The Association of Graduate Recruiter’s (AGR) annual summer survey 2013 has recently reported that graduates are facing ever greater competition for jobs, with leading UK employers now receiving 85 applications for each advertised job.
Stephen Isherwood, AGR’s new Chief Executive advises graduates to ‘be competitive and strategic in your approach to applications – and keep persevering.’
So how should you best apply this advice to your graduate CV?
To help you to put these recommendations into practice, I’ve put together a comprehensive, section-by-section guide to building your graduate CV.
Our graduate CV writing packages are also a very competitively-priced option if you decide you’d rather hire a professional.
Name and Contact Details
Avoid writing “Curriculum Vitae” at the top of your CV – it is obvious to employers what the document is, therefore you won’t need to state the obvious. Instead replace this with your name in a larger font. This will help the recruiter to remember it. Your personal contact details should follow this before going into the main body of your CV.
Headline
Using a headline at the top of your graduate CV is a good tactic to position yourself as a strong candidate in the reader’s mind. Before the profile, state clearly your professional moniker; an overarching description that confirms to the reader from the outset that it is worth their while to continue reading your CV. Example headlines could read along the lines of Business Graduate, Aspiring Business Analyst or Graduate Researcher. One simple way to position yourself as a ‘fit’ for the role is to describe yourself in the terms used by your target employer.
Profile
Include a targeted, concise and well-written profile to illustrate your skills, experience and future potential to prospective employers. This paragraph should sum you up as an individual, detailing what you have to offer and what motivates you within your chosen career. Your profile should make it easy for employers to see what your main selling points and experience are.
Employers are looking for graduates with the potential to succeed within their organisation, given the right training and opportunities to shine. With this in mind, your CV profile needs to highlight your potential to become a valued employee, using the solid foundation you have already achieved through academic achievements, key competencies and transferable skills.
Objective
Outline in one or two lines your objective for applying to the target organisation in the context of your overall career ambitions, skills and experience.
Education
As a new or recent graduate, your focus to date will have been primarily your education and so you will not be expected to have an extensive work history. Therefore, unless you have been employed in a relevant role since graduating, it is advisable to detail your academic history and qualifications directly after your profile section.
List your university, years of attendance, degree title and relevant modules. If you haven’t yet graduated, indicate when you are due to finish the course.
Summarise older qualifications in a similar manner, however, avoid listing GCSE subjects and grades; it is sufficient to indicate that you have, for example, 9 GCSEs including Mathematics and English.
Leave off any irrelevant awards and achievements. Listing everything can make candidates seem immature, and also leaving some things off gives you new information to add at an interview.
Key Skills
You can consider using a Key Skills section on your CV, either immediately after Education or after Experience. The Key Skills should use snappy two to three word bullets, and describe the transferable business skills (e.g. Quantitative Research or Report Writing), rather than soft skills (e.g. Communication Skills), that you can bring to your target employer. Ideally, these should reflect the skills outlined in the target job advert, description and person specification.
This section, which can be skim-read very easily, is a godsend to the recruiter who needs to quickly locate the words that enable them to tick, tick, tick the boxes.
Work Experience
This section can be used to outline all paid or unpaid work experience which may be of interest to a potential employer. You can break your experience down into relevant and other work experience, with your most pertinent experience featuring first on page one of your CV.
Recruiters are keen to understand what drives you to pursue your chosen career. Demonstrate your motivation by detailing any experience which has developed and used the skills pertinent to your desired job. Relevant work placements, research projects and general employment can be used to show recruiters what you have to offer and entice them to find out more.
You can use general work experience to illustrate transferable skills of interest to your target employer, even if these are not directly relevant to your chosen field. For each role, use key achievements to illustrate key competencies such as customer service, teamwork, communication and interpersonal skills, organisation, time management and the ability to learn quickly and work hard.
Your graduate CV will be more compelling if you can evidence your claims with specific examples of what you did and the benefits of your actions. Talk about what you achieved rather than your team as a whole. Make your statements SMART wherever possible – Specific, Measurable, Action Orientated, Realistic and Time-Based – detailing for example the amount of money you saved, the number of clients you served, over what specific time period and with what benefit to the organisation as a whole. For instance, it’s easy to state you have experience in sales, but employers will take more note if you say you were responsible for a 10 per cent growth in overall sales over a six-month period.
Although it is important to document any work experience you do have, don’t worry too much about a lack of employment experience. As a graduate you are not expected to have worked extensively and your focus to date will have been your academic studies. What you need to draw out is your employability – how have you used your initiative; examples of successfully handling pressurised or difficult situations; dependability; and your ability to adapt and react to changing environments.
Additional Information
An additional information section can be used to outline skills, experience and memberships not covered elsewhere in the CV. Languages, IT skills, professional memberships and relevant extra-curricular interests can all be covered in this section.
Cover Letter
Always send your CV with a tailored covering letter explaining why you are applying for the role. Without a covering letter, your CV may end up straight in the bin. At a basic level, your cover letter is a courteous and polite introduction to your CV. A good cover letter will show that you have researched and understood the role you are applying for and that you have an idea about how the company operates and its vision for the future. By doing your homework, you can make your cover letter come alive by showing your enthusiasm, motivation and positive attitude.
Graduate CVs – Hints and Tips
Your CV is your personal sales brochure – it should be easy to read, interesting, and memorable.
Tailor your CV and cover letter to each position you apply for, so your documents are relevant to each job and interesting to each target employer.
Your most relevant experience, qualifications and skills must feature on page one of your CV.
Use well-defined sections to make your CV easier to read and understand.
Graduate CVs should be between one and two pages in length.
Avoid including irrelevant details such as your height, weight, date of birth, gender, marital status, primary school education, religious affiliation or sexual orientation.
Check, check and check again for spelling, grammar and punctuation.
Use black type and an easily legible simple font like Arial, Tahoma or Verdana.
Although most applications are now by email, if you do need to print your CV, use high quality 100gsm white or off-white paper.
Need some help with writing your graduate CV? Check out our graduate CV writing packages from just £59.
Lis McGuire
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