer" or "the SCUBA diver" rather than thinking "Steven... which one was he...?" And of course, if your CV is particularly short then it's at least something to put down and talk about. The last batch of CVs I had were apprenticeship positions so there's precious little else for them to write other than their GCSE results, they're ~17 and they've done nowt.

Good luck.

Don't have sexy69.filthy @gmail.com as your email address.

Seriously.

4 years ago I was very expensively trained:

Contact details in a header, name, address, LinkedIn, phone and email in that order (don't worry about LinkedIn).

2-3 lines to describe your tech side. (Experienced trainer with X years etc)
2-3 lines on the type of person (happy, reliable, can do attitude)

Then job history in reverse order. The older the job the less you put. Numbers are really nice in some cases, trained X students to X level in X time (I'd they are good numbers). Remember HR are looking for matching words they understand in an application. Make it simple for them, if your company had an odd title for your role change/modify it to the industry norm.

You don't have to put all your jobs. I'm up to too many to put in, but I won an prestigious award in my first role so that goes in as it shows a history of achievement.

Relevant courses are nice, in the UK it was suggested to forget "other business" for higher level positions as they don't care. It can be useful for lower positions where it is relevent. Eg clean EU license to drive 7.5 ton trucks.

Agree with the "take care over your CV", a badly presented one makes me think .... Sometimes less is more.

On the share your services there's a kindly gent doing tips n guidance

Ciao