 I think to begin with with CVs going to the career service that the university is a really good place to start. They can advise you on best practice what a good CV looks like and they'll also be able to give you a template so you can begin to fill in the different sections rather than starting from scratch with a blank page which can be pretty daunting. So the best way to prepare your CV is to decide on a format, make sure it's structured, keep it concise, you don't need to go over two pages and remember that you're applying for a graduate role so keep your education and your skills at the top of your CV. To prepare for a CV I would start with research, I would look at the company that you are applying for, the role that you're interested in, this allows you to figure out whether the company is actually right for you and whether the role itself is also something that you are truly interested in doing. Also understanding your target audience so if you are going for a creative industry or a corporate industry you can tailor your CV appropriately. I would recommend trying to write your CV from somebody else's perspective talking about yourself. If you're uncomfortable talking about what you did or saying I am this person and I have this experience try and be as objective as possible and talk about yourself as another person and you can always change the pronouns later. Your CV should be approximately two pages long, if it's too short you might be lacking detail, if it's too long it kind of makes us beg the question is all of this relevant? It's also very overwhelming when at Mainframe we receive thousands of CVs a year so we want to be able to look at your CV and kind of get a snapshot of you without having to go two in depth and read between the lines really. At IWA you have to appreciate that we have over two and a half thousand applications per year so we like to see about two pages worth of information on your CV so being succinct but then also providing the detail and context that we need to really understand who you are. So it's a really key thing to get your CV the right length. Somewhere between one to two pages is kind of ideal. If you're trying to squeeze it all into one it might look a bit cluttered and really hard to read but two is kind of a good size especially at the graduate level. We don't expect CVs from students to be any longer than two pages. I've definitely seen some longer ones and I think it's important to keep it really clear, concise and with all the relevant information so no more than two pages, maximum being about three. At the beginning of a student CV I really like to see a short personal statement just to capture in a snapshot who you are, your experiences from each of the different areas of your life and then also finally what you're looking for in a role and in a company. So yeah that's an important part to me. So a personal statement career objective I think with anything it really does come down to you but it's something you need to keep up to date and make sure that it still aligns with what you're looking to do with your career. You're looking for aligns with what the company you're applying to can give you. If you're applying to be an engineer at an accounting firm and that's in your objective you're probably not going to get far along the process. So we don't ask that you include a personal statement or career objective on your CV. This is kind of a case by case and it's more whether you feel that that's relevant on your CV. So for example if you know exactly where you want to be in three to five years time and you've got a clear vision of how to get there then it's really good to put that on. Also sometimes a personal summary can be good to get a feel for that person's personality but again it's not a prerequisite for us. I think your personal statement should rather be included in your cover letter. Your cover letter and your CV are two separate documents. Your CV should be focusing on the facts. So again your work experiences and educational history. No definitely not. We don't ask for a specific skills section on a CV and the reason is we would rather see how you apply those skills so be that through your application questions or how you represent that through a cover letter and we would rather see that incorporated rather than kind of a list of bullet points of skills. I would suggest a technical skills section so if you are studying a degree in computer science or information systems it's really important to list those skills so whether it's the type of languages you've studied coding systems databases definitely but please don't include a personal attributes or competency based list rather try and incorporate those competencies in the body of your work experience. So for example if you think you're a problem solver tell us about how you solved the problem at work what impact it might have had on the business and your role. Yes so it's important to remember that an interviewer sometimes will only review your CV in about five to seven seconds so you want to keep your CV very structured absolutely if you've got technical skills list them separately from your soft skills. I think a separate skills section of Done Well can help you stand out from the crowd Deloitte get about 3,000 graduate applications during their graduate period so you need to be able to stand out but make sure there's skills that do make you stand out so if you have a special skill in a technology something that's different to just your run in the mill attention to detail and communication I think bullet point sort of three or four of your top skills are good to kind of draw the eye of the recruiter and go okay this person's got something we'd like and we want to pursue further. Each CV is different but if you have skills that are relevant to the role definitely put it in there so for example if you had a forklift licence and very good numerical skills I would definitely put that on your CV for us it would highlight that you might be a good candidate for our logistics division but make sure that they are backed up with the examples otherwise it just kind of looks like you're putting it on there for the sake of putting it on there. In terms of the layout of the CV I prefer to see things in chronological order or in different sections according to your voluntary experience your education and your work experience a skills section isn't necessarily important to me I like to see them woven into the different areas of your life that you're talking about however if you're more comfortable in breaking that out separately then that's up to you you have creative