"Ideal" Contractor CV

[Scoobos]

The standard of grammar and spelling in your posts is awful, always get someone else to check / proof-read your CV.

[The Spartan]

Mine is 4-5 pages and it was the fact that I had put a lot of effort into in and giving background of my work that got me my current gig

[JohannM]

The standard of grammar and spelling in your posts is awful, always get someone else to check / proof-read your CV.

Awful as in? Thought it was a contractors forum not an English Grammar class. So far I have never had anyone complaining about the spelling mistakes in my CV. BTW English is not my mother tongue but I do get along well.

[SimonMac]

My CV Advice:

Drop most personal information, mine has name, email and phone number on it only, address is irrelevant and takes up valuable space, as does marital statues, age hobbies etc.

Section 1 Personal Statment: 6-8 bullet point statements, very positive in intent and delivery I am, I have, I will...

Section 2 Key Skills: List of technologies used, also include "soft skills" like Project Management if you don't have PRINCE2 qualifications etc

Section 3 Qualifications: Drop GCSE's and A-Levels, keep to degree if you have it and professional courses/membership etc.

This normally takes the first page.

Page two +

Employment history

Each job is Job Title, Organisation and location (Exeter, Leeds, Nottingham rather than full address)

Very brief summary of organisation and the project I worked on, one or two sentences maximum.

4-5 bullet points statements on what I did, and how it helped the project/organisation goal

Skill Summary: List of skills both technical and soft skills used on the project. (I have found this very handy for agents key words search and also they frequently ask when and where you used certain skills)

Rinse and repeat.

This is not hard and fast but it seems to work for me, my only other advice would be to tailor each CV to each submission

[The Spartan]

Try not to take it to heart somewhere in his post there is sound advice I personally hate bad grammar and if I spot it in a C.V. I read it does count against the individual. Your C.V. is a representation of you before you meet the client you want it to stand out as much as possible for the right reasons. Getting someone else to check it is always a good thing as after a while you tend to suffer from word blindness and cannot pick up your own mistakes

[SimonMac]

The standard of grammar and spelling in your posts is awful, always get someone else to check / proof-read your CV.

My grammar and attention is reflective on the importance of what I write, on a CV or Covering Letter it is tulip hot, double checked and checked again. On a random internet forum I don't really care!

[hyperD]

Once I received a 16 (yes, 16) page CV.

I didn't bin it, I framed it.

[JohannM]

Try not to take it to heart somewhere in his post there is sound advice I personally hate bad grammar and if I spot it in a C.V. I read it does count against the individual. Your C.V. is a representation of you before you meet the client you want it to stand out as much as possible for the right reasons. Getting someone else to check it is always a good thing as after a while you tend to suffer from word blindness and cannot pick up your own mistakes

I do think his advice is gold, but attacking me on my grammar on a public forum is a bit too much I guess. But yeah for me its not as easy to write English as you lot.

[JohannM]

My grammar and attention is reflective on the importance of what I write, on a CV or Covering Letter it is tulip hot, double checked and checked again. On a random internet forum I don't really care!

+1

[NorthWestPerm2Contr]

Always kept my CV to 2 pages, but starting to wonder whether I should increase it to 3?