I need to formulate a C.V. but the problem is, there’s not much to put on my C.V. How do I make it look full and professional, with barely any experience??
What’s necessary and what’s not?
Now I’m thinking that I should have gone to all those presentations at uni about writing CVs. 
This isn’t for job applications by the way, it’s for an overseas Masters program.
Please help!
Just need a few tips for this sort of thing. I didn’t know they required a CV for a masters program!!
Oh, and am I allowed to include BS, which they are probably not going to bother verifying? I don't like lying, but I think most people exaggerate on their CVs dont they?
Cat-woman, here’s a word of advise from someone in Human Resources and doing her Master’s (me!):
How to make your CV look fuller?
In addtion to your education and courses being taken, etc., do include your goal in pursuing the Master’s degree as well as involvement in extra-curricular activities and school organizations, skills (computer and any other relevant), any special talents, etc. If you want to go one step beyond, as a way of being creative, insert one or two direct quotes from professors re: something positive about you.
Try to limit the length of your CV to one page if possible and don’t prnt it in a font smaller than size 11 which may make it tougher on the eyes.
Best of luck! :k:
Cat,
Don't worry if you do not have much experience, any experience will do! If you focus on skills sets gained/enhanced from the experience, then even a job a Mcdonalds (Customer Service, Multi-tasking!)will be appropriate to put on a resume/CV.
A great source of experience and pertinent skillsets to demostrate is any positions you may have held in campus organizations. I didn't have any work experience to put on my resume when I graduated, however, I had held many leadership positions in my Fraternity such as Sr. Vice President of Finance, and President. I put my leadership experience on my resume, and beat out other applicants who had pertinent work experience. Employers or Graduate schools are more interested in your skillsets! Hope this helps...if you would like, you may fwd me your CV for critique once you have it completed. Moona is good source of information as she is in the HR field, I also get to review many CVs during recruiting season. Thanks
cat-woman, here is another word of advice...
i dont know what BS you have done , but in computer field when you over exaggerate its a risk. I have heard ppl often exageerating their cv's with this and that and emploeys actually asking them uqestions thier CV's fall flat face!
So tell the truth and 'Truth shall set you free' :)
use a bigger letter type....
wow, nice tips Moona and Ahmar - thanks. I'll definitely take those into account. I will have to make up a few extra-curricular activities lol
all I can think of is my stint at tv presenting and being a TA and some non-competitive sport! oh, and a few awards here and there.
Ahmar, might email it to you if I'm not too embarrassed of the end product.
cheers :)
Cat
before you even get to education and experience, create a section where in 2-3 lines you can give a summary of who you are. a profile section. and then a professional skills section.
Look at it this way, you are telling a story in your resume showing that you have skills and background for a certain position. With the limited time someone has to go thru a stack of resumes u need to help them put you in the review pile rather than the reject pile.
The best way to do that is to state your skills and expertise at the top, so they dont have to go through your entire resume to figure that out.
This also solves your problem of not having much work experience. I would list positions in different organizations to show that.
A better idea would be to not worry about a chronological resume but go for a functional resume, in my next post I will show you the same resume one chronological and one functional and you can see how they are different. In this post I just wanted to share the personal profile and professional skills section.
here is a profile statement from a personal profile section of a friend's resume of a resume. the guy started with this. and then has a skills summary after that.
Expertise: ( some ppl title it as Executive profile, Or Experience Summary)
Versatile business executive with management expertise across sales, business development and technology functions operating in both large and small company settings. Effective operating in highly unstructured and ambiguous environments. Adept at resolving complex business issues through creative problem solving and negotiation skills.
Experience includes 6 years in financial services and 6 years in healthcare, coupled with extensive background in software and technology markets. Have built and lead 2 customer service operations, 2 consulting organizations, 3 sales teams, 2 business development departments, and 3 IT groups.
This is another expertise section format, this is in bullets and had expertise portion tailored for a specific job.
·Marketing channel strategy, market segmentation, value chain analysis.
·Strategy formulation, alignment of technology and development of supporting processes and performance metrics.
·International business and marketing experience in consulting and industry roles.
·Project leadership and team management.
·Customer Relationship Management software selections, process development.
Professionals Skills: There could be statements in bullet points or 2 columns of bulleted skills like in this resume but did not paste as they were.
