(If this is unacceptable please lock thread - I am not looking for job offers I'm moving to UK on Saturday and want to make sure this is the kind of thing that will work to get a look in)

Hi Guys,

You are pretty ruthless and I know many are employers or work in recruitment.

Competencies

Technical Competencies
• Business process development and re-engineering
• ICT expertise in integrating business solutions
• Data analysis and reporting
• Quality auditing
• MS Office, especially Excel and Sharepoint
• Written communication
• Conversational spoken Chinese


Behavioral Competencies
• Action oriented
• Solution focused
• Negotiation skills
• Building stakeholder relationships
• Development of peer relationships
• Strong interpersonal communication
• Time management


Employment

Australia:

Suncorp Home Personal Insurance (Suncorp is Australia’s largest general insurance group and 5th largest bank)
Business Improvement and Quality Assurance Officer June 2009 – January 2010
In this position I had a broad range of responsibilities as a quality assurance and business process analyst. I used my information systems experience and training with SAS software to access, manage and summarise data from a variety of sources for management reporting and analysis. I was also responsible for developing tools on the SharePoint platform using InfoPath Forms Services which were enhanced using C# coding. In my quality assurance role I worked within a team as it developed a quality assurance framework; in this project I engaged stakeholders to understand their requirements and worked with them to develop, implement and carry out audits. I also explored process modeling and worked to help reengineer business processes.

Events Team Case Manager December 2007 – June 2009
In this role I was responsible for a personal claims portfolio. This required me to liaise with customers, builders, suppliers and other stakeholder groups within the claims process. I gained experience with a broad range of IT systems required to perform my role. I coordinated the repairs and replacement of customers’ items as required by company policy and industry legislation, in particular interpreting and applying product disclosure statements. The work was customer focused and involved dealing compassionately with customers who had suffered loss as a result of natural disasters which had affected Australia through last summer.

China:

Minotel (Panyu, China) Assistant Manager May 2006 - November 2006
This 18 room mini-hotel is located in Panyu outside the major trade city of Guangzhou in China. My tasks included checking in guests, organising rosters and cleaning. I learnt to deal with guests on all levels of service and helped to efficiently run staff below me. As an English speaking foreigner I was mostly responsible for helping overseas guests.

Hosting Work August 2006 (part-time)
Played the role of an Italian Cruise Captain for advertising purposes. In this position I welcomed people to investment dinners as well as did some performances on stage.

Bar Work September 2005 - April 2006 (part-time)
Worked in Australian owned bar within China, included making drinks as well as taking orders for light food and table service. I was also involved in helping with potential advertising opportunities, which included helping to design and place magazine and newspaper advertisements.


Australia (part-time work while studying):

Casual English Tutor of foreign students 2004-2005
Order Assembler, retail distribution centre 2002 – 2005
Telephone Sales Consultant 2001 – 2002
Information Technology Systems Support 1999-2000
McDonalds Family Restaurants 1998 – 2001

Education
University of Queensland
Graduated B.Information Technology 2009

SAS Querying & Reporting
SAS Institute Inc. 2009

Business Process Modeling & Business Process Re-Engineering
Trident Business Solutions 2009

ZhongShan University of China
Fulltime Chinese Language Study September 2005 – January 2007

TEFL Diploma
Teaching English as a foreign language
Including TEFL Young Learners Module 2005

Certificate 2 in Information Technology
Industry and Commerce Employment and Training Group Ltd 2000


ICT Experience
• Advanced Excel skills including use of Pivot tables to manipulate data sets and create reporting.
• Experienced with SharePoint site management and development.
• Advanced InfoPath forms development for business solutions.
• Experienced with all other MS Office Products.
• C#
• Java
• Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN)
• Visio
• SAS

seeing as you actually speak the language you probably already know this, but isn't there no such language as chinese? it's mandarin, cantonese, etc. i'd put down which dialect you speak instead of just saying 'chinese' in case they think you're bulls***ting or really care about semantics or something.

McDonalds Family Restaurants 1998 – 2001

Hah, take it out.

It's all about the layout of your word doc and the fonts you use.

Also needs more positive descriptive words

e.g.

before: Negotiation skills
after: Awesome Negotiation skills

Depends what job you are going for. If professonal office IT job then I would probably take out Macca's as well as Hostie and Bar work. I would leave in the AM job at the Minotel though. Remove the part about you scrubing toilets.

Wouldn't seperate Aus/China work either. It's all work.

My theory on splitting up the work across two countries is that it's usually a good conversation topic in the interview. I like to kind of cultivate a resume that will direct the conversation away from the normal interview questions which they're going to be asking everyone so I can stick out.

Defo will take out the cleaning bit and Maccas.

This version is just general and not specifically aimed at IT sector because I'll be giving it to agencies along with a couple of written references.

It's all about the layout of your word doc and the fonts you use.

I'm terrible at this I hardly even use bold or underline, have no eye for design.

you are missing a U in behavioural

I'm an employer and I reckon your CV is very good. Concise and no bulls*** is how I narrow down to the interview stage.

If you're going to write a cover letter - I get rid of most people based on emails and cover letters. Here's an email I received earlier this week:

hello XXXX,
Attached is my resume and cover letter. Hopefully my character and
skills are what you seek. thank you

I s*** you not. I receive emails like that!! How they think they will ever get a job is beyond me. That carriage return after 'and' on the first line is actually there - and they did not sign off on the email. E.g., "Kind regards, Tom Simpson" or whatever. I've seen better punctuation in FaceMan posts.

Yep, layout is important as pointed out above. Format your doc sharply. San serif font (Times New Roman) for headings and serif (Arial) for text.

I personally like table layouts, but that's contentious. It wouldn't really swing me one way or the other, but because I'm an engineer I like to see summarised answers - so I expect that in engineering CV's.

