How do I describe my job on a CV?

This is an area of a CV that is very easy to get wrong and the vast majority of CVs that we see contain some basic errors when describing job roles. The area I’ll cover in this post is the Header.

The Header:
You need to put yourself in the recruiter or employers shoes and consider what they’re looking for in order of importance.

As an example of this lets look at a salesman working for a BMW car dealership.

As the employee the most important thing to you as an individual is that you work for a BMW Dealer; in Sales; and you’ve been there for 3 years.

But a potential new employer with a job vacancy to fill is looking for someone who works in Car Sales; has 3 years experience; preferably with a prestige brand.

So the way you need to present the information on your CV is:

• What do you do?
• How long have you been doing it?
• Who do you do it for?

So it needs to look like this:

Car Sales Executive                               2012 – date

 BMW Lincoln

This may seem a minor point but it’s all part of what makes it easy for an employer or recruiter to quickly understand what you do and whether or not they want to interview you.

In my nest post I’ll cover what comes after the header in more detail.