PROFESSIONAL SKILLS
ü P & L responsibility ($40 million)
ü Management (60 people)
ü Business development (US, Canada, Europe)
ü Manage complex sales cycles
ü Client and prospect management (CRM)
ü Contract negotiations
ü Create and manage alliances
ü Create effective organizations
ü Customer and market needs analysis
ü Employee performance management
ü Issue / risk management
ü Process Improvement, Six Sigma Green Belt
ü Program/Project Management
ü Change management
ü Vendor analysis & management
a general chornological resume.
XYZ consulting JULY, 2000 – MAY, 2002
Senior Principal
· Created and implemented cross-divisional Customer Relationship Management strategy for a large national insurance company. Managed team of 20+ business and technical people and budget of $20 million through the first of 5 releases. Critical to the success of this program was leading the client through the implementation of a formal budgeting process across the company, pushing decision making down to individual contributors, and moving their technology organization from traditional development cycle, procedural programming to rapid development cycle, object-oriented programming
· Led 10 person IT team for a $25 million portal initiative at a major financial services company, including client representatives and 3rd party consultants. Accomplishments included identifying and negotiating partnerships with multiple vendors, architecting the solution, creating the operations support plan, and sizing the effort
XYZ.COM SEPTEMBER, 19XX – MARCH, 2000
VP Sales & Marketing
Responsible for creating and managing the sales, marketing and support infrastructure necessary to deliver and support $100 million in business within 2 years.
·Built 60 person sales & marketing group managing $20 million budget
·Established 25 person customer service/call center
·Developed $40 million sales pipeline across 21 vertical markets
·Created interactive, print, radio, and TV marketing campaigns
·Managed trade show group that averaged 2 trade shows per month
XYZ Corp DECEMBER, 19XX – SEPTEMBER, 19XX
Manager, Global Internet Marketing (19XX - 19XX)
Led team of 8 business analysts/consultants and 6 Internet Developers/Support staff to apply Internet technologies to XYZ functions of sales, operations and customer support.
·Developed strategic plan for Internet applications to drive growth in revenue and profits justifying 5-fold increase in Web investment
·Created organization required to implement and support plan
·Established appropriate processes to balance centralized brand and product control with local content management requirements, building a global internet presence in 8 languages
·Drove 250% plus increase in web traffic and 175 basis point improvement in XYZ's net operating margin through reduced customer service and sales costs, exceeding management’s business and financial objective
Manager, Healthcare Internet Marketing (19XX - 19XX)
Key participant in management team that established XYZ corp entry into the healthcare market. Created and delivered on $45 million business plan through aggressive product development and targeted sales programs.
·Created Six Sigma sales process that delivered 33% productivity improvement in field sales force through value driven CEO sales approach and re-aligning along Hunter-Farmer methodology
·Built consulting methodology and organization. Designed and delivered training program. Sold and led three major North American client consulting engagements (1 manufacturer and 2 providers), driving $3 mm / year incremental revenue
·Designed, implemented and sold Internet-based contract management solution. Created partnership between distributor and purchasing group to create full-service capability
Manager, Financial Services Marketing (19XX - 19XX)
Key member of management team that built $40 million business over five years. Critical success factors were training sales team on value-driven sales approach and creating cornerstone products to augment traditional EDI and service bureau focus
·Product manager for Global Risk Management System for money market and foreign exchange trading operations, creating an additional $15 million / year revenue stream
·Created and implemented market plan for Research and Adjustment System for ATM system managers
same experience listed in a functional format.