I like the language stuff. If you were coming for an interview, you're right, that's a conversation point.

Other than that the main tip I give to people is that once you have an interview - know the company and their products/services BEFORE going to the interview and talk like you are already part of the team. I would go so far as to say study their website thoroughly and take notes. Then you can say, ok so you do this and you do that, etc, and talk about projects that they are trying to employ you to do.

You're going for an IT position, say programming, so let's say you start talking about "So I saw on your website that the Royal Queensland Hospital is one of your clients, what do you do for them?" and then they say something like, "We write a database application....blah blah blah" and BANG! You're into the technology - you can talk about their versioning system, their compilers, IDE, coding practices. You can fukn talk about that s*** for years. Just ask Hogfather, lol.

Positive, positive, positive is the key.

Good tips their Pinky, duly noted!

I agree with Pinky on the cover letter thing.

I was involved in an interview process a few months back and some of the cover letters and emails were a joke.

Like what pinky posted, I mean really.....

San serif font (Times New Roman) for headings and serif (Arial) for text.

See, my advice would be never use Times New Roman or Arial. The advice about serif and sans-serif is good, but pick something slightly different to the stock standard ones. Like Georgia and Calibri, for example. Except don't use those cos they are the ones I use.

San serif font (Times New Roman) for headings and serif (Arial) for text.

See, my advice would be never use Times New Roman or Arial. The advice about serif and sans-serif is good, but pick something slightly different to the stock standard ones. Like Georgia and Calibri, for example. Except don't use those cos they are the ones I use.

Yeah I agree with this totally. My own CV doesn't use those first two fonts because they are really f***ing boring.

Other than that the main tip I give to people is that once you have an interview - know the company and their products/services BEFORE going to the interview and talk like you are already part of the team. I would go so far as to say study their website thoroughly and take notes. Then you can say, ok so you do this and you do that, etc, and talk about projects that they are trying to employ you to do.

Yeh Pinky I do this for all my interviews, I'm very thorough when preparing (probably why I've got every job I made it to interview for).

Thanks for the feedback re fonts. With regards to cover letters, should they form the body of the email you send for a job or are they a seperate document above and beyond?

Good question, I don't know, but always address the selection criteria in your cover letter, even if you've addressed it in an additional document. Apparently that's pretty standard expectation these days. I think they sort of skim through it so the more places you address the selection criteria the better.

I send my CV in an email and my 'Cover letter' is the Email body.

I really don't like cover letters to be honest. I never read them other than a cursory glance at grammar and punctuation so I can say, "Yep, they know some nice words and can structure business letters and probably reports elegantly." which you can pretty much tell from a cover letter.

I'd put it as the email body unless the job ad specifically asks for an attachment - I've seen some that you can't email, you can only upload attachments on their website, so in that case you have no choice you have to have it as a separate document.

I also think a concluding sentence in the cover text like, "I look forward to discussing the position further with you." or something along those lines is pretty handy as your final sentence if you're writing/emailing.

When I'm looking at potentials I break it down like, "I've got this hole that needs digging." now who out of these 100 people is going to dig it the fastest, for the cheapest, without having a sook about it. Their 'skill set' if you like is that one dude has a shovel, one guy can bring a bull-dozer and another guy has some dynamite. The guy with the bull-dozer obviously costs more. The guy with the dynamite might get it done quickly but it will be a f***ing mess when he's finished (sometimes you need people like this, though).

I've mentioned in other threads before, but I used to hire brains - now I hire grinders. People that can grind away, do some boring s*** without complaint, and you can then go and have a beer with them after without feeling like they are looking for other work.

That's my perfect employee.

I send my cover letter in a separate document. The CV itself is also in a separate document. They're both in PDF format (one employer requested me to send them in a doc format).

Thoughts?

I am doing recruitment for key person at the moment. All I ever read on the resume is the applicant's last job. If their last job is similar to the job I am recruiting for then they get a second look.

Everything else is useless filler which I don't even read. Time is money!

I HATE COVER LETTERS

San serif font (Times New Roman) for headings and serif (Arial) for text.

I think you have this backwards. Times New Roman is a serif font, and Arial is a sans-serif font.

Personally I would just do the whole thing in IMPACT + Capslock for maximum effect.

last edited by Tremble at 19:29:23 28/Jan/10

agree with almost all Pinky says

i close with this
"I look forward to discussing this application and my career aspirations with you at your convenience."

personally I like cover letters, some can be very revealing and show me if the candidate has actually read the job ad. anyone can "wank" up a resume I'm a f***ing expert at it! so the cover letter has helped me. but we are all different.

I also use a table style CV (found a great template once on MS Office site) but I also believe you need to develop your CV to suit the role you are applying for so that the focus is on the skills required for that role. this may mean you have for example an IT resume and some for other roles.

also on your post/CV
don't go so far back (you got rid of maccas so good, but last 5-7 years unless you had a really significant role that relates to what you're currently applying for)
bullet point key (wank) words/phrases in your history summaries
more detail on your casual work while studying (what companies was it with)

best of luck over there

yeah a few people have already said it but tailor your CV to the job you're applying for, if the skills for a job aren't relevant to the position you're going for (ie maccas, scrubbing toilets if you're going for an IT position), ditch it.

That's some really good advice, Pinky.

Also for some reason I had never wondered what CV meant until I read this thread.
Curriculum vitae, Latin for "course of life".

Disappointed.

http://22.media.tumblr.com/9sCFJJjeYnzcdx0qoAegRNeNo1_400.jpg

make sure u have a working visa if your going to carry a hard copy of ur cv into uk... if u dont they will kick u out

Don't know if someone else has already said this, but a CV includes all your s*** you have ever done, whereas a resume has just the stuff you want to brag about for the job you're applying.