Online CV Workshop: a wannabe magazine journalist’s CV
This time The Postgrad is putting her CV under the Wannabe Hacks microscope and asking for YOUR help.
I’m about to start applying for an Easter work placement so I’m in the process of re-doing my CV for the gazillionth time. To be honest, I’m sick of rehashing it and reckon it could do with a few fresh pairs of eyes.
I’m looking for advice on presentation and content – what could I have done better? What else should I include and what could I delete? I particularly think my ‘profile’ paragraph could do with a LOT of work. Please be unflinchingly critical, I can take it!
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Just wanted to thank you all for your input, I can't tell you how useful it has been! I'll be posting my edited CV soon as a follow-up.
Good CV Hannah, maybe put your employment and education first and then your skills and interests. I reckon interests should go last, as really its your experience and qualifications employers are most interested in before your interests. Other than that your CV looks similar to mine, only I have my address at the top too- does anyone do that anymore? Is it worth it?!
Your qualifications and interning experience are clearly excellent....but the CV doesn't really have any personality. You need to get across what your passions and interests are a bit more. I never see any colour in people's CVs...why? I don't mean rainbow coloured text but a little bit of creative formatting would make it stick out from the other piles of text that potential employers are going to receive.
A trick I used was to put a small version of the logo of each of my employers/work experience next to their name; it adds colour and makes your experience stand out.
I don't think you need any advice from wannabe's to be honest, you're clearly a very strong candidate. Just to be very hypocritical, however, I'd say this:
What differentiates you from the rest of the pack, really, is your academic strength. Internships are a dime a dozen but 1st class work from cambridge and a masters from city are fewer and farer between. So I'd put these right at the top after your profile thingy (which I think is actually quite good and direct about your career goals). I say this mainly because I've consistently been told that what's attractive about my CV is it's simplicity and clarity over my academic strength, which although strong, is less impressive than yours. Having lived on inDesign through my student years I'm perfectly capable of designing some crazy super-design but often people don't know where to look, so I have one column with everything in descending order of importance.
Also, I'd get rid of your general section, it's a bit nothingy, and your writing and copyediting section is also a bit fluffy, publications 'such as the guardian'?
Also think as a general career thing you could do with some placements on bigger, badder publications like G2, Vogue etc.
If that all seems quite hard I think you could stretch to two pages, your experience is strong enough to justify it.
That said, no-one's exactly throwing job offers for the Sunday Times my way so you probably ignore everything I've said.
You've got a load of awesome content on here, but there's no differentiation between education and your skills. I think it would look better to either have 2 equal collumns, or one of them a lot smaller. Also, It might be good to add a splash of colour to make bits stand out. I'd also advise making your name bigger, or possibly moving around your intro statement to underneath your name. I'd also move the 'general' bit further down, as I think your visual arts experience is probably more important/interesting to employers. Good work overall though, your CV is PACKED!
Only criticism would be that the personal statement at the top has too many sentences starting with "I". Also, aspiring to magazine journalism does not contradict your ability to work with multimedia and web content so I would sub "but" for "and".
As map says, you've got lots of amazing experience on your CV. I think in your profile you could be a bit more explicit about how fantastic you are - at the moment you are underselling yourself. Try to tell the audience why you're unique better than the rest. I also think you might consider naming your experience in the profile. I know you've listed previous employment below your profile but it might be worth rephrasing and saying "I have over a year's worth of work experience at a/b/c". Try switching the last sentence around and don't say 'but': "I am confident writing for the web and producing multimedia content and I am an aspiring magazine feature writer". Just some thoughts.
Looks smart, but there's inconsistencies with the par spacing. It doesn't portray you strongly enough as a journalist - journalism comes over as just one of many interests.I would start with a section called JOURNALISM AND MEDIA SKILLS, and bring all those up to the top. Also have one section called INTERNSHIPS, then list the whole lot together, BEFORE the 'Education' section - again, so the reader is hit with all the media stuff in the left-hand column.You come across strongly on the politics / women's rights stuff - that might put off editors of certain types of publications.
It also needs a link to your blog / website, so readers can see your published work for themselves.
Good luck with it!
Wow, you've got loads of amazing experience on there but I don't think the presentation does it enough justice. Maybe colour block your titles to make them stand out, and definitely put your profile in a box itself or shift it around to a place more eyecatching. I based my CV on this guy's: http://alexwood.me/CV/ and it's worked wonders adding a bit of colour.
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