Disclaimer: there isn’t really 10,000 don’ts, in fact there is only one. But it is pretty darn important. I’ve written and read enough CV’s to have a pretty good idea what constitutes a good CV and what constitutes good bin liner and so I thought I’d share my thoughts. Let’s start with the Do’s:

Do’s

Don’t:

At some point in all our working lives, we will decide to move on and look for a new job. Inevitably, this means we need to update our CV. And this can be a daunting and time-consuming process; there is so much conflicting advice on what a CV should look like (but trust me the advice I have you above is pure gold of course!), it’s enough to put you off finding a new job. But one piece of advice that everyone will universally agree on is “don’t lie on your CV”. It sure is a tempting thing to do; you may feel that your skills don’t match what people are looking for in your profession: maybe you felt you’ve become “de-skilled” and are only good for the niche you have found yourself in at your current place of work. But the fact is, unless you are actually really bad at your job, you will have skills, soft or technical, that employers will be looking for. But supposing you give in and decide to lie on your CV. Maybe something like….. you have some experience in managing replication in SQL Server. It’s a highly sought after skill, it’s probably the most challenging feature in SQL Server. Let’s play out a few scenarios here: