CV Critique please

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I would really appreciate any advice anyone can give me on my CV, First time looking for a new job for over 10 years, and I think my job hunting skills are a little out of date!

TIA

Mat

 

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I'm after a CV critique as well but....

*Steps into employers shoes*

1. "A good customer services focus" - Doesn't sound like grammatically correct English and has me in doubts.

2. The "always keen to learn new skills and knowledge" reads as "Something vaguely positive - no real content here" change it to something else which makes me want to read on.

3. Did you spell Alcatel wrong? I'd stop reading at this point and toss the CV in the bin.

4. The Course information doesn't present the employer with any hard knowledge about what applicable skills you have. You need to elaborate on things like "Putting Java to work" - what is that exactly? Why would I as an employer care? How do I as your employer earn/Save money by what you're bringing to the table?

Those are my opening thoughts on it anyway, sorry if I sound harsh but I always feel having your feelings bruised in order for maximum forwards progress is always for the best.

Just my 2p.

 

Mat, you need to sanitise the CV better (Mr H.).

And you have taken a THREE year break to study?? mate, way too much time off and would make me wonder about you.

Overall not an inspiring CV (sorry to be harsh).

 

Formatting is all over the place. There are lines which should be indented according to your formatting, but arent. Standardise these.

You also have inconsistencies in section headering: Career History is left aligned with everything under it continuing as normal, but the other sections have all the content aligned to the right of the header (also, this doesnt really give you a lot of space). standardise. And please dont capitalise them. it looks awful. bold/underlining exists for a reason - its not a notepad file, its a word document.

Lose nationality, age, and marital status - none of them are important. Employers wont give a monkeys that you have two kids.

Qualifications are too wordy. I dont need a sentence detailing that the OU gave you a certificate, make it short and snappy. For instance:

In terms of the concerns from Simon regarding the 3 year break, given that this was to study a degree its probably not too much of a problem. However, I was under the impression that an OU degree was studied outside normal working hours, and therefore didnt require a full-time break. I could be wrong in that of course.

As already mentioned, watch for spelling errors/typos.

 

Well yes it takes 3 years full time study to earn a degree. I was assuming most people, especially those in charge of reading CVs would know that!

I have been doing some part time work during that time, but as the part time work was driving a delivery van I decided not to add it as it has no relevance to the jobs I'm now hoping to apply for.

The one interview I've had so far, when I asked for feedback said the study break was not a problem as the qualifications earnt matched the time taken.

but in any case I can't go back in time and change the decision to go back to school, (nor do I want to) but unless I want to resort to an outright lie, I've got to work with the fact that there has been a 3 year gap from relevant work and make it look as good as possible.

Mat

 

Forgive me but... well it's an OU course, I had assumed that this was a part time degree. The other thing I would mention is that you won't have been studying every working hour of every working day. I also have to be honest and say that if I were to take the time off to study for a degree I would have kept a part time IT job up because technology doesn't stand still.

I would honestly suggest re-starting the CV from scratch, there are a number of templates around here, two that I have used are attached.

If I were you I would consider changing the wording used to describe your study period, for example

Aug 2007 - Present Full Time Education - Bachelors degree in Computers and Math Sciences (for example). A study break is (in my mind) usually months rather than years.

 

And I guess thats a prejudice that I'm going to be bashing my head against a lot!

OU Degrees are marked and graded to the same standard as any other degree, they are assessed by the same assessors that check the degrees awarded by more traditional universities. It takes the equivalent of 3 years full time study to pass, the only difference is that the OU design their courses so that you can do most of the study at home and spread it out over a longer time period if you wish!

Leaving my last job wasn't really my choice, I would have had to move to India and take an 80-90%% pay cut to keep it!

And part time IT jobs are about as common as rocking horse dung - especially if you live in a town where the largest IT employer in town has just offshored it's main helpdesk and made over 100 people redundant

Mat

 

Its not a prejudice, its simply a belief that OU degrees are not done full time. Hell, you would probably find that most people would mistakenly believe (myself included) that OU degrees couldn't be done full time, that they were simply done part time in conjunction with any other job.

 

Exactly.

 

Leaving a wife working full time and bringing up the kids while I'm away at uni running up huge student loans ?

It was the only real option availible to me, I needed to be home to run the house and look after young kids during the day and fitted the study around that. Now both kids are at full time school I'm hoping to get back to work.

In any case this is getting off track, I can't undo how I've got to the spot I'm now at, but surely 9 years working for an ISP, a computing based degree, however earnt and the CCENT can be built into a CV that will at least get me interviewed for basic helpdesk / support jobs! hopefully I'll be adding a CCNA to that next week!

Written communication has never been my strong point but I'll be taking the constructive comments on board and coming up with a V2.0 CV in the next day or two for you all to pick apart

Mat