Creating your best CV

Don’t know where to start? Not sure how to explain your career break?
Struggling to know what’s relevant and what isn’t? Here’s our simple guide to
creating a great CV.

The most important parts to remember are:

Include all key content

• Your contact details

• Short profile – a paragraph of about six lines or so, usually summarising your key
skills and experience and highlighting the industry and field you have experience
in
• Dated education
• Professional qualifications
• Dated work history (including your career break). List roles in chronological order
and include key responsibilities for each
• Key skills
• Interests

Use a clean layout

• Keep your layout simple and easy to navigate

• Highlight key experience that’s relevant to the role, for example in bold
• Reduce content that is not relevant to the role
• Use bullet points to make each section clear
• Depending on the length of your career, we would expect your CV to be no longer
than three pages (and probably no more than two)

Explain your career break

• Make sure you include this section in your CV

• Add the dates and a brief description of what you have been doing in this time

Accuracy is vital

 Check and double check your spelling, grammar and chronology

 Ask someone else to proofread it too

Watch your language

 Be succinct
 Avoid clichés, acronyms and too much technical jargon
 Improving your LinkedIn Profile – Make yourself stand out!

In an ever-more competitive world, you need a strong LinkedIn profile to make sure
you’re visible to the right people. Not only will it improve your connectivity and network,
it will paint a compelling picture of you and your knowledge and, most importantly,
make you stand out.

Creating or updating your LinkedIn profile is just as important as the layout of your CV.
Clear and accurate information is key to helping the reader understand your career
history, skills and experience. Here’s how.

Create a compelling summary

• Ideally you should explain that you’ve taken a career break, and for how long.
Although this is not mandatory, it will provide clarity to the reader from the start.
• When writing your summary, keep it basic. In a nutshell, what are you known
for? What’s your identity? And how does your work help other people?
• Put a stamp on it. By now the reader knows who you are and what you do. Finish
off with a strong “closer” sentence. Similar to your opening line, this could be
what your mission is as a working professional or what you’re passionate about.
• Include specific details, such as your title and company, briefly what you did on
the job and how it helped people.
• Don’t forget your speciality or area of expertise, if you need to describe your role
more.

Include all your past experience

• List your past experiences and try to include at least your last three jobs,
including your career break dates.
• Each experience entry should include a description of the work you did in each
position.
• Make this section come alive with real-world evidence of your contribution to your
industry. You can use any of the following tools:
• Video • Images • Audio • Presentations • Slide Shows • Documents

Add your education

To add your education Go to Profile > Click on “Add education”.

Seek recommendations

• A recommendation is a written statement by one of your LinkedIn connections.

• A positive recommendation adds significantly more credibility than an
endorsement (see below). It matters that someone took the time to provide
details about your strengths and accomplishments, and put their name to it.
• Recommendations from former managers and higher-level colleagues and clients
can add significant depth and reliability to your profile.
• Ask for recommendations. Start with people who know you.
• Write a recommendation for someone you respect and they are likely to return
the favour.
Manage your skills & endorsements

• You can be ‘endorsed’ by your LinkedIn connections. This means they agree you
are experienced in a particular skill, sector or area of expertise.
• You can’t directly request an endorsement, but you can set up your profile to
make it easy for your connections to endorse you.
• To manage your settings, go to Edit Profile. You can add and remove areas of
expertise, and control if you want to be included in endorsement suggestions to
your connections.

Join interest groups

• Following relevant and key interest groups on LinkedIn will help build your
credibility.
• Use LinkedIn’s native search to find groups based on topics you’re interested in.
• On LinkedIn’s search directory you can either click on the group name for details
or join.
• Public groups can be full of spammers, private groups generally offer more fruitful
and interesting discussions.
 Interview Tips

So, you’re through the CV review stage, you’ve had an initial conversation with a recruiter,
and now you are actually going to meet the hiring manager. Well done!
For some roles, you may be asked to complete a short technical assessment to demonstrate
your technical capability. If this is the case, your recruiter will explain what’s required in
advance.
Your recruiter will help you prepare for the interview. Additionally, see the tips below for
general guidance on preparation and techniques you could use during an interview. If you
need any adjustments to help you perform at your best during the interview, please do tell
us in advance so we can support you.
I haven’t interviewed for a while, what should I expect?
Your interview will cover experience you’ve gained outside the working environment, focus
on your transferable skills, and include scenario- or task-based questions. You won’t be
expected to provide specific examples of recent experience.
We want you to perform at your best, we don’t want to knock your confidence by
presenting questions and situations you simply won’t be able to answer. So we’ve designed
our assessment process to reflect this.
We also encourage hiring managers to focus their time with ‘returner candidates’ on
learning about what they can do: their strengths and qualities.
That’s because we want more people to consider Deloitte following a workplace absence;
and we think how we assess you is a big part of that.
1) Preparation
Research is key - Make sure you know the area you’re going to be working in.
Read up on market developments, current hot topics, any trends in this space and any
Deloitte activity in this area. This will help you to demonstrate why you want to work in the
area.
Know how we assess - At Deloitte the structure of our interviews follow a competency-
based approach. This style of interviewing is often used to evaluate a candidate's key
competencies. Essentially, what the interviewer really wants to know is whether you have
the right skills for the position.

Deloitte’s 5 competencies:

• Technical skills – your expertise in doing the role, your product and market
knowledge, your use of any technical systems
 • Motivational – demonstrating a good knowledge of Deloitte and what a career in the
area you have applied to join involves

• Management effectiveness – your ability to work as part of a team and experience in

people management, if applicable.

• Leadership effectiveness – interaction with and leading others

• Communication – ability to share and convey thoughts and ideas effectively,

influencing and persuading, working with people at different levels

We’ll explore how your experience links with these competencies, and ask if you can offer
any specific ‘real life’ examples to back up your experience. So, we recommend investing
some time in reflecting on your experience in these five areas.
Know your CV – Your CV is a key tool that your interviewer will refer to during the interview.
Make sure you know it inside out, that you know the dates, and are able to talk through it
succinctly.
2) In the interview
First impressions count - Be punctual, know where you’re going, arrive at least five minutes
early, and ensure you’re appropriately attired. If you’re running late, due to mitigating
circumstances, let the interviewer know as soon as possible or pass on a message via other
points of contact you may have. Take an additional copy of your CV with you in case you
need to refer to it.
Communication - Remember this is something the interviewer will be assessing you on.
Make sure you understand a question and answer it directly; if you don’t know the answer,
be honest and say you don’t know.
Questions for the interviewer – We think it’s important for you to get to know us at the
same time as we get to know you. Before your interview, think about what you’d like to
know about the role, team, firm, and industry you’ll be working in. Having three or four
questions prepared not only demonstrates your level of interest and commitment to the
role, but also wider thinking (a great skill) about the field you’ll be working in. Your
questions may be indirectly answered through the course of the interview, but try to make
sure you have something to ask at the end, or build on the ones answered.
3) A final note – An interview should feel like a 2 way conversation. Try to make yourself
feel as relaxed and confident as possible to best demonstrate who you are and what you
know. Don’t stress about what you don’t know or that that you have had a career gap; we
can spot potential. We want to hire you for who you are and what you can bring to the firm.