CV Checklist: Key Points to Check

When making job applications it is vital to check that all of the important aspects have been covered on your CV. Review your CV against key areas below to make sure that you have followed best practices, which will improve your chances of success.

Including all the correct sections on your CV is essential and also making sure that they are ordered in the right way - uur guidelines below will help you in this endeavor.

When you apply to jobs on the major jobsites, portals and platforms such as Reed, Indeed, CV Library and LinkedIn, you will notice that employers are receiving hundreds of CVs for open vacancies, so it is certainly beneficial to use a CV checklist to make sure that you aren't missing any critical things.

Personal Profile

The first paragraph of your CV can create a strong impression and compel Hiring Managers to keep reading of your experiences. In a nutshell, your Personal Profile should be right at the top of your CV and demonstrate your capabilities and experience level in a clear way. Make it easy for the reader to understand your strengths right at the outset and sell yourself in the best possible way.

Skills / Expertise

This is another key section on a CV, which should be on page 1 and beneath the Personal Profile. It can be in bullet point form or perhaps short, categorised sub-paragraphs, demonstrating your capabilities at a high level, and if possible targeted towards showing those particular skills you possess that are required for the jobs you are applying for.

Work History

Include all of your jobs, in order from the most recent to earlier roles, summarising positions that are much older (to ensure your professional CV stays within the ideal maximum length of 2 pages). In terms of details, mention your title, company / organisation name and dates worked, along with your responsibilities and achievements as bullet points. If your career has been very lengthy, then you would not need to include the responsibilities for summarised positions.

Education

If you have recently completed university or college, then the Education section should be beneath the Personal Profile on page 1 of your CV. The further you have progressed within your career, the less emphasis needs to be placed on education, rather it would be your work history that would take precedence - the reason being that this is what employers will be most interested in. In this case, it would be preferable to make Education the last section on your CV, along with any professional training and courses.

Contact Information

The key things to include right at the top of your CV are name, e-mail address and telephone number. Home address is something which has been traditionally included on a CV, however this is optional, especially now with remote and hybrid working practices becoming more and more common in the workplace. If you have a LinkedIn profile or a portfolio of work, then it may be worth including hyperlinks to these within the header of your professional CV as well.

Keywords

Recruiters use ATS systems to scan candidate CVs for keywords, to make sure they shortlist the most relevant individuals with the right level of experience and capabilities for the vacancies they are advertising. We have written a full article on ATS software and explained in detail how these work. Find ways to include all of the important keywords in a natural way which flows, and as mentioned earlier in this guide, you can try to include within the intial sections on page 1, i.e. the Personal Profile and Key Skills / Expertise section.

Format

Ensure that your professional CV has a clear and well structured format, avoiding borders, columns, tables and images, as these tend not to be very favourable for ATS systems in our experience. In terms of font sizes, we would recommend a size 9 for descriptive text and perhaps size 10 for headings / sub-headings.

Spelling and Grammar

You might have a great CV, but if there are spelling errors / typos, then this can really be a negative as it shows you have not paid attention to detail. Use a spell checker and then manually read through your CV multiple times to check before finalising, ensuring that all the grammar is perfect as well.

Things you do not need to include on your CV

Personal details such as nationality, gender and date of birth are not necessary to include, especially to ensure adherence with the Equality Act in the UK which all employers comply with. A profile photo is not necessary to include for the same reason. References used to be included on CVs in the past, i.e. contact details of referees, however nowadays, the norm is just to state 'References upon Request' at the end of a CV.

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