CV & Cover letter (There's love in sharing.........)

The Curriculum Vitae (See attached for sample CV & Cover letter)
The term 'Curriculum Vitae' (CV) is derived from Latin and translated means "the way your life has run". In simple terms, a CV is a personal statement outlining your life from an educational and professional review.
The idea of a CV is to get you an interview and your foot in the door, not to get you the job. Your CV should reflect your occupational and educational life and be relevant to the position you are applying for. Think of it as a personal marketing platform to sell/promote yourself to a prospective employer. When constructing your CV bear in mind that potential employers will only spend a mere 30 - 60 seconds reading your life history.

SELF-ASSESSMENT
Evaluating your skills, achievements and personality is the first and one of the most difficult steps in the career management process. Honesty is the key, and focusing on your strengths and weaknesses will provide vital information to help you find the right job. Put yourself in an employer’s shoes:
What would they want to know about you?
What will differentiate you from other applicants?

SKILL EVALUATION – What do you have to offer?
Taking the plunge and deciding to change jobs can be unnerving and involve a great deal of soul searching, particularly if you have not written a CV for many years or you want to change career direction. By examining your skills and abilities you can determine your relevant strengths which will help you in determining what you have to offer.. Define your main skill sets as a useful way to start the evaluation process. You may wish to divide your skills into the following areas:
• Technical Knowledge
• Practical knowledge and experience
• IT skills
• Commercial and business experience
• Managerial and supervisory experience
• Team working experience
• Analytical and problem solving abilities

Self-Analysis
Once you have established your skills set, evaluate each skill individually; give them a score from 1 to 10 and ask yourself these questions:
What are my main strengths; what do I do best?
What are my main weaknesses?
What skills do I lack, could I retrain?

Use the Right Words
KEYWORDS
In addition to identifying your skills, try and determine the “Action words” that illustrate and support your skills and experiences. You will find this evaluation very useful when writing your CV. You may want to prioritise your transferable skills. Remember these are skills that you can bring to any job and any organisation. There are numerous words you can use and the following are just a few examples.
Planning Words:
Created, Designed, Scheduled, Engineered, Innovated, Justified, Tailored, Planned, Devised, Developed, Estimated, Revised, Formed, Organised, Established.
Leadership Words:
Directed, Administered, Specified, Authorised, Delegated, Managed, Coordinated, Guided, Controlled, Trained, Mentored, Supervised.
Responsibility Words:
Evaluated, Initiated, Authorised, Performed, Developed Implemented, Handled, Operated, Maintained, Coordinated, Audited, Assembled.
Interaction Words:
Conferred, Counselled, Inspired, Appraised, Resolved, Coordinated, Negotiated, Clarified, Recommended, Mentored, Conferred.
Investigative Words:
Analysed, Correlated, Reviewed, Assessed, Observed, Evaluated, Computed, Verified, Investigated, Researched.

What do you want to do/be?
• What is preventing you from getting where I want to go?
• What do/did you enjoy most and why?
• What do/did you least enjoy in my current/previous position and why?
• Do you want more or less responsibility? Do you want to aim for management?
• Where do you want to be in 2 or 5 years time?
• What is your ultimate career goal?
• What is important to you – recognition, money, family, power?

Preparing your CV – The Layout
Name/Contact Details - display a permanent address, home phone, email and mobile. (Note: if a graduate remember to give a permanent address of a family member and your term time address).
Personal Details - include your Date of Birth, Nationality and Marital status. (Can usually be placed at the beginning or end of the document.)
Personal Profile - highly recommended to grab the reader’s attention, it is a key selling point. Ideally this should be punchy, precise and no more than three, 15-word sentences.

Academic Qualifications - recommend you list higher education only if already working. Include details on your final year project, i.e. dissertation, thesis. List any other major projects, field studies, training courses etc. (Can be placed after Work Experience.)
Work Experience – List in reverse chronological order. Include dates, job title/position and company name. As well as writing a brief overview of your job, try and incorporate your responsibilities and achievements.
Computing Skills - list all geoscience and general software applications used, hardware, operating systems, databases, etc. For each one you might want to list your level of proficiency.
Additional Skills – Industry Knowledge, Technical, Commercial, Managerial, Analytical, Languages.
Publications – be careful not to list too many, you may appear to be too academic. You may want to combine topics and list the topic and number of papers written/presented.
Personal Interests - keep this limited but consider what it says about you… eg. are you a team player or an individual?
Society Memberships - List the most relevant.

Referees
Referees - optional but recommended, use 3 maximum. Ensure at least one is an existing or previous manger – provide details on company name, job title and telephone/email/contact details. Graduates should list at least one academic referee.

The Good CV
Is no more than 2 pages max - long CV’s are regarded as time wasting. (If you have an extensive work history, use no more than a maximum of 4 pages.)
Clearly states who you are, where you have been and what you have got to offer. Don’t hide your name with your personal information; put it in bold at the top of your CV and in a minimum of 12-14pt.
Looks attractive - is well laid out, structured and easy to read.
Include a catchy Personal Profile to grab the reader’s attention.
Try to print on good quality paper - it may be circulated around several departments. Also remember to print on one side of the paper only.
Use bulleted lists - short and concise points are clean and informative.
All relevant work experience listed - make sure its written in reverse chronological order

The Bad CV
(would include some/all of the points below)
• Excessive references to “I, he or she” i.e personal style - Alternatively write “Employed as a Seismic Interpreter with 6 months practical experience in …..” the impersonal style”
• Include common spelling, grammatical and punctuation errors. Have someone read your CV, friends know your strengths and weakness and are often more than willing to criticise.
• Would have draw attention to some negative descriptions - the idea of a CV is to sell yourself.
• Would highlight gaps in your work history – this might cause the reader to have doubts/questions about you. It is easier to discuss these details face to face at an interview.
• Would list too many interests and personal information - think about your CV is relaying to the reader and use the space effectively.

The Ugly CV
• Avoid excessive use of CAPITALS, underlining, bold and italics, large fonts - NOT VERY USER FRIENDLY
• Don’t write long sentences, paragraphs or ramble - aim for concise information, less text is easier to read
• Make sure it’s not disorganised and unstructured - don’t make the reader switch back and forth between pages
• Avoid too many graphics, colours, rigid formatting
• Embedding photos - different software might distort your appearance – so be careful

The Covering Letter
http://www.cvtips.com
The objective of the cover letter is to present a brief overview of yourself to the employer. By presenting your personal information in a coherent format, your objective is to convince the employer that your skills are valuable to the employer. Below are some tips to aid you in preparing a concise cover letter.
1. Avoid lengthy letters exceeding 1 page. Most cover letters consist of 3
paragraphs.
2 - Paragraph 1: Brief self-introduction including a description of your career objective.
3 - Paragraph 2: A short description of your education, skills and other relevant information.
4 - Paragraph 3: A closing paragraph indicating your salary requirements, contact address and contact number. Ensure that you include your email and fax contact if available.

Wishing everyone God's favour in your job seach.
Dos