How to write a CV

Your CV should include six different areas of information; personal details, education and qualifications, work experience, interests and achievements, skills and referees.

Normally your personal details would be your name, date of birth, address, telephone number and email.

For your education you should mention your university and degree subject; any relevant school work should also be included. Remember the reader of your CV may be used to a different scale of grades to you; you might be a Chinese graduate applying to a Western company or university, for instance. Therefore it is important establish how grades are scaled in your country. It is only necessary to mention accomplishments that show your best side; no need to state poor results and don’t lie! Many people use reverse chronological order when listing dates; that is, start with the most recent date first and work backwards. Both chronological and reverse chronological are acceptable but stick with the same throughout your CV.

Work experience should emphasis skills that relate to the job you are applying for. Show how the experience developed you, so even working in a shop or restaurant involves working in a team and providing a quality service. Likewise if you are looking for a finance job, focus on numeracy and problem solving skills, whereas for marketing emphasis negotiating abilities. You may not have had much experience if you are a graduate student but don’t forget to mention internships; use them to show what you learnt and improved and what your responsibilities were.

Interests and achievements should be kept reasonably short. As you grow older your employment section will lengthen and this section will diminish. It is a good chance for you to mention any interests relevant to the job: current affairs if you want to be journalist. Examples of leadership: captain of a sports team, chair of a student society. Any similar evidence that shows skills such as team working, organising and planning would be useful to put in as well. Bullet points give your CV a clear and easy to read look, so use them to separate your interests into different types. Like this:

Reading (but give examples: I enjoy reading historical novels because they make the past come alive)

Ice skating (make sure you don’t just use passive interests or you will seem boring. Out of the ordinary hobbies make you stand out from the crowd)

Try not to use the same clichés as other people切記不要使用陳詞濫調(diào)。Skills are things like languages, computing and driving. For languages, list all the languages you speak, with a one word description of your knowledge of that language; conversational, intermediate, advanced and fluent. You can also list any certificates and results like IELTS scores, with date. Computer skills should include everything you know; good working knowledge of MS Word and Excel etc. Driving; full current clean driving licence.

Usually two referees are enough; one academic and one an employer. Your academic referee could be your tutor or a member of staff who knew you well; such as a project supervisor. Your employer could be from your last part time or summer job if you are a graduate job seeker. A family friend is also possible but ideally they should have some professional position such as a banker, teacher or doctor. In any case the key point is that your referees should know you well enough to be able to write positively about you.

Referees (noun)????References, people who act as references

Scaled (verb)?????Measured

Chronological (adj)???Arranged in order of time of occurrence

Stick with (verb)????Stay with

Numeracy (noun)???Skill with numbers and mathematics

Internships (noun)?Position of students doing supervised practical training

Diminish (verb)????Make smaller or less

Clichés (noun)????Overused expressions

Tutor (noun)?University teacher, responsible for the supervision of a certain group of students

Project supervisor (noun)?Person who directs a project