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Writing Engineering CVs - Some Thoughts
A CV, or "Curriculum Vitae", is a summary of your academic and professional qualifications, and employment history, such as you would present to a prospective employer.
Writing Engineering CVs - Some Thoughts
A CV, or "Curriculum Vitae", is a summary of your academic and professional qualifications, and employment history, such as you would present to a prospective employer.
More than that, however, a CV is, to all intents and purposes, a marketing document, and its principal purpose is to secure a face-to-face interview for you with a prospective employer.
If it achieves that purpose it can be considered a success; otherwise, it cannot. An effective CV can, of course, continue to work for you during an interview - many interviewers refer constantly to your CV during the interview process - highlighting, and reinforcing, your strengths in the mind of an interviewer.
Writing an Engineering CV
There are no hard and fast rules governing the length of your CV - this will vary according to the length of your career, to date, and the number of jobs that you have had - but do bear in mind that a prospective employer may need to plough through hundreds of applications, so anything more than 2, or 3, pages is unlikely to be read in full.
Similarly, the design of your CV need not be complex; it is sufficient that all the necessary information - name, address, contact details, employment history, education - is present, and easily identifiable, so that a prospective employer does not have to search for salient points. In fact, a number of CV templates - general, and job specific - are available online, to help with your presentation of this information.
Engineering requires an understanding of mathematics, science, and technology, so any relevant positions should be listed in more detail, highlighting your main duties, and responsibilities, but also demonstrating your skills in these areas. Engineering is one area where experience, and "on-the-job" training, often holds as much sway as formal, academic qualifications. This is the information - along, of course, with your academic, or professional, engineering qualifications - on which a prospective employer will base his, or her, decision to interview you.
Professional CV Writing Consultants
Your CV needs to be as well-written, and professional-looking, as humanly possible, and having someone else look at it before publication is always a good idea. Even if your spelling and grammar is of the highest standard, it is possible for mistakes to go unnoticed when proof reading tour own work, because there it a tendency to read what you meant to write, rather than what you actually wrote. An experienced, professional CV writer can assess your CV not only for spelling and grammar, but can help you to identify your key skills, and achievements, and present them to a prospective employer in a way that will encourage him, or her, to invite you for interview.
Many CV writing consultants have extensive knowledge of engineering and construction jobs, which then can apply to tailoring your CV, specifically, to the job for which you are applying.
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