Top Skills for CV Success : Stand Out as A Graduate
Your university days are great fun, very rewarding, and you learn a lot of skills along the way. Although we would never want you to wish away this time in your life, it is helpful to have one eye on your future throughout your time studying at university, and part of this includes preparing skills for CV success and how you can stand out as a graduate at the end of your undergraduate degree.
Whether you are looking to land a summer internship as a student or looking for a graduate role after university, there are some key skills that you should include and key steps that will help you out together a winning CV.
What is a graduate CV?
A graduate CV is a document that outlines your skills and achievements in a way that looks attractive to a recruiter or a hiring manager at a company.
The idea is that you want to make a good first impression, put forward what makes you the right person for the role in question, and looks at specific areas that make you suitable for it, rather than a generic CV that lists your educational achievements and work history.
How to write your graduate CV
Before we get into what the recruiters are looking for specifically, how should you go about writing your graduate CV to be effective?
The first thing is that you should think about the details of specific skills that you have developed through your studies, work experience, or part-time job, that are transferable and could be desirable to a recruiter. Write confidently about your personal skills and experience, pointing to any praise you have received during your work, and ensuring that you keep things clean and clear, discussing specific transferable skills from part-time work and seasonal roles that otherwise might not be appealing alone.
What do graduate recruiters want to see?
Here are a few of the things that recruiters are looking for in your graduate CV.
Commercial Awareness – it is important that you can demonstrate CV skills that showcase your knowledge of the specific industry and/or company that you are applying for. Find out about the company culture, how it sits in its competitive landscape, and what its products and services aim to achieve.
Good communication skills – you need to show that you can communicate well, this covers verbal and written communication, alongside good listening skills. You can include specific examples of each, in interview and presentation situations to show how you communicate well.
Problem solver – can you take an analytical approach to logically work through a problem? This is vital within any career, as you will face small and large challenges that require effective resolution every single day.
Strong teamwork – although independent skills for your CV are desirable and you are showcasing your own abilities, no person is successful in life unless they have strong teamworking characteristics. Can you manage and delegate to others when required, can you take on instruction and work towards a wider team goal through your independent actions?
Effective IT skills – include examples from your studies, work experience, or extracurricular activities where you have used your IT skills to great effect and where this might be useful to your future role.
Leadership characteristics – even if you don’t want to be a manager right away, for your future career it is best that you can demonstrate in your graduate CV that you have the ability and characteristics to show good, strong leadership. This can be through delegation and management of tasks, as well as leading by example.
Organisation – can you work efficiently and remain consistently productive, meeting personal and wider team targets through careful prioritisation of tasks? Learning how to focus and remain consistent is desirable to any recruiter.
Some graduate CV rules and tips
Here are some final rules and things you shouldn’t do when putting together your graduate CV.
Don’t include your picture – you want your graduate CV to be slim and precise, so don’t take up good real estate on the page with a selfie or headshot that won’t make a difference to what the recruiter thinks about you.
Be precise with your data – if you’ve included specific projects and volunteering information, such as charity fundraisers, include the detail, like how much you raised, how many people did you contact/gain as a donation etc.?
Keep it simple – stick to a simple font, size 12, have a structure for bold and italics that you stick with throughout the document, and make it clear and easy to read.
Stick to one page (or two) – following the simple theme, we would always recommend that you keep your CV down to one page, if possible, two pages maximum.
Stay relevant – never lie or stretch the truth about anything you have done, and keep the information relevant to the application, demonstrating your relevant experience and skills with clear examples.
Proofread! – Last, always make sure you triple read through and proofread your CV once you have written it, and it can’t hurt to check through it once more before you send it off to a graduate recruiter or specific company, to ensure it is relevant to that specific application.
It is challenging to learn how to navigate life after graduation, whether you have a clear idea of what you want to do for a career or even if you don’t quite know yet at this stage.
Learning how to put together skills for CV creation and applying that to application letters and interviews for graduate schemes, post-grad study, or any type of job role, is a vital thing for your life.
Getting to grips with it during your undergraduate studies will stand you in good stead for the future, as there will always be times when we are looking to progress or to change roles.
Having a strong foundation to build from in terms of your skills and experience will help you to be successful. How is your CV looking currently? Do you need to tweak it to match the specifications of a job role or graduate scheme you have your eye on? Let us know your own approach in the comments.