control on this one. So in terms of listing your referees if it's someone that's potentially known to the business and would be somebody that the business would respect in that field then absolutely because that could be the reason you get through to an interview otherwise there's no requirement to do so Deloitte wouldn't contact your references until you'd actually been offered the role and at that time because you need to make sure your referees are happy to be a referee for you so we'd ask you to check with them and then we'd make contact. It's definitely not necessary to list your referees on a CV in KPMG's process we would contact you later on down the line if we do need those details. You don't need to list your referees just say referees available upon request. My top three tips with CVs would be to begin with the career service there's no points struggling on your own when they're the experts so go and get some advice from them go and get a template from them and start there. Secondly I would advise that you include hard facts in your CV that focus on the results of what you've achieved say for example if you have bullet points under each of your work experiences or voluntary experiences I want you to list what you did how you did it and why you did it so the why is the result and that's the part that students often miss out we're looking for the impact that you personally delivered so we can imagine the impact that you're going to be able to deliver in a role with us Finally I think you should be quite quantitative in the results that you give so really bring to life the story that you're trying to tell so talk to me about the percentage cost savings that you delivered or how much money you raised for your voluntary charity work we like to see stories with detail and that will set you apart from other students we see two and a half thousand during our campaign so go into the detail and give us facts and figures that we can use to really remember you and understand you with so three of the things for a successful CV so one thing for me personally is I think it's really important when you are applying for a graduate to put your education as further up on the front of your CV as you can because it's really clear for a recruiter then to see who you are what you're studying, things like that I would definitely also recommend putting as much detail on there about work experience, voluntary, extracurriculars, clubs, societies anything you've been involved in all detail is good so there's no detail that will be detrimental to your CV We like to see your hobbies and your interests so this kind of gives us a little bit more understanding about who you are and what you like to get up to outside of work or what you like to get outside of university I would definitely get somebody to look over your CV so proof reading is really really critical grammar and spelling is a critical part of CV writing as well as you could look at making your CV format PDF so once you are sending in your application you might find that the format changes once you send it through to someone else's computer so PDF format is quite good so the most important thing when you are creating your CV is to keep the format neat and tidy keep the information concise and factual one of those things and I come across it quite often is when individuals say that they are very detail orientated or have a strong eye for detail but yet I come across numerous spelling and grammar mistakes so please ensure you use spell check and proof read your CV before you are sending it out I think other things to consider when you are doing a CV and Christian there actually often get asked is whether to include a photo I personally recommend not to include a photo I think it's unnecessary for your skills if you do decide to use a photo make sure that it's appropriate to the company that you are applying for that it's not too casual and that you're smartly dressed within it a photo should be about a headshot of something that you would look like if you were to turn up for an interview however it's a lot easier not to have a photo and everyone's got linked in these days so that's a good shortcut I think something else to consider with your CV and is very important is spell checking if you need to get someone to read over your CV and double or triple check that everything is in line especially if you're going to describe yourself as an accurate person don't misspell the word accurate it's never a good look and if you've been working it's always really helpful to see if that's been part-time or full-time work or if it was over the holidays sometimes it looks like you've been holding a full-time job down while you've been studying two or three different degrees and it's really confusing One of the things that I think can trip people up on the CV is having a photo once again it's your decision whether you do so but if you're going to have one don't make it a selfie in front of the bathroom mirror make it a professional shot the reason I don't personally think photos are good on CVs is that whoever's reviewing it without even thinking about it might have already judged you before they've even had a chance to look at what you can bring to the role this sense of unconscious bias so my recommendation is no but once again it's your CV so you decide whether you want to do that or not another tip for your CV and this sounds really silly but just make sure your contact details are really easy to spot we're going through the recruiter needs to get through things pretty quickly so they need to be able to contact you so make sure those are really clear on your CV First and foremost, please proofread it if you say in your skills section that you've got great attention to detail but then we come down and we see spelling mistakes or punctuation errors it kind of doesn't really match up so you could get your family and friends to proofread it for you if you didn't feel confident in that formatting is really important so if we see a CV that's well formatted it will immediately put us into a more positive frame of mind because it's easy to read, it's clear and well structured and thirdly, put in your personality because we do get so many CVs across our desks every day if you can put your personality in there it will help you stand out from everyone else so for example we had one candidate put on her CV that she plays kayak polo and immediately we were like what is that we never heard of it before so we were immediately intrigued and wanted to get her in to see what it was how much involvement she had with it and why she went there in the first place