MY FUTURE PROFESSION Picture 14.1

What should I include in my CV?

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  Contact details - Include your full name, home address, mobile number and email address. Your date of birth is irrelevant and unless you're applying for an acting or modelling job you don't need to include a photograph. If you have a professional networking profile, website or online portfolio link to it within your contact details.
  
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  Profile - A CV profile is a concise statement that highlights your key attributes and helps you stand out from the crowd. Usually placed at the beginning of a CV it picks out a few relevant achievements and skills, while expressing your career aims. A good CV profile focuses on the sector you're applying to, as your cover letter will be job specific. Discover how to write a personal statement for your CV.
  
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  Education - List and date all previous education, including professional qualifications. Place the most recent first. Include qualification type/grades, and dates. Mention specific modules only where relevant.
  
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  Work experience - List your work experience in reverse date order, making sure that anything you mention is relevant to the job you're applying for. Include your job title, the name of the company, how long you were with the organisation and key responsibilities. If you have plenty of relevant work experience, this section should come before education.
  
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  Skills and achievements - This is where you talk about the foreign languages you speak, and the IT packages you can competently use. The skills that you list should be relevant to the job. Don't exaggerate your abilities, as you'll need to back up your claims at interview. If you've got lots of job-specific skills, you should do a skills-based CV.
  
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  Interests - ‘Socializing’, ‘going to the cinema’ and ‘reading’ aren't going to catch a recruiter’s attention. However, relevant interests can provide a more complete picture of who you are, as well as giving you something to talk about at interview. Examples include writing your own blog or community newsletters if you want to be a journalist, being part of a drama group if you're looking to get into sales and your involvement in climate change activism if you'd like an environmental job. If you don't have any relevant hobbies or interests leave this section out.
  
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  References - You don’t need to provide the names of referees at this stage. You can say ‘references available upon request’ but most employers would assume this to be the case so if you're stuck for space, leave this out.