Your CV is your sales brochure – this is the only chance you have to impress potential employers and secure an interview for that new position you are seeking.

Based on over eighteen years of experience in the recruitment industry, Sprint Engineering Recruitment staff know how to prepare and present a CV to give you the best possible chance of securing an interview and promoting your skills effectively, and we can review and often improve your CV before we present it to potential employers.

There is certain information that needs to be included and some that isn’t required, and we will collate all of this for you from your current CV and in discussion to create an individual sales document, tailored specifically around you. The CV we prepare for you (and indeed the one you may prepare for yourself) should include the following details:

• Personal Information
• Training & Qualifications
• Work Experience
• Interests

Your CV is a précis of your educational and professional history and it should provide a potential employer with enough interesting, relevant information to secure you an interview.

A CV should be honest and accurate. It’s important that you don’t volunteer negative information, but you shouldn’t leave gaps in your work history because you will be asked about these at interview.

Collect all relevant information about yourself before you start. In fact, as your career progresses there will be more and more of this, so it’s good practice to keep an up-to-date record of qualifications, jobs, training courses and achievements. You can then refer to this list when you’re making a career move.

Personal Details
Your full name, address, home telephone number, date of birth, marital status. State whether you have a full clean driving licence and whether you are prepared to consider relocating to another area. If you have foreign language skills which may be relevant, list them and indicate whether your skills are spoken, written, business or technical. Also indicate your level of fluency: fluent, good working knowledge etc.

Education / Qualifications
List your qualifications and education history - for example:

• BSc (Hons) 2.1 in Physics,
• HNC Electrical Engineering.
• A Levels: Maths, English, Chemistry.
• GCSEs (or O Levels): Maths, English Language, History, Geography, French, Chemistry, Biology
  

Professional Qualifications
List your professional qualifications and membership of professional associations.
If you recently completed a college or university degree or equivalent, you could provide details of the course modules if the subject you studied is relevant to the job for which you are applying.

Training Courses
List any work-related training courses which you attended, including company-sponsored courses and any you attended on your own initiative. List any qualifications gained.

Profile
Write a single 3-4 line paragraph that provides details of your major skills, strengths, personal qualities and achievements. Be specific, e.g. good team player, excellent written skills, versatile, able to motivate others, etc. Look at your staff appraisals or at your references. This is the first real opportunity to show how you match the job requirements, so take care with this and it can really make a big difference, but be careful not to oversell yourself.

Work Experience
If you have been working for a number of years you do not need to include any part-time jobs or unpaid work experience. However, you might want to include these jobs if they covered a period of unemployment, or if you feel that some of the experience you gained will be useful in your next job. You should normally concentrate on your two or three most recent jobs (unless you were there for only a short time), because employers are most interested in these.

Start with your most recent or last job and work backwards. For each position (treat internal promotion as a new job and record the dates separately), give the name of the company and your job title (e.g. Fitter, Service Engineer, Commissioning Engineer etc...) and indicate when you started and finished in each job. Include a full description of the products that you sold and your target markets. Be careful when you use product or market-specific abbreviations - they can be misunderstood.

Set out your main responsibilities, achievements, duties and skills that could be transferred to another employer. Be specific and positive about your skills, e.g. 'in-depth knowledge of hydraulic systems and controls' would be a better description of your abilities than ‘hydraulic skills'.

In particular list any significant achievements you had in each position, including large projects you have worked on/major installations completed on time and within budget. Quantify your successes if possible. ‘Installed and commissioned new 50MW steam turbine system’ is more interesting and positive than just saying ‘worked on steam turbines’. Try to give an indication of how you achieved this success. You should try to include some achievements such as being recognised as the technical expert in your company, most satisfied customers etc., and any information that may be relevant to your next job. You need to shout about your achievements. Please remember that your CV is your sales document. If it does not tell the reader why he or she should employ you, it has failed. Employers will only want to employ you if they can see a benefit in it for themselves. So do tell them the benefits of employing you.

Include your level of responsibility if any, e.g. 'responsibility for departmental budget of £100K and managed 10 staff'. Your achievements may sell you to an employer and make them choose you for an interview rather than someone else. For this reason it is vital that you think carefully about your achievements.

Other Experience
List any computer skills you have, including the make and type of equipment with which you are familiar, the software and operating system used, e.g. IBM compatible PC, Microsoft Windows 95, Microsoft Office 97.

Interests / Hobbies
List your interests, hobbies and any sports you play. List any positions of responsibility you hold or have held in any club or organisation and say what your responsibilities and achievements were.

References
You do not need to list referees on a CV, but it is a good idea to think about whom you could ask.

A CV should not be more than two A4 pages. A longer CV should only be considered if you have previous relevant experience that cannot be covered within the first two pages, i.e. the last two or three jobs. Clarity and organisation are very important when it comes to reading and interpreting a CV, so you have to consider how someone else will view your CV and whether they can easily find the relevant information that will allow them to know that you are the person for the job.

A few tips on layout and presentation:

• don’t overdo the typefaces and design; less is definitely more
• be meticulous about spelling, grammar and neatness
• leave plenty of white space
• use headings, bold and italic type to help the reader navigate
• make the font size 12 points so it’s easy to read
• keep sentences and paragraphs short but informative and use bullet points for product lists/target markets if necessary

While many people have one CV, it is worth spending time on tailoring a CV to a specific job, especially if you’re serious about getting it. Again this is something that we do - every time your CV is presented to a specific client we will have reviewed and amended as necessary to suit the job specifications, saving you the time and effort and allowing you to benefit from our experience and client knowledge. Read the advertisement and person specification and make sure that you show how you meet the criteria. The summary is a useful place to achieve this if the standard layout of work experience and key achievements doesn’t cover the points well enough for you.

First impressions matter; if your CV does not attract the reader's attention in the first 20-30 seconds, your chances of obtaining an interview are greatly reduced. An employer may have a hundred or more CVs to look through and probably only a couple of hours in which to make a selection.

Finally, working with us on the preparation of your CV makes sure that the CV conjures up the right image of you and your skills, capabilities and achievements and sells you effectively, ultimately ensuring that you secure the next step in your engineering career.