The Obvious Stuff That Needs to Be in Your CV

Put your address in. If you’re bothered by confidentiality or security, at least put the town in – people need to be able to know where you’re based.

Date of birth is a personal choice. It makes no difference because employers can usually work out your birth year anyway.

Contact details. As obvious as this sounds, I’ve seen plenty of CVs without contact details.

Profile. Try to keep the management speak to a minimum. Capture yourself as a person and a professional in a snapshot and use your own tone.

Ignore in-service qualifications? Absolutely not. It might be worth explaining what they are and why they’re relevant, but they can add a lot of value if explained well.

Run it through a grammar and spell checker even if you think it’s right.

Leave in military abbreviations? Yes but explain it the first time. Imagine it’s being ready but a civvy who either isn’t too bright or is completely unfamiliar to the Forces world.

List your responsibilities? Yes, but you must also cover your key achievements as well The responsibility outlines what and whom you are responsible for and the achievement shows the RESULT. How can you get that result to land? Employers get excited when they see specifics around how you have helped a business to save money, make money, save time or lead a team to do one or more of the first 3. Make them visualise you in the role producing the same results for them. BE SPECIFIC.

There can sometimes be value in explaining the detail around the modules in a military course. A CV I checked recently had this in and it landed really well with me. It outlined the syllabus and what was covered; this can help a civvy tp understand what you actually did and make you more relatable. If you can also transfer this same tone and feel into the body of your CV you have a really good chance of getting an interview.

The CV has 1 job – to get you an interview, not to get you the job. This is only the start of the work but if you produce a good CV at least it puts you in the mix.

I’ve seen some very technical CVs that don’t translate well. If a civvy can’t get their head around what you do in your role it doesn’t matter if you’re the Chief of Defence Staff – they won’t get it. Help them to understand. What would your equivalent in civvy street be? What would they be doing? This is a great mindset to have.

Put dates in your CV? Always.

Disguise your military background. NEVER.

Keep or lose hobbies and interests? Absolutely keep in. If there is a relatable point in your CV that lands with an employer they can often spend 20 minutes just talking about that and all the time you are building rapport.