Writing Your First Professional CV
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Young graduates face one of the hardest tasks in all CV writing, which is how to differentiate themselves from everyone else and not come across as a wannabe with overblown intentions but little to offer.
Contrary to popular belief, naked ambition is not highly regarded by recruiters, who are actually looking for evidence of maturity and judgement, at least an appearance of originality and creativity and the definite hint of potential commitment.
Your challenge is to imply all of these things without being so crass as to actually say them. This is where intelligent candidates can score highly by making the most of their NON WORK activities and interests.
Young graduates rarely have a great deal of work experience, and if they do it tends to be irrelevant to their future career. I often see long CVs that ramble on about the communication skills the person learned selling burgers and the numeracy skills they acquired at an all night petrol station.
This sort of information cuts no ice with anyone. Important things about work experience might be whether or not you did it to fund some amazing trip around Europe or whether you did it to pay for your university tuition fees and then managed on sheer talent to convert it into degree....
