A curriculum vitae is a summarization of your career objectives, professional experiences, achievements and educational background in one to two page document. The heading of your curriculum vitae must have your name, address and contact details. The body should contain your career objective, a summary of your profile, what experience you have, what you’ve accomplished, where you went to school, and your references. Your career objective should be brief, up to two sentences - it should give your potential employers an idea of how you wish to move forward in your professional life.

A concise profile or a summary should discuss who you are and how your skills and experience best apply to the job you are interested in. You should avoid disclosing any personal details such as ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, living situations, marital status, or anything else that is not directly related to your career in all parts, including the summary. Personal profile/summary should only contain a few well-written sentences that convey what you can bring to the table in terms of the specific job. Don’t go overboard in trying to be creative – stay professional,but use this section to attract the employer’s attention.

You will want to list your job experience in chronological order starting from your most current or last job. The listing should include the date range of your employment, name of the companies or persons you have worked for, and the city and state where the place of employment is located. You will find that it is very important to put your skills on your CV, paying attention to the experience you have that will show that you are the correct candidate for the job you are applying for. Your education should include college, graduate and post-graduate work, as well as any courses or professional certifications that are relevant to your career development. Achievements, volunteer positions, publications and interests should only be listed if they apply to your professional work experience References should be listed if requested.

You need to make sure that your curriculum vitae grabs attention to get the interview that you want, and need. The Internet has made getting the interview and jobs much more competitive. Consider your resume to be your personal sales pitch — you want to present yourself in the best possible light. You will want to make sure that it is error free so double check your grammar and spelling, make sure that all company and school names and cities are spelled properly. If your CV has errors, even minor ones, it makes a bad impression and leads to assumptions that you: don’t pay attention to details, don’t check your work, and don’t have good communication skills.

It is very important to know that you need to keep color, font, and formatting of your CV consistent so it will looks professional not only in person but online as well. You either don’t know how to concisely summarize your education and experience, or that you are listing unnecessary information for the sake of taking up space,restrict it to one or two pages – any additional pages give an impression that. If you’ve never written a curriculum vitae before, reference books, Internet resources or seek assistance from a professional CV writing service. The main factor that determines if you will remain stuck in your current position or land the interview of your dreams may be a well-written CV.