The Career and Achievements Section is the most important part of a senior CV. Junior staff can demonstrate their potential through their educational achievements and hobbies; a manager or professional has to show a record of achievement within their chosen field. Details of your education and outside interests can add weight to your CV, but it is the Career and Achievements Section that proves to the recruiter that you have the skills to succeed in the job on offer.

CHOOSING AN APPROPRIATE FORMAT

There are two main ways to present your career and achievements:

• the time-based CV
• the skills-based CV.

Each is suitable in different circumstances.

The time-based CV

The time-based CV is the traditional style of CV. It gives details of each post that you have held, starting with the most recent and working backwards through time. This is the most common type of CV and is the format preferred by most employers. It emphasises progression through a number of posts over time. It is a useful format to use where:

• you have worked for a relatively small number of employers
• your employment history is one of progression in a career
• you are currently in work
• you are applying for a job in the same field that you are currently working in
• you have worked for prestigious employers
• you are applying for a job in a relatively traditional field or organisation.

Case study – Sue’s CV

Sue has held only four jobs to date, and can show a history of uncomplicated career progression. A time-based CV is therefore the logical choice for her (see Figure 4).

The skills-based CV

This style of CV is based on the skills and knowledge that you are offering the recruiter rather than the posts that you have held. Because it emphasises your abilities and your achievements, it is perhaps a more logical way of selling yourself to an employer. It is also more suitable for presenting a modern career where the individual builds up a portfolio of skills by moving through a series of varied jobs. Despite this, many recruiters want their candidates to show a career of orderly upward progress. They suspect that skills-based CVs are used to hide patchy work histories and they therefore prefer the traditional time-based CV. However, the skills-based CV is a useful format to use where:

• you have worked for a large number of employers
• you have worked in a number of different fields or careers
• you have had a career break or a number of spells of unemployment

• you are not currently in work
• you have developed valuable skills in unpaid work
• you are applying for a job demanding skills that you possess, but have not used in recent posts
• you are changing career, and want to emphasise your transferable skills rather than the fact that you gained them in an environment different from the one you now want to enter -this is particularly useful for ex-armed forces personnel.

Case study – Steve’s CV

Steve has spent the last seven years working as a contractor. He has developed a great portfolio of experience but all in relatively short-term contracts. If he was to compile a traditional time-based CV:

• No recruiter could spare the time to read through the long list of all the projects he has worked on.
• The fact that he sometimes works on more than one project at a time would be confusing.
• His experience as a systems analyst would be emphasised, because most of his work has been in this area. Steve wants to move away from systems analyst roles into project management and he therefore needs to draw attention to his project management skills.

For these reasons, Steve decides to present his career and achievements Section in a skills-based format (see Figure 5). He divides this information into three Sections:

• Key Skills.
• Information Technology – this is a separate Section because Steve needs to list all the systems and packages that he is familiar with.
• Career Summary – giving information on his employment history. He has summarised the years that he has spent working as a contractor, as the recruiter neither needs nor wants to know details of every single company that he has worked for during this time.

Experiment to see which style of CV suits you best. In addition to the time-based CV that Brian created, which is shown in Figure 3, he also put together a skills-based one to apply for the post at Zipco – see Figure 6.

THE TIME-BASED CV

The time-based CV shows your career history, starting with your most recent job and moving back in reverse chronological order through posts that you held previously.

Your current or last post will usually be the one of most interest to the recruiter and will therefore be given the most space and emphasis. Occasionally, you may want to give more emphasis to a previous post which is more relevant to the one that you are applying for. If you are in this situation, consider whether the skills-based CV format would be more appropriate. Normally, you will give less and less detail on posts as you work backwards through time, and only a broad outline will be given on roles that you held more than fifteen years ago. This is because:

• you want to keep your CV to a readable length
• you want the reader to concentrate on your highest-profile post, most recent achievements and up-to-date skills.