XYZ, Ltd 2002–Present
ABC International 2000–2002
ABC.com 19XX–2000
*Sales and marketing *
·Rapidly built sales, marketing and customer service organization for an Internet startup. Built 60-person organization and established 25-person inbound/outbound call center in four months. Pipeline at the end of six months had reached $40 million with $1 million in booked revenue
·Established the Midwest Cash Management office for a large multinational merchant bank. Grew $200,000 of annualized revenue to $10 million in 3 years
·Helped large technology firm build a healthcare vertical. Working with VP and Director of Sales, built 6-person product marketing and 12-person field sales force. Re-aligned sales team along Hunter-Farmer approach, created CEO level value propositions, and re-designed sales process to reduce sales cycle 33% and improve sales per field rep from under $300K to approximately $800K
·Responsible for building Midwest cash management business for a large multinational merchant bank. Created system to keep in touch with 200-300 prospects in 12 state region. Closed over $1 million in new business 5 years in a row
·Worked with VP of Financial Services vertical of large technology company to convert product-driven sales organization into value-driven services organization. Directly responsible for repackaging offerings, defining value propositions, and sales force training. Introduced two new products that delivered over $15 million in new revenue
·Worked with Fortune 50 multi-national electronic products company to develop company-direct sales model. Created sales approach and market strategy
*Build Alliances *
·Lead team comprised of software vendor, 2 consulting firms, and large multi-line insurance company in CRM implementation. Managed daily interactions at all levels of each company. Created successful alliances between Software company and Insurance Company and between Software Company and one of the consulting firms. Results were that the CEO’s of these three companies were highly satisfied with the relationships, the four companies were able to work together as a single team, and the project was progressing on schedule and budget
·Worked with VP of large technology company to create healthcare supply chain outsourcing business. Identified and worked with senior management at distributor, software company, staffing services company and university hospital system to put together agreements in principal for the alliance.
·Lead a combined team of US and French representatives of a large technology company, French trading company and two large US commodities exchanges to deliver online trading application. Developed value propositions and worked with various constituents within each company to create alliance.
*Systems Development and Implementation *
·Designed, built, tested and implemented Computer Aided Design and Drafting system at small manufacturer. Identified need to add drafting component to CAD system and hired and managed team through implementation. Result was business was able to grow without hiring additional engineers and was able to reduce the drafting department to a single person.
·Lead team to implement customer service system at large multi-national merchant bank. Responsibilities included working with Users to define requirements, identifying potential solutions providers, creating vendor analysis tool, and creating cost benefit analysis. Lead team that implemented and maintained the selected package.
Inspire superior performance
·Built team of 60 sales, product management, and customer service people from the ground up for an internet start-up. Through participative management, mutual goal setting and creating a challenging but fun work environment (contests, etc), people coalesced into a team that met objectives and enjoyed the work.
·Molded 26 people across four companies into effective team at large insurance company. Combined social interactions with client-focused problem resolution sessions to break down internal competitive barriers and build a cohesive team that achieved client’s goals and objectives
Functional resume can be a good choice to showcase your skills to a prospective employer.
Try creating a resume in the functional format, hhave a personal profile and a professional skills section at the top. education after that and then the experience in a functional format.
That will make your resume look fuller as well as showcase your strengths and skills to prospective employers.
try it and see how its looks, let me know if you want me to give u feedback on that, otherwise your cousin is a wealth of information on these topics anyways.
Fraudia: you in HR too? Damn!
CH with the way teh market is, i get enough resumes sent to be passed around that i may as well be in HR.
I halped interview quite a bit so know some from experience. i.e. shortlisting 20 candidates from a resume box of 200 for more analysis..once u do that a few times, its easy to see what works and what does not.
Why doesn’t the whole world turn into one big pool of HR experts! Ayi!
I am not claiming to be an HR expert, but giving a person some advise which they can accept, factor, or reject.
I had not seen anyone explain the different formats of resumes etc here before. Has someone else here described the difference between and utility of chornological vs. functional resumes? If so we should direct ppl to that thread.
maybe our HR professionals can write soem posts on diff types of resumes as well as diff types of interviews , case based, behavioral etc. I am certain it will be very beneficial to new professionals and soon to be graduates.
Fraudz :k:
Keep it clean.
I am not sure if this link will work, but no harm trying
Cat-woman, visit monster.com. Apart from performig job searches, you can access the site's Information Center which gives tips on preparing resumes, interviewing, networking, and the like. In addition, try checking out the (Society for Human Resource Management) SHRM organization's website, shrm.org. I am a member of this organization and I have a password to get in but even if you don't have one, you can access some of the articles and materials related to human resources---topics of interest to you such as resume-preparation. You're also welcome to e-mail me your CV anytime for critique.
:)
C.V. format in the US particularly is meant for academicians and scientists. I am working on my C.V. these days too. But thats meant for Germany and not for education purposes. It does matter what purpose are you going to use your C.V. for.
Normally, in a C.V., you are suppose to include all your education starting from high school.
This ofcourse depends on the level of experience you have.
Some of the very basic things to include in your C.V.:
your pic on the top right
your signatures on the bottom with the date on the left
dob
interests
nationality
single/married...
b/w i did not include status cause' didn't have much space left for it.