Posted By Stuart Nagle
Take heed of the good advice from david.
In addition, these are the headings that are on my CV ( and positioned centally on the page with the text under each section in text boxes squared off and the text box centred on the page. Using text boxes is a good idea as it's easy to change them and copy paste to a backup CV sheet for differing applications - see the previous advice - and that I have good results with in the past:
1) Personal Details should be included at the top I have mine in nice columns starting with; DOB, Nationality, address and marital status (single, married divorced etc).
next column is desciption heading only, telephone, fax, e-mail - AND ONLY IF REQUESTED TO DO SO - DETAILS OF SALARY
All in all about 7 lines deep on the page
the final column has the information above in it , lined up accordingly.
2) Membership of Professional Bodies;
Listing memberships, designatory letters and date of joining
7 Lines deep on the page
3) Qualifications;
A list of qualifications held in date order including any specific qualifications related to the application listed togeather and seperated by 1 line from the main body
16 lines down the page
4) Executive Summary;
19 lines of text summing up me personally in my work environment, personal assets, how long I been married how many kids, their ages etc and what I enjoy doing in my own time etc.
5) Employment History;
List of employers in reverse date order stating with most recent and so on.
Bold heading with employers name and date from/to etc, and then a brief but all encompassing description of tasks (leaning towards the individual job being applied for and often using many of the words and phrases in their own advert, job descption and information or phrases picked up after speaking to someone about the post on the phone.
For example longest section should be current employer (if possible) and then slightly shorter details on previous posts.
Mine is as follows...
Current post 10 lines down page
last post - 9 lines down page
remainder 5 posts are an average of 7 lines down page per post.
Don't be wordy, use short descriptive items and don't be affraid of using lots of commas, i.e,
Reporting to (....), responsible for the provision of health and safety management, design, formulation, operation, management and auditing of complex safe systems of work, defining extent of systems and operations to which safe systems of work extend. Managing the duties of (x) other (title) and (x)+ appointed (X) Persons employed on/or in (x) Establishments (in UK and X), NHS Trust and various facilities management and PFI/PPP contracts nation-wide. Other responsibilities include assessing, interviewing, appointing and overseeing of (x) Persons, training of (x) Persons and (x's). Additional duties include the formulation and publishing of Company health and safety policies and procedures in respect of (x) works. Formulation, management and instruction of training courses, Managing and lecturing on (x)training and refresher courses for (x,x,x etc).
I have used Arial 10 Point bold for headings and 9 point normal for body text which is still good and readable but gives suffcient room for my entire CV to be spaced out well on just 2 pages (which is the max number of pages you should use!!)
Hope that above is of some use to you....
best regards...
Stuart Nagle