Many people draw up a CV at the start of their career, and simply add to it as they go along. This can lead to an unwieldy document full of irrelevant information. If your CV is like this, put it to one side. Start again with a blank piece of paper and the question ‘What does the recruiter need to know about my career to date?‘

The golden rule when writing a CV is never to leave unexplained gaps in your career history. A suspicious recruiter many wonder whether you were in prison or doing something that you want to hide during that time. If- like an increasing number of job applicants – you were a homemaker, travelling or unemployed for a period, put this information in the correct place in your history.

What to include

For each position that you have held, you should include:

The name of the company

Unless your employer is well known, a short description of the business may help the reader (for example – ‘Smith and Jones Ltd are the largest manufacturer of quality widgets in the UK‘). You may also want to state where the organisation is or was located. This does not have to be the full address, especially for jobs that you held in the past.

The position(s) that you held

These should be listed in reverse chronological order. If you never had a job title, or your title was confusing or misleading in some way, choose an appropriate name that accurately and honestly reflects what you did. For example, your firm might have called you an ‘operations support analyst‘, but it is going to give the reader a much clearer picture of what your role was if you tell them that you were a market researcher.

The dates that you worked

Add the dates that you worked for the company or held each post. If you are still in a job, show this as, for example, ‘June 203 -Present’ or otherwise your CV will quickly become out of date. You can put this in even if you know that your job is about to come to an end. For your recent career history, the recruiter will want to know the months that you started and finished in a job as well as the years.

What you achieved

This is the core of your CV. If you could only tell the employer one thing about yourself, this would be it. Note that the focus should be on achievements rather than duties. Junior CVs focus on the duties of the post. Senior ones may detail the responsibilities held, but the emphasis must be on what you achieved in the role. Your key selling points should come over clearly in this Section.

Exercise 1

Think about each of the last three posts that you have held. What would a recruiter see as your most important achievements during your time in that post?

Now rank the achievements in each post within order of importance to select which ones you are going to put on your CV.

To ensure that the reader focuses on the most important points, you should describe a maximum of six achievements in your most recent post, and give less detail about previous jobs.

Exercise 2

For each of the achievements that you wrote down in Exercise 1, ask yourself:

• What are the most important points about this achievement that the recruiter needs to know?
• Does this achievement reflect my key selling points?

Then describe each achievement in one or two sentences for your CV.

Question and answer session

‘I am a general practitioner. I can see how a manager within a business might be able to concentrate on their achievements – he or she is employed to complete projects successfully and hit targets. As a doctor, my measure of success is the quality of care that I provide to my patients. How should I present this part of my CV?‘

As a professional, the accent is on your skills, knowledge and competence. The key points listed under each post that you have held could concentrate on describing:

• The nature of the work that you did, showing the challenges that you faced and the skills that you have therefore developed. For example:
  Managing a caseload of 2,20 patients in a deprived inner-city area. Approximately 60% of patients are from ethnic minorities and a significant proportion do not speak English. Sensitivity to patients’ culture and religion is an important part of meeting their needs.

• Areas of specialist knowledge, interest and skill that you have gained during your time in the post. For example: Developing an understanding of the needs of the elderly in my work as a GP: supporting a home for 50 active senior citizens, 10 people living in warden-controlled sheltered housing and three homes for frail elderly people.
• Finally, you may have contributed to meeting targets and completing projects. For example:
  Set up an asthma clinic which to date has helped 20 patients
  manage their condition.
  As manager of the practice finances, I reduced running expenses
  by 10% over three years. Brought about a 50% increase in the numbers of women going for
  cervical smears by working with practice and community nurses to
  educate patients on the need for regular health checks.

What to leave out

Don’t give the reasons why you left each job that you have held unless you are specifically asked to by the recruiter. If you left for a post with better prospects and more responsibility it should be obvious from your description of that next job. Any other reason may reflect badly on you. Never admit on your CV to having left a company because, for example, you couldn‘t get on with your boss.

Laying out the information

The details of your career and achievements must be clear and easy to read. The best format for laying out your information on each post is usually:

Job title

Name of company

Dates post held

What you did in the job will probably be more important than the company in which you did it, so the job title is placed to the left where it will be the first thing that the reader sees. If the company you worked for was very prestigious, you can reverse these two items. The start and finish dates for each job are of lesser importance, and therefore appear on the right of the page.

