How To Help Your Child Into That First Job- Sort Out Their CV!

With the first green shoots of recovery starting to show, now is a good time to get your child away from the house and into their first role. Educational institutions do their best to help with their CVs but the ones we come across are woefully inadequate and the simple fact is that the CV needs to be extraordinary to even get an interview As a parent, you are in a unique position to help. You probably know your child better than anyone else on the planet. Start by listing all of their achievements, no matter how small. It doesn’t matter if that achievement is the swimming 10m badge, get everything out and start to list those achievements An achievement driven CV stands out from all the rest - It shows a recruiter that the candidate has a proven track record- the implication being that they will be able to carry through that record of going the extra mile through to that new position. Shy away from responsibilities, even at this stage, employers expect people to have carried through their responsibilities and are looking for the extra-ordinary candidate Double and triple check a young persons CV to make sure that there are no spelling or grammatical errors. Over reliance on the power of the spell checker means that words are often found correctly spelt but in completely the wrong context. Pay particular attention to people’s names, the names of Educational Institutions and post codes. Employers can be really finicky when it comes to this level of detail Hobbies and interests are of more importance in younger people. Clearly they have less life experience to draw upon, perhaps having recently graduated. Avoid at all costs the banal, the obvious and the downright insane. Make sure if you mention them at all that the interests are at least factual- they may after all be called upon at interview to expand on them Expand on computer skills by showing what they have been used for. For example, Microsoft Word, used to create 10,000 word dissertation, essays and complete assignments. This shows an employer what transferable skills that you have in a way that other candidates simply will not do. This can be the difference between a rejection letter and the maybe pile