How to write the perfect CV

Ah, the dreaded CV. Most of us are caught off guard when we’re asked for our CV, racking our brains about where the USB stick, we saved it onto is from 5 years ago. Starting a new CV is even more testing, leaving us clueless about what we have been doing for all of these years.

Here at Staffroom, we receive CV’s through every day, so we have the pleasure of sifting through the good, the bad and the ugly! We have collated a few different tips to help you create a great CV!

1. Up to date contact details

Now then, this may seem like an obvious place to start but you’ would be surprised how many phone numbers we call that don’t exist, or email addresses that bounce back. Contact details are the number one most important aspect of your CV, we may absolutely love your experience and qualifications and want to offer you a role right there and then but how do we contact you with your old number? Additionally, 9 times out of 10 we call candidates that haven’t listed their child related experience specifically just to in case they’d forgotten to include it, we need your number to do that!

2. Start from the top

Experience, experience, experience, just like most other employers we sound like a broken record! But there’s just no hiding from it, experience is crucial to working within local schools therefore its extremely important to make sure you’re including any child related work experience you have. This can be volunteering, mentoring, sports coaching, tutoring or anything similar.

Organising your information is super important too, your most recent experience should always be listed first and descend. That way, it is clear what you’ve been up to most recently rather than your first job doing the paper round!

3. Dates and details

Dates are very important in the experience section, it is very useful for us to know how long you have worked within a certain role as this helps us to understand the level of experience you have. You may have worked in a school for a couple of days, or a couple of years so it is important to specify.

Details are also very important; we do not need an hourly rundown of your day but we do like to see a clear and concise description of the type of tasks you completed.

4. Personality

We understand that showing a glimpse of your personality on a blank piece of paper is very difficult but try not to be too rigid in your text. We love to find out a little bit more about your personality, it will make your CV stand out to us and mean we’ll definitely be giving you a call to chat to you about the role!

5. Word or PDF

This is a little extra tip that will make yours and our lives easier, when creating and sending a CV it’s always best to ensure it’s formatted as either a Word or PDF file. This is because these files are the easiest to open on most devices and will not move around your text and undo the work you’ve done!

So there we have it, organisation, details and keeping your CV up to date is all you’ll need to make sure you are providing the most relevant information to us.

If you have a passion for working with children and would like to take the next step in your career within education, send over your CV to info@staffroomeducation.co.uk