2011: Expert CV Tip of the Week 7

The How to Make a CV Tip of the Week 7 is:

“Use a smaller overall font to make your CV content look tidier“

Another simple piece of CV advice this week. I would always advise using a slightly smaller CV font size. Using a smaller font size in your CV employs a number of benefits; 1) You fit more information in a smaller amount of space, thus allowing you to better ‘market’ and ‘sell’ yourself to employers with additional text and CV information, 2) The overall look of your CV will appear tidier, as text will be blocked up and pushed together tighter, 3) Your CV formatting will seem more professional due to efficient use of space, and 4) You can section off your resume in a better structured manner as you will have more CV space available ‘to play with’. It also has the added benefit of allowing you to use the space to incorporate various different designs for your curriculum vitae. Generally speaking, your CV should be 10-12 font size, so in accordance with the advice here I would say that size 10 in most cases will look better and be more suitable for your CV format.

You will always get people that might advise against and disagree with this expert CV tip of the week, and in some cases there are valid points. Negative points for example, include making sure the CV text font size is not too small that the average reader will struggle to make out the words! Plus in some cases people may not read thoroughly the CV text that too small, as they may be put off by the ‘bulkiness’ appearance of the curriculum vitae. With font size, it’s about making an educated judgement and generally speaking the benefits of having a slightly smaller overall text size outweigh the drawbacks as it’s unlikely that you will often find an employer for a job that will penalise you for font being too small.

The final point to make about CV font size when judging the format of your resume, is that you don’t want people to get the impression that you’ve padded out the space by using a LARGER FONT SIZE, because your curriculum vitae is likely to end up in the bin.

Make the most of your CV body / curriculum vitae text-> use the a smaller CV font size!

More Expert CV Tips of the Week

2011: Expert CV Tip of the Week 6

2011: Expert CV Tip of the Week 5 / Month 2

2011: Expert CV Tip of the Week 4

2011: Expert CV Tip of the Week 3

2011: Expert CV Tip of the Week 6

The How to Make a CV Tip of the Week 6 is:

“Justify your curriculum vitae content / CV text“

Really simply and easy tip this week. Basically, in the majority of cases, where there are numerous lines of text in your CV body you should be looking to use the ‘justify text’ tool. This puts the text pushed up against both the left and the right margins and creates a more professional overall look about your CV / resume.  The justify button on most programs looks something like this:

This is only a very subtle amendment to your overall CV formatting but in my opinion, and in may other peoples opinion that I’ve discussed this with, justified text makes enough of a difference to the tidiness of a document to make it well worthwhile implementing.

Tidy your CV body / curriculum vitae text-> use the ‘text justification’ tool, fool!

2011: Expert CV Tip of the Week 5 / Month 2

The How to Make a CV Tip of the Week 5 also happens to be the How to Make a CV Tip of the Month for Feb:

“Don’t allow someone else to write the CV version that YOU will submit“

There are many CV writing resources available to users on the internet and even via recruitment companies or high street career advisors. Many will charge you for their time, and in some cases the advice will be free. One thing is for certain, if a CV is fully written by someone else on your behalf, it should be tweaked to suit your writing style before you submit it to a job advert. Think about this as a scenario – you turn up to interview having submitted the ‘perfect’ curriculum vitae for the job role! Fantastic! The only problem is that you used a CV writing service and submitted the new CV version that they sent back to you and you don’t know exactly what has been written on your behalf! It’s going to be a messy interview when they speak about items in your CV that you don’t recognise or,  in extreme cases, even know the meaning of particular words written in your CV!

In essence you need to make sure that your personality comes through within the resume that you submit because it will be very clear to the interviewer if this is not the case.

If you have to use a CV writing service -> make sure you check and tweak the resulting CV outcome of your investments by adding your personal touch

Related articles:

2011: Expert CV Tip of the Week 1/Month 1

2011: Expert CV Tip of the Week 2

2011: Expert CV Tip of the Week 3

2011: Expert CV Tip of the Week 4

2011: Expert CV Tip of the Week 4

The How to Make a CV Tip of the Week 4 is:

“Get your CV proof-read, numerous times”

2011: Expert CV Tip of the Week 3

The How to Make a CV Tip of the Week 3 is:

“Write the CV from the perspective of the intended reader”