| How to Write a CV 1—CV Format Selection Demystified |
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How to write a CV? How to create a CV writing masterpiece? It's a complex and challenging task, one that requires energy, patience, and considerable thought. The goal of this five-part series is to assist you in writing the perfect CV—a document designed to emphasise your assets and minimise your weaknesses, ensuring that your job application sails through the initial screening stage and straight into the hands of the people whose attention will lead to that all-important interview.
CV Format Selection—Create a CV Using the CV Format Best Suited to Your Circumstances
Almost everyone has a good idea of what goes into a curriculum vitae, from contact details and work experience
to education, skills and references. Less understood are the many CV format options into which this content may be placed, such as the Chronological CV format, the Functional CV format, and the Combination CV format. Each format possesses a number of strengths and shortcomings, which are largely dependent of the sort of work you are planning to pursue, and the career path you have followed so far. For instance, the Chronological CV format could prove very effective for an individual who has worked in one field for a number of years, but less so for an applicant who has had many different roles across several diverse sectors.
The best CVs are invariably those in which the content and format have been appropriately aligned, but how are you to determine which CV format—Chronological, Functional or Combination—is applicable to you? The following analyses of all three options, identifying their unique advantages and disadvantages, should help make choosing the right CV format a breeze. Let's begin with option one: the Chronological CV format.
CV FORMAT ONE: CHRONOLOGICAL CV
The Chronological CV format is, without question, among the most widely used CV formats available. It attempts to illustrate the development of your career from its inception to the present time. The word chronological refers to the fact that your work history is arranged such that your most recent engagement appears first, followed by your next most recent role and so on, right back to your very first position. Until the creation of the Combination CV format, this was the outright victor in the CV format war, favoured by employers for its elegant simplicity and transparency. It remains a strong contender today, thanks to its easily scannable nature.
Advantages of the Chronological CV Format:
A tried-and-trusted means of articulating your career path, highly familiar to recruiters.
Allows the reader to formulate a clear mental image of where you have been and what you have done.
Adds greater gravitas to a steady, predictable work history, and details accomplishments within each role.
Disadvantages of the Chronological CV Format:
Starkly reveals limited work experience, gaps in employment, and job-hopping tendencies, if present.
Similarly, can draw attention to the age of applicant and/or an unusually long stay within a single company.
Makes little mention of core abilities and characteristics, since the emphasis is primarily on facts and figures.
When to Create a CV Using the Chronological CV Format:
Your career path is largely gap-free, and contained within a single field of endeavour.
You have progressed from positions of low responsibility and authority to more substantial posts.
Your latest employment roles are the ones which are most pertinent to the job that you are seeking.
When Not to Create a CV Using the Chronological CV Format:
You are re-entering the workforce after an extended period of absence.
You tend to switch rapidly from job-to-job, seldom remaining in one role for any length of time.
The vacancy that you wish to apply for bears no relationship to the positions you have held in the past.
CV FORMAT TWO: FUNCTIONAL CV
The Functional CV format is generally employed by applicants with a chequered work history, typified by multiple career gaps, a hotch-potch of conflicting job titles and truncated tenures within myriad posts. For this reason, it is routinely regarded with suspicion by potential employers, who construe it as evidence that the candidate must 'have something to conceal'.
Does this mean that the Functional CV format should be cast to one side? Not at all: When adeptly formulated, it can powerfully emphasise your skills and abilities, knowledge, and achievements, while deflecting attention away from the specifics of your work history. For example, if you wanted to apply for an IT Management position, but had spent the last four years working in a sales capacity, then you might overcome this problem by splitting your CV into two distinct skills sections: IT Proficiencies and Managerial Strengths. By listing relevant accomplishments within each section, without mentioning where and when they took place, and adding a brief employment history segment to the end of your CV, you help ameliorate the difficulties posed by your most recent—and irrelevant—
position.
Additionally, Functional curriculum vitaes offer an easy way to elevate the status of voluntary posts, by allowing you to pepper their details amongst the rest of your attainments in each skills segment.
Advantages of the Functional CV Format:
Takes the spotlight off inconsistent career path, gaps in employment, and irrelevant recent positions.
Calls attention to your experience, skills and accomplishments as they pertain to the job you are targeting.
Showcases all your prior experience, both career wise and through involvement in extracurricular activities.
Disadvantages of the Functional CV Format:
Of all the CV formats on offer, this is the one most likely to engender recruiter suspicion.
Provides no information on upward progress within organisations, or on any promotions received.
Presents your skills out of context; thwarts all attempts at discerning what you did in any given position.
When to Create a CV Using the Functional CV Format:
You are entering the workplace after a long time away or, as a graduate or school leaver, for the first time.
Your work experience is mixed, or based chiefly in an area that is completely unrelated to the one you seek.
You have accrued myriad employment gaps during your career and/or have often switched from role to role.
When Not to Create a CV Using the Functional CV Format:
You want to put your abilities in context, and show how your responsibilities have increased over time.
You wish to demonstrate how you have risen in stature since the beginning of your employment history.
You are unwilling to take the risk of creating your CV in a format which may be seen negatively by readers.
CV FORMAT THREE: COMBINATION CV
The Combination CV format, as you might surmise, harnesses the most persuasive elements of its predecessors, blending the robustness, clarity, and acceptability of the Chronological CV format with the skills-led directness of the Functional CV format. It minimises the impact of negative attributes, such as limited or unrelated experience, by incorporating a career objective that unambiguously defines your aim, a personal profile that showcases your abilities, character, and appropriateness for the vacancy being sought, and a major achievements segment that brings your most relevant accomplishments to the fore.
This Functional-style opening is then augmented by a traditional Chronological-type
CV format for the rest of the presentation. Names of companies, job titles, responsibilities, duties and high points within each employment are explored in depth, providing a comprehensive snapshot of who you are, where you are, how you got there, and where you hope to go next. In most cases, the Combination CV format gives you the greatest chance of gaining the immediate interest and on-going attention of prospective employers. CV Ireland constructs the vast majority of its curriculum vitaes for clients within the framework of the Combination CV format.
Advantages of the Combination CV Format:
Delivers the best of both worlds: the simplicity of a Chronological CV, and the focus of a Functional CV.
Situates your objective, abilities and pertinent achievements in pride of place at the start of your document.
Affords transparency and straightforwardness while mitigating adverse effects of work gaps or irrelevancies.
Disadvantages of the Combination CV Format:
Can prove lengthier than competing CV formats if care is not taken to avoid duplication of details.
When to Create a CV Using the Combination CV Format:
You are striving to play up your strengths and de-emphasise your vulnerabilities.
You feel a Chronological CV relies too heavily on raw data, and a Functional CV lacks context for your skills.
You wish to make an instant positive impression on the reader, supported by a full overview of your career.
When Not to Create a CV Using the Combination CV Format:
You have difficulty writing about your goals, traits and achievements in a compelling manner (we can help!).
Preparation is the Cornerstone of Great CVs—Selecting the Right Format is Just the First Step
Just as in the case of job interviews, a great deal of preparatory graft goes into the construction of a curriculum vitae. It is not enough to merely sit down at your keyboard and start typing: You must first select the CV format most appropriate to your requirements. With that done, you will now need to conduct a thorough self evaluation of your innate skills, abilities, personal characteristics, responsibilities and achievements in previous employment.
How do you do perform such an assessment? Part two of this series will teach you precisely that.
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