CV's

Now for the hard part !!

When did CV's become so complicated ?? Gone are the days of putting Curriculum Vitae at the top, followed by name, address etc and your date of birth (which you can no longer do due to age discrimination laws) and listing every place of employment, every school you have ever attended and every qualification you have and of course references.

Now it has to start with your name where Curriculum Vitae used to be followed by contact details, it can’t be more than 2 pages long which means you leave off half or more of your information. For example I was told recently not to list my secondary school education just my degree and my A levels as I wouldn’t have been accepted onto these courses without gaining the necessary GCSE’s, which makes sense but goes against everything I was taught in school about writing a CV. 

CV’s also have to have key words in them (confused so was I) I spoke to a colleague who deals with CV’s and she pointed me in the right direction, when talking about your duties at a former employers to use words such as responsible, managing, focused, decisive, versatile and resourceful ! How I am supposed to know these things ? I have been  to a Government Agency that's supposed to help me with writing my CV several times and not once did they mention having keywords in my CV.

So after many many rewrites with several people looking it over my CV it is update and ready to distribute to prospective employers, but how many employers actually ask for a CV these days ??