When it comes to preparing your CV, or Resume, take a look at our top tips..
When it comes to preparing your CV (in English people tend to use the term CV) it is worth thinking about who is going to read it. Yes, that means you may well have to tailor your CV depending on the position you are interested in. Remember, the people who have to make a selection only have the information in front of them, so make it as easy as possible.
Let’s say you are a qualified sailing instructor, you have sailed for most of your life and along the way you have entered and won some races. You’ve spent a long time hanging around boats and there is not much you do not know. OK that’s great.
Now let’s say there is a position advertised that wants someone to teach basic sailing skills to young people in Crete. You will be part of a watersports team and the young people will be coming from various different countries and will be with you for up to two weeks, as an example.
So, take a careful look at what is wanted. Of course you must be a confident, and experienced sailor, but it also says you will be working as part of a team and you will be teaching young people – and not for ages either, just a few weeks at a time.
So, in this case it would be helpful to highlight any experience you have had in coaching people – don’t spend ages talking about what an amazing sailor you are, and all those cups you have won in races. You are a confident and experienced sailor – stop. You have helped out at your local sailing club coaching students and you found that rewarding, as well as being a bit of a challenge sometimes. And yes, you are a great team player – as part of a sailing team winning all those cups, yes you know what it takes to be a team player. You are also open to different ideas; after all if you only have your students for a couple of weeks you are not necessarily going to be turning out world-class sailors. Your students are they to have a good time, so you can’t necessarily be a hard task master. This is the sort of thinking process you need to adopt, you are not changing your CV, you are just highlighting the skills and experiences you already have that are directly applicable to the job in question. In this case, if you happened to have visited Crete on holiday yourself then this is something to add in. For another position that fact might be completely pointless. Get the idea?
Parlez-vous francais?
Well, it’s obvious – or should be. Never say something that is not true or accurate. Let’s say you said your French is fluent and you get picked to go somewhere where some guests only speak French. As it happens your role doesn’t really bring you into contact with French speaking guests on a daily basis, so your ‘OK’ French gets you by. Then one day something terrible happens, a child has a sudden allergic reaction to something they have eaten. In a total panic the child’s parents start screaming wilding in French for help, but they also explain, in French, that their child must have a particular emergency injection in order to save their life. You mis-understand and do your best to calm the parents, thinking their child is just choking on a bit of food and will soon recover. Your failure to immediately understand the parents causes a delay in fetching the life saving injection and by the time it does arrive the child is deeply unconscious and at risk of life changing injury.
OK, not your fault directly, perhaps not even your job, but you are wearing a t-shirt that says STAFF or something similar that suggests you are someone anyone can go to in an emergency. You said you could speak French fluently on your CV, as it turned out in the heat of the moment you couldn’t properly understand. Your dishonestly, or failure to be accurate, could result in tragedy.
Maybe a rather dramatic example – but you get the idea. In this example everyone selected for positions at this resort was required to speak fluent French, even if this was only going to be an occasional requirement. If it says fluent French, just as an example, it means it for a reason. So be honest, be accurate, be yourself.