Question and answer session

‘I have had an unusual career pattern. After doing a number of different jobs, I went back to college as a mature student and changed career. How do I present this information so that the recruiter doesn‘t think I’m a job hopper who can‘t stick to one thing for long?’

As the labour market changes, fewer and fewer people enjoy a traditional career of unbroken progress in one specialism. CVs often show:

• career breaks to pursue full-time education or look after children
• career changes
• periods of unemployment
• working for a wide variety of employers.

Most employers are now used to this. Many appreciate the breadth of perspective and skills that this kind of career can offer. Try to show a logical pattern behind your career history with each move developing your skills and abilities further and an underlying purpose or area of expertise. It could be that your career has been one of caring for children, first as a nurse and then as a teacher; or managing teams, first in the armed forces

and then in industry. It also helps if you can show a positive reason for career changes – perhaps because in your first career you were able to identify an area of strength that you wanted to build on. If you have spent some time outside of paid work, this needs to be shown on your CV to avoid leaving a suspicious-looking gap, for example:

Homemaker Sept XX – Mar XX

or

Job hunting following redundancy July XX – Sept XX

‘I have spent fifteen years with one company. Won’t new employers think I‘m stuck in my ways?’

If you have had many years of experience with one employer, you will need to show that you have grown, progressed and gained a breadth of experience within that organisation. If you have held a number of posts there, you may want to emphasise this fact by dividing the information that you give on your time with that organisation into a number of subSections (see Figure 7).

I ran my own business for several years, but did not make enough money to make it viable in the long term. How do I present this information on a CV?‘

Identify and sell your achievements as you would if you had been employed. Running your own business demonstrates that you have developed:

• self-discipline and motivation
• commercial acumen
• a broad understanding of how business works

• an entrepreneurial perspective, which is of great worth to many organisations.

If you were recently self-employed, you might want to put in a positive reason for your wish to switch to employment to reassure the employer that you will be happy working for someone else.

‘I’ve been on maternity leave twice. How do I present this on my CV?’

If you took a few months off and then returned to work with the same firm, your CV doesn‘t need to say that you were on maternity leave. The same principle applies if you have been on long-term sick leave. It isn‘t a selling point with employers, so leave it out. If you resigned from your job and took a longer break, treat it as you would a career break (see above).

THE SKILLS-BASED CV

A skills-based CV enables you to put an emphasis firmly on what you can do, rather than when you last did it or when you learnt to do it. It is organised around your most relevant and marketable skills. For example, someone looking for a post managing a mechanic‘s workshop might show the following on their CV:

Workshop manager

• control and inspection of workshop equipment
• purchasing and control of all workshop spare parts
• control of all workshop documentation.

Team leader

• managing teams of up to twenty mechanics, technicians and office staff
• staff recruitment
• running apprenticeship and Modern Apprenticeship training schemes, successfully training over 30 young people during my career
• organising rotas for 24-hour emergency breakdown cover.

Engineer

• extensive experience of the repair, maintenance and testing of vehicles of all kinds, including light, commercial and heavy vehicles and petrol and diesel engines.

Exercise 1

Look at your key selling points. Think through the last ten years of your career. Then ask yourself the question:

• What are my most marketable skills?

Once you have compiled a list, rank them in order of importance. To ensure that the recruiter focuses on the most relevant points, pick no more than six of your most important skills for your CV. These will form the subheadings of your Career and Achievements Section.

Exercise 2

For each skill heading that you created in Exercise 1, ask the questions:

• How can I prove that I have this skill?
• What are my most important achievements in this area?

Rank the points within each Section in order of importance. To maintain focus, there should be a maximum of six points under each heading with fewer points shown under the headings lower down the list.

Choosing your Section headings

While it is tempting to copy the Section headings from someone else‘s CV, this will lead you into difficulties later on as you try to fit your information into unsuitable categories. The skills Sections that you choose should reflect your own personal selling points and your unique abilities and career history.

Voluntary work

It may be appropriate to list some skills that you developed outside regular employment. For example, you may have developed your team-building skills in the Territorial Army or your flair for organising events in part-time voluntary work. These ‘selling points’ can be fitted into your skill groupings in the same way as those gained working for an employer. However, the main focus of your CV must be on your achievements in regular employment.

