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Recruiters see 1000’s of CVs across a year. Many of the best candidates in the construction market are not represented well on paper. My personal view is that if your recruiter meets with you and goes through a thorough registration process, your CV should be irrelevant, but the facts are that in most cases, clients want to see one……it’s almost as if they don’t trust recruiters to tell them the truth……how shocking! Anyway, even though a good recruiter will know more about their candidate than a CV can tell them, clients want them, so make sure yours is as good as it can be. When I register a candidate, I often re-write their CV’s to the formula I’m going to talk about, but it’s time-consuming and to be honest, if the original follows this pattern, I’ll have more time to generate leads for you! The Don’ts 1. Don’t have an inappropriate email address! The first thing that employers read is your email address. Some people have “interesting” emails. Now obviously it’s tricky to get the type you may have at work. But things like ginmonster@hotmail.co.uk or footballhooligan@gmail.com don’t really provide a good starting point! Even if you have a common name, a big number, adding your middle name or initial or a combination of these should see you being able to find something appropriate. 2. Don’t use tired phrases and adjectives to describe yourself. Many people like to write a Profile of themselves, explaining what they are like as a person. Unfortunately, most use words and phrases like “hardworking”, “enthusiastic” and my personal favourite, “work well individually or as part of a team”. While these may be true, when you’ve read them as many times as hiring managers do, it loses all effect. And more importantly, cannot be proven as they’re all dependent on opinion. 3. Don’t include irrelevant qualifications In the qualifications section, unless it’s relevant, leave it out. I often get CVs for people who only want to work in construction that include their NVQ in Catering or something they did straight after school. There are exceptions to this. If you want to work in construction but have a BSc in Geography or something, include it. Higher education qualifications are always relevant as they show a high level of learning ability. 4. Don’t be too repetitive, only mention the unique responsibilities for similar job titles This advice is specific to people who want to stay within their field. You do not need to list the duties and responsibilities for every job under the same title you’ve ever had. Stick to the unique ones within that role. What I mean is that, if we take a Site Manager for example, each one (pretty much) is responsible for things like health and safety, maintaining build programme, management of trades etc, albeit to differing degrees. This is the same whether you run a £50k extension to a home for a private client or a £50m new build school. All this does is make your CV pages long and full of repeated information. The Do’s Here's the main areas to remember when composing your CV. 1. Stick to factual, demonstrable information 2. Detail the projects worked on, their individual challenges and solutions you found, don’t list the duties if they’re basically the same as other roles you’ve had 3. Focus on achievements, awards and recognition you’ve had that are specific. 4. This is most important – DO NOT LIE!!! Don’t stretch employment dates, don’t claim to have been THE Site Manager on a £70m project if your responsibility was purely the brickwork package for example, and if you were an Assistant QS, say so. If you stick to this as a basis for your CV, it will focus more on the results of what you’ve been responsible for, rather than purely listing the duties you had. If you make a claim of something like “track-record of delivering projects ahead of programme and under budget”, give examples and more importantly, be prepared to talk about them in any potential interview. If you’ve had a break in employment, don’t hide from it, explain it. If you need further help with your CV, let us know and we’ll go into more detail, specific to what you want to achieve, that should help you stand out from the crowd.