In the United States and Canada, a CV is expected to include a comprehensive listing of professional history including every term of employment, academic credential, publication, contribution or significant achievement. In certain professions, it may even include samples of the person's work and may run to many pages.
In the
European Union, there has been an attempt to develop a standardised CV model known as
Europass (in 2004 by the
European Parliament and
European Commission) and promoted by the EU to ease skilled migration between member countries, although this is not widely used in most contexts.
A standard British CV might have the following points
[1]Personal details at the top, such as name in bold type, address, contact numbers and, if the subject has one, an e-mail address. Photos are not required at all, unless requested. Modern CVs are more flexible.
A personal profile, written in either the first or the third person, a short paragraph about the job seeker. This should be purely factual, and free of any opinion about the writer's qualities such as "enthusiastic", "highly motivated", etc.
A bulleted list of the job seeker's key skills or professional assets alone is somewhat unsophisticated
A reverse chronological list of the job seeker's
work experience, including his or her current role. The CV should account for the writer's entire career history. The career history section should describe achievements rather than duties. The early career can these days be lumped together in a short summary but recent jobs should illustrate concept, planning, achievement, roles.
A reverse chronological list of the job seeker's
education or
training, including a list of his or her
qualifications such as his or her academic qualifications (
GCSEs,
A-Levels,
Highers,
degrees etc.) and his or her professional qualifications (
NVQs and memberships of professional organisations etc.). If the job seeker has just left the place of education, the work experience and education are reversed.
Date of birth,
gender if you have an ambiguous first name, whether you have a
driving licence used to be standard - but nothing is required and you should not waste space on trivia. An employer requesting date of birth and gender needlessly could find itself on the losing side of recent
anti-discrimination legislation.
The job seeker's
hobbies and
interests (optional)
It is obligatory for it to be typed or word-processed, not hand-written.
There are certain
faux pas for CVs:
The CV being longer than two full sides of
A4 paper. (This rule does not apply to academic positions, for which the CV normally includes a complete list of publications and major conference papers. CVs for positions in postsecondary teaching, research, and academic administration may be of any length.)
Writing anything
pejorative about other persons or businesses.
If applying for a specific position, omitting a
covering letter explaining one's suitability.
Implying skills which one does not have.
As with résumés, CVs are subject to recruiting fads. For example,
In German-speaking countries, a picture was a mandatory adjunct to the CV for a long time.
In the huge
Indian job market, photos and good looks are strongly preferred in the
service industry (
hotels,
aviation, etc.) and in sales-
marketing,
front office and
customer service jobs. Additionally, Indian employers prefer lengthy résumés.
Including a photograph of the applicant is strongly discouraged in the U.S. as it would suggest that an employer would discriminate on the basis of a person's appearance —
age,
race,
sex,
attractiveness, or the like. The theatre and modeling industries are exceptions, where it is expected that résumés will include photographs; actors refer to such photos as
head shots.
When listing non-academic employment in the U.S., the newest entries generally come first (reverse chronological).
The use of an "objective statement" at the top of the document (such as "Looking for an entry-level position in stores") was strongly encouraged in the U.S. during the mid-1990s but fell out of favor by the late-1990s. However, with the avalanche of résumés distributed via the Internet since the late 1990s, an "objective" and/or "skills summary" statement has become more common to help recruiters quickly determine the applicant's suitability. It is not prevalent elsewhere.
A profiling statement (or thumbnail description) was a protocol developed by placement agencies in the late 1980s. Many candidates now open their CV with such a statement. This can be a short paragraph or a handful of bullet points delineating the candidate's most desirable skills and experiences.
Listing of computer skills (such as proficiency with word processing software) was a strong differentiator during the 1980s but was considered
passé for most professional positions by the 1990s.
In the 1980s and early 1990s in the U.S., the trend was to not allow a résumé to exceed one page in length. In the late 1990s, this restriction fell out of vogue, with two- or even three-page résumés becoming common.
[
edit] Online résumés
The Internet has brought about a new age for the résumé. As the search for employment has become more electronic, résumés have followed suit. It is common for employers to only accept résumés electronically, either out of practicality or preference. This electronic boom has changed much about the way résumés are written, read, and handled.
Job seekers must choose a
file format in which to maintain their résumé. Many employers, especially recruitment agencies on their behalf, insist on receiving résumés only as
Microsoft Word documents. Others will only accept résumés formatted in
HTML,
PDF, or plain
ASCII text.
Many potential employers now find candidates' résumés through
search engines, which makes it more important for candidates to use appropriate keywords when writing a résumé.
Including an e-mail address in an online résumé may expose the job seeker to
spam (see
Spambot).
Some career fields include a special section listing the life-long works of the author. For computer-related fields, the
softography; for musicians and composers, the
discography; for actors, a
filmography.
Keeping résumés online has become increasingly common for people in professions that benefit from the multimedia and rich detail that are offered by an HTML résumé, such as actors, photographers, graphic designers, developers, dancers, etc.
Job seekers are finding an ever increasing demand to have an electronic version of their résumé available to employers and professionals who use
Internet recruiting at any time. Internet résumés differ from conventional résumés in that they are comprehensive and allow for self-reflection. Unlike regular 2 page résumés, which only show recent work experience and education, Internet résumés also show an individual's skill development over his or her career.
For job seekers, taking résumés online also facilitates distribution to multiple employers via Internet. Online résumé distribution services have emerged to allow job seekers to distribute their résumés to employers of their choices via email.
Another advantage to internet résumés is the significant cost savings over traditional hiring methods. The Employment Management Association has included internet advertising in its cost-per-hire surveys for several years. In 1997, for example, it reported that the average cost-per-hire for a print ad was $3,295, while the average cost-per-hire with the Internet was $377.
[2] This in turn has cut costs for many growing organizations, as well as saving time and energy in recruitment. Until the development of résumés in an electronic format, employers would have to sort through massive stacks of paper to find suitable candidates without any way of filtering out the poor candidates. Employers are now able to set search parameters in their database of résumés to reduce the number of résumés which must be reviewed in detail in the search for the ideal candidate.
Finally, the internet is enabling new technologies to be employed with résumés, such as video résumés--especially popular for multimedia job seekers. Another emerging technology is graphic-enabled résumés, such as Visual CV.
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