How to Write the CV That Gets You Your Desired Job!

July 18 2018, By Juliet Ugochi

Your curriculum vitae or resume is what you use to sell yourself to potential employers. If you do it right, it will help you get multiple interviews which will land you the job of your choice.

Immediately after school and youth service, the next thing on your mind is how to get a good job. Knowing how to write a good resume is one of the best ways of ensuring that you get that dream job.

It is essential that you know how to write a good CV that will differentiate you from the thousands of other applicants. Here are the major things that should be in a great resume and how to arrange it to impress future employers.
1. Title
2. Personal details
3. Educational qualifications
4. Work experience
5. References


1. Title: The first one is the title. Some people name their cv, resume or curriculum vitae. This is so wrong. A potential employer knows that what you are submitting is s a CV so you don’t need to name it CV again. You can use your full name at the title, just type it in big bold letters. That is better. Then you can type your full home address under your name in a lower font size. Make sure you centre align both sentences.

2. Personal Details: This is the next section after the title. This is where you give your future employers a glimpse into who you are.

You can name it personal details, personal data or biodata. What you should put here are your date of birth, sex, phone number, and email address.

3. Educational Qualifications: This is the next stage, where you tell them why you are qualified to be given this job. List all your qualifications starting from the last obtained. Example, if you have a masters degree, start from it. Don’t start with your primary school certificate. Sometimes you can even leave your primary school education out unless you feel it is relevant to the job you seek. This is because employers are more interested in your university education.

You can have another subheading with the name - Certifications. It's totally optional. ‘Certifications’ is the place you list other certificates you have received from the training you went to. This could be a computer training certificate, a CNA certificate, a foreign language certificate, a chartered accountant. Any other certificate you got apart from the one your school gave you is listed under here.

4. Work Experience: This is the next section where you list any job experience you may have had in the past. If you have been working for a while and want to change your job, this is easy to do.

Just start listing with the last job you held or the one you are currently working in. Then move down to the first job. If you are a fresh graduate and have not been employed still put something down.

So many young graduates make this mistake and leave this place blank. Very wrong. Start with your NYSC job. So, you don’t know that it is a job. Write it down. Then write down your IT job. You see.

Think back too, did you do any job part-time after secondary school before gaining admission into the university? Add that one too. Employers just want to know that you have had some kind of experience with working under somebody. Even if it was in your father's office you worked, put the name of the company down.

5. References: This is the last section of the CV writing that many people ignore. You must always put two or three names as your references. Beg people you know who can vouch for your good character to allow you use their name on your cv. Again, you can ask your employer during your NYSC days, your past employers, or the people in the training center where you obtained your certificates. So, you see, where to get names are endless. Just don’t put a fake name there. Most times, employers don't call these people but sometimes they do. And if they call and discover you lied, you have instantly lost the job. What you should do is to inform the people on your list you have their names on your CV in case people contact them.

After this section, you can have hobbies at the resume. Just put 3 or 4 skill that you love doing and that will impress potential employers. Don’t put swimming in there if you are not going for a swimming interview.

Don’t add cooking if it is relevant to the job. App development, web designing, writing are examples of good hobbies that will impress potential employers.

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