CV Writing - Employment

Whichever CV format you use, the employment section of your CV is bound to receive a great deal of critical scrutiny from a reader.

For that reason you must strive to make this section as compelling as possible. Remember: your CV is about selling yourself. A CV is a sales pitch just as much as it is a piece of personal history. Yes, in superficial terms it's a record of facts, of things that happened. However, just like history - which in one sense is just a record of stuff that happened - it is all about an interpretation of those facts. You need to positively interpret your experience and marry it up with the kind of qualities that are sought by your prospective employer.

So, when you sit down to write this section, don't just present it as a potted history - examine your experience.

- Which skills did you demonstrate?
- What were the major achievements or milestones in each job?

Once you’ve thought about that, you need to consider how best to present this information.

First things first: where you place the employment section in your CV depends on the kind of CV format you are using. In a traditional, chronological CV it will appear on the first page and will occupy a large part of it. It may either precede or follow the education section - there's no hard and fast rule about that. Which of these sections you want to place first, depends on what aspect of your experience you want to stress and where you are in your career. A new graduate will probably want to flag up his education much more than someone with twenty years of work behind them.

In a functional CV or combined CV both the educational section and employment section follow an introductory Objective Statement, Skills Summary or Career Summary. Nonetheless, the format employed for the employment section remains the same.

What is that format?

First up you should have a header section listing dates worked, the company or organisation name and location, and finally, the job title. How you arrange these elements stylistically is up to you and how much space you can devote to them - space often being a scare commodity in densely packed CVs.

A brief job summary should follow beneath, in which you detail the major duties of the job. Try to make this as concise, dynamic and factual as possible - don't waffle. Don't mention skills or qualities you can't substantiate with reference to events or outcomes.

Finally, beneath the introductory prose summary you should add a bullet-pointed section highlighting your key achievements in that job. Again try to make this as focused and factual as possible. Recruiters hate CVs that claim much but fail to give supporting evidence. Conversely, they love CVs that demonstrate how your past experiences prove your skills and qualities. The layout of the section should look something like this:

01.2004 - 07.2006 - XYZ Corporation, New York

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Investment Analyst
In this role I was mostly involved in activities X, Y, Z. Provide brief, relevant facts, figures and outcomes. This section should extend to no more than three or four sentences but should neatly encompass all the major tasks involved in the job and at the same time highlight major qualities.

Achievements:

• Achievement 1 - I did this with this result, demonstrating this quality.
• Achievement 2 - I did this with this result, demonstrating this quality.
• Achievement 3 - I did this with this result, demonstrating this quality.

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Many people tend to just fill up the bullet points with bald statements or a list of skills. A couple of entries like that are fine, but you should really make the effort to be more expansive and sell yourself to the reader. Whole bullet-pointed lists of skills should be hived off into another section of your CV.

Next time: CV Structure: Education Section of your CV

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