Writing the Perfect CV for a Job in IT

As competition for jobs in Information Technology (IT) increases, you as a job seeker need to impress any potential employer right from the outset. You may find yourself looking for local firms and speculatively contact them in case they currently have any available IT jobs or may have in the near future. Or you may use an IT recruitment agency to help you find the ideal job for you.

Either way, you're going to need curriculum vitae (CV) to highlight your skills and experience to a potential employer and to the IT recruitment agency, so they can better match you to suitable vacancies.

Your curriculum vitae should be clear and concise; meaning bullet points and short sentences work better than paragraphs. A good CV will always start with personal information such as your name, your address, your telephone numbers and email address. Adding a personal statement can also be advantageous however is careful not to over sell yourself with claims you cannot back up in an interview. There are other personal details such as your qualifications, schooling, hobbies and interests which are best added at the end of your curriculum vitae.

When a potential employer reads your CV they want to see who you are and how to contact you, followed by your employment history. Always start with the most recent post first and work backwards. Usually you are not expected to go back further than 5 years, however if you feel earlier posts are of relevance then include them by all means. Just bear in mind that your CV should be no more than two sides of A4 and in my opinion, filling two sides of A4.

Briefly describe what your role was. i.e. "Responsible for implementing and maintaining a variety of IT solutions such as Sage and Oracle." And follow this with bullet points describing more specific roles. These could include staff training, troubleshooting, researching new software releases and so on. List as many as you can think of then refine the list to the key points. Do they really need to know that you also emptied the bins? Do this for each of your past jobs; list everything then refine.

Remember that you may be asked to go into detail about anything on your CV in an interview, so only state things you can confidently back up. You may find that your CV is over 2 pages long so you need to go back and see what you can either delete or reword more concisely. Do not just make the font size smaller as this will only make it harder to read, and similarly, don't use too large a font to make a short CV fill two pages.

Have family members and close friends look over your CV as a fresh pair of eyes can spot any spelling or grammatical errors you've missed. Any good IT recruitment agency will also highlight areas where your CV could be improved as it's in their interest to get you and everybody else on their books into the most suitable IT jobs for their skills and experience

Carl Liver

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