Having a well-written resume is your passport to any company and your key to any Jobs in the United Arab Emirates or any other country in the world.
Previously we made sure to show all the details about the Ultimate guide about How to write a CV that gets hired quickly and get your job in UAE. We’ve already gone through a professional CV writing guidelines early too, where we showed you the kind of things you have to put on in order to construct and good looking professional CV.
Now we’ll just want to take you through the do’s and don’ts just like any other documents. There are certain things you should put them in there and those that you should Avoid. So we’re going to look at things you need to put on the winning CV that will land you in a good job interview very soon.
Dos of Professional CV Writing
- 1. Keep your CV Short. I mean the idea here is not to bore the recruits who are reading the CV. I’m not saying that if you have a lot of good things to talk about you just still try to limit it to two/Tree pages.
It’s important to keep it to the minimum just so that whoever is reading the CV will not get bored just by looking at the number of pages they have to go through.
- 2. Tailor your CV to Job Description. here you need to optimize your CV to the role that you are applying for. I know this might be quite difficult to do especially when you’re applying in different places and giving and sharing your CV all over.
But the ideal situation is that every prospective employer wants to feel special. They want to see that we want to apply for the particular role they advertise for. So if you can make sure you’re tailoring the CV to suit the person who wants to employ you.
- 3. Clean CV Layout: Now it’s important to also choose the right cv type. We all have different workspaces and backgrounds so you find that the traditional chronological CV is not for everyone but there are actually two commonly used CV types.
You can either use a functional CV or the chronological CV, the Chronological CV is always known as skills base. This type of CVs puts the spotlight on your achievement and your skills rather than on your experience and education.
Question: How to handle career gaps on a resume? The best option if you have a gap in your work history and you’re planning to change careers, or are just starting out in the workplace is to go with the Chronological CV or what’s called the Skills-based Resume.
Now when you look at the chronological format it is by far the most widely used format and what it does is that you outline your work experience and education. So it is the best option if you plan to stay in the same industry and have no gaps in your work history.
- 4. Professional CV Format: So you’ve also got to follow the correct format. We have a complete guide post on Professional CV format for UAE if you want to go through the details, however, to make it short we advise you to follow the standard CV format guidelines by putting on top of the CV your personal details of your name your telephone number your email address.
Then you can write either your work history or your education depending on which one is best and so on and so forth. So make sure you actually follow the professional CV format.
Remember: you should not write the word “CV” on your CV. It’s quite obvious when you submit a CV that it’s a CV! so you don’t have to mention it.
- 4. Standard Fonts: Now one other important thing that I think a lot of people miss out or don’t pay attention to what type of font they’re using. We recommend sticking to normal typing fonts such as Times New Roman or Aerial.
It’s because these are very easy to read and make you’ll see the look professional as compared to the other fancy looking fonts. Remember the idea is not to really impress them about how artistic you are. It’s to impress them about the qualities and skills you have you have and how best you fit into the job role.
Stick to font sizes that are about 11 points. Employers don’t want to be straining their eyes just to read your CV. You want to make sure that everything is easy for them.
Note: Stick to one font type only while drafting your resume. choose a font type and stick to it. keep it neat and consistent.
- 5. Using White Space & Margins. You have to pay attention to how neat and tidy your CV is. Keep good space and keep it consistent with good use or margins.
All these things make your CV look tidy.
- 6. Support your Claims. You’ve also got to support claims with specifics. So merely saying that it helps reduce overheads doesn’t help your situation. It does nothing for your chances of getting an intern. Recruiters and employers want specifics. I want specifics to include data to support your claim.
Example: Put Numbers! you would say: I help reduce the company’s overhead from 20000 to 10000 within 12 months of taking up the role.
That actually gives the prospective employer or recruiter a picture of how to measure your success and to measure what you claim you could do.
- 7. Highlight Credentials & Qualification: Some people take out some of their professional qualifications of their CVs. But no matter how irrelevant it might seem to you all the time, it’s important because it takes a lot to go forward and roll on a professional course. So if you have any of such qualifications do Add them. it actually adds value to your CV
- 10. Use Power Words: these words can bring the recruiter attention to your CV for Job application.
Instead of writing, I did ABC. You should use words that are action-oriented. So say things like I managed a team of five I achieved my targets within two weeks of joining the company. Or, I supervised 20 employees. These are words that show what that you did.
Helpful Power Words Guide: You can download our must-use Awesome Power Words Guide for UAE’s Professional CV Writing
Correct Spellings & Grammer: Make sure you’re checking your spelling. you don’t want to send a CV that’s got a lot of typo errors in there.
In fact not even one typo error. because it tells the recruiter you haven’t taken time to really go through your CV. Sometimes minor typos can be forgiven because you’re human, But if you have 10 of those on your CV then there’s actually a problem.
It means you absolutely didn’t invest time in writing a professional CV in the first place. Get someone’s help to go through your CV because it’s much easier for them to pick out the mistakes.
We Provide a free consultation for Professional CV writing in Dubai and UAE, feel free to consult us.
Those Dos are quite easy and straightforward. Now let’s look at our Don’ts.
Don’ts
- 1. Tell Lies!. The first rule of thumb is don’t tell lies please no matter what you do don’t tell lies not even the white ones. It’s very important to be as honest as possible.
The truth of this matter is that you’re hoping to get a job with this person that you’re sending the CV to. Now imagine your employer, recruiter or HR you find out that you told lies and your CV, the trust they have for you would be out of the door. So you just don’t need to tell lies and you see don’t also include unnecessary information.
- 2. Include Unnecessary or Provocative details. So I spoke earlier about things like marital status, Date of birth, religion or extreme political views of left or right wings.
Be Careful!. though no one should refuse you a job application based on age, religion or political points of view, HOWEVER, you will never know why they didn’t call you in first place. Could be because you’d the you know fit into that age bracket that they were looking for.
Putting this info into the CV will make it very easy for them to eliminate you. That means that we could even get a chance to read the second page of your CV to determine if they want to even get to know you!
- 3. Talk about Money. one very important thing that gets all of us excited is the Salary or money. However, you should never mention money on your CV, money issues are meant to be to be discussed face to face. The CV is not the right place or Salary negotiation.
Salary is a matter of negotiations which can happen at the time of your interview and ONLY after your employer brings it up!
Once you put your salary or you expect compensation on your CV it makes it easy for you to be eliminated as well. It paints this picture of you being more interested in money than the job that you will come to do.
- 4. Personal Issues. Divorces failed exams and some other failed attempts it’s not the type of information you want to put on your CV. So please eliminate that.
- 5. Jargons. Oftentimes people just assume that whoever is reading this you will understand some of the technical jargon that they put in there see not everybody studies the same thing that you did. And so it’s very important you don’t have the technical jargon in your CV just so that whoever is reading it understands exactly what you’re trying to say.
Learn How to write a cover letter with free templates and Samples.
So that’s the end of the do’s and don’ts of CV writing. I know that it’s going to be very easy for you to go on.
I want to make sure that you stand out of a thousand CVs and as a recruiter, I would like to either pick yours or no one else’s CV.
Dears,
I find your website and its information very useful, thank you.
Im currently updating my CV and going back to work after being a stay at home mum for 6 years.
I am based in Dubai. Should I mention this somewhere and if so, how best to describe it?
I appreciate your assistance with this.
Thank you in advance, Anniek