Behind the marketing message of your CV, there is always an element of a timeline, requiring you to remember and present a series of dates. Dates can make or break a CV, and further or diminish your suitability as judged by a recruiter. Here are some handy dos and don’ts of presenting dates on your CV.
Your date of birth
Don’t include your age or date of birth on your CV. It is not necessary, and including it could indicate to recruiters that you are out of touch with current requirements.
Don’t include an email address which clearly incorporates your year of birth – see above.
Dates within your profile
If you have an extensive history within a particular type of role or industry, do indicate the number of years you have worked in this field. A great place to include this information on your CV is in your profile, at the top of page one. Examples include ‘seven years’ experience at C-Level’ or ‘over 20 years’ learning and development experience’.
Dates within your career history
Don’t feel obliged to list your entire career history, outlining what you have done for the past 10 to 15 years is perfectly acceptable. It is better to show experience as relevant for a particular opportunity, than to outline all roles held since year dot of your career.
Do list your experience in reverse chronological order within each section, so that your current or most recent role is presented first. You can still split your experience into Relevant Experience and Other Experience, with relevant experience appearing first on your CV, but make sure that each section uses the reverse chronological format.
Do make sure that the dates in your career history stack up, ideally showing a seamless transition from one role or experience to another.
Recognising that not every jobseeker has a continuous career history, do explain any gaps in your career history in a clear and concise way. Using years rather than months and years is a good way to deflect attention from short gaps in employment, though if you have a gap-free career history, I’d personally opt for the month and year approach.
Do list dates consistently throughout your career history. If you indicate January 2003 – March 2005 as the dates you undertook one particular role, follow this format (full month name and year) throughout your career history. I tend to abbreviate dates within the career history to give the first three letters of the month name and the year, for example Jan. 2003 – Mar. 2005.
Don’t be tempted to fudge the dates. It might present a temporary solution, but truly it is not worth fudging your employment dates.
Do list your current role as <<insert date>> – Present. Writing Oct. 2003 – Jan. 2015 would suggest that you have completed this period of employment.
If you are not currently employed, and have only recently finished your last employed role, do indicate the month and year your employment finished. For example, listing Oct. 2003 – Dec. 2014 would clearly show that you have only recently finished your last employed role, whereas 2003 – 2014 leaves the reader unsure as to whether your role finished in January 2014 or December 2014, and if you have been unemployed since, this could make quite a difference to how you are perceived.
Do give the date (month and year, or just year) of a promotion to show career progression.
Don’t be afraid to group short-term contracts and projects of a similar nature under one date period. You may wish to indicate the duration of short-term contracts or projects undertaken, for example, ‘Delivered a six-month project to relocate the fish finger production facility, driving monthly production savings of £200k’.
Dates of education and professional training
Do list your education and professional training in reverse chronological order. You may wish to consider breaking the information up into two separate sections, depending on how many qualifications and courses you are listing.
Don’t always detail secondary school education. If you are a graduate with several years’ experience under your belt, or you have further tertiary education to list on your CV, there is no real need to list your A Level or GCSE qualifications, as these will have been prerequisite to your university education. Similarly, I often see non-graduate C-level executives wondering about whether to list A Levels or O Levels. In fact, this could then draw unnecessary attention to a missing degree, when the experience gained since school or university is far more relevant and compelling.
Do include the date of your degree if you are a recent graduate. If you gained your degree ten, twenty, or thirty years ago, then you can opt to list your degree without the date you acquired it.
Don’t include and list dates for every professional training course you have ever completed. Instead, think about what the reader will want and expect to see, and remove anything that represents white noise. As a general rule of thumb, do make sure you are consistent, so if you list the date you completed one course, follow suit for others.
Do show that your certifications are current. Some certifications expire after a number of years, so make it clear that yours are current by indicating the date of attainment and re-certification.
Lis McGuire
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Hello Ms. McGuire,
Apart from theose dates mentioned here, I write place and date at the bottom of my CV. Many times I feel annoyed by changing the date to the application date. I felt having a CV with no date at the bottom would save me a lot of time. Instead I can mention the date in the cover letter i attach before the CV. Does it make sense to have just your CV without place and date at the end?
Thanks in advance
It is absolutely fine to leave the date off your CV. Thank you for reading and commenting. Lis