Question and answer session

‘I have spent five years on a career break looking after my young children. I am now looking to re-enter employment as an engineer. While I have been on career break, I have managed a household budget, developed interpersonal skills coping with fractious toddlers, and learned how to do six things at once! Can I include these skills on my CV?‘

Not if you are looking for a job at a senior level. Unfortunately, listing skills that you have acquired as a homemaker detracts from your professional image. It also emphasises the fact that you have not been in paid employment for a number of years. You can, however, include information on any freelance or voluntary work that you have done during this time – for example, helping to run a playgroup, or work with a parent-teacher association.

Listing your past employers

A description of your skills should always be followed by a summary of your career. Ideally, this should be a list of each of your past employers in reverse chronological order, with the posts that you held at each and relevant dates. However, if you have held down a great number of jobs, then this may not be practical – and you may not remember details of the jobs you were doing 30 years ago! If this is the case, select a list of your major employers – including, of course, the most prestigious and those with the closest links to the recruiting company or industry.

SUMMARIES

There will be situations in which it is appropriate to summarise a period of your career rather than give details of every post that you held during that time.

The long career

Your CV should concentrate on posts that you have held in recent years. Much less information will need to be given on earlier jobs, particularly those you worked in over fifteen years ago.

Those nearer the end of their working lives might want to show details of whole decades in summary form – for example:

Self-employed trader – 1965-1975
Graduated from trading on market stalls in the Cardiff area to
owning and managing a ladies’ fashions shop in Pontypridd.

Or:

Gained experience of retailing in a number of junior positions – 1960–1970.

This prevents valuable space on your CV being taken up with out-of-date information and means the reader focuses on the information on your more recent and relevant career history. Drawing attention away from jobs that you did many years ago is particularly useful if you are concerned that you may be discriminated against on the grounds of your age. It is also useful if you have had a change of career or have risen to the top from humble beginnings. The managing director of a retail conglomerate will not wish to go into details of the years he or she spent stacking shelves and working on the tills.

The career change

If you have changed career, you will not want to give detailed information on the jobs that you did in your first specialism. You will, however, want to sell the transferable skills that you developed. For example, a businesswoman who originally trained as a nurse might wish to summarise this period as follows:

Registered General Nurse 1981-1992

Gaining full professional qualifications at St Cedric‘s Hospital, London. Developing my career working in a variety of hospitals, reaching the position of Sister in charge of the Accident and Emergency ward and a team of ten nurses. This experience has given me a high level of interpersonal skills and the ability to manage a team working under extreme pressure.

Short-term jobs

Many job hunters have spent a period of their career working in a number of short-term jobs. This could be for any of the following reasons:

• career development through temporary or contract work
• filling in while looking for a permanent post
• time out travelling
• moving around while following a spouse‘s career.

This may be time during which you developed very valuable skills, but you should not clutter up your CV with the details of each temporary post. The period can be summarised as in the following examples:

Temporary jobs

XXXX – XXXX

Temporary secretarial, clerical and bar work while travelling around Australia and New Zealand.

Or

Contract Site Manager

XXXX – XXXX

Managing teams of builders constructing homes and offices around the UK and Germany. Major employers included:

• Millar Construction pic
• Morgan Homes
• A. G. Arthur and Sons
• Lloyd and Logan Construction
• Jabusch-Wiemer Gmbh.

CHECKLIST

• Have you given most room on your CV to your most recent and relevant experience?
• Have you made sure that there are no gaps in your employment history?
• Have you included all the information that the recruiter will want to know about your previous employers?
• Are you confident that you have not included too much information?
• Have you focused on your achievements, rather than your duties?
• If you are using a skills-based CV format, is the information on your career organised under appropriate headings?

POINTS TO CONSIDER

• 1.Would a time-based or a skills-based CV be the most appropriate way of presenting your career? Why?
• 2.What are your three main achievements in your career to date? Are these clearly presented on your CV?
• 3.Would it be helpful if your CV summarised a period of your career?