The general appearance of your CV should reflect you as an individual. The more conservative style is always safe, and essential when you are applying for say, a serious senior management role. A conservative CV can be lifted using subtle key colours and there's nothing wrong with that, but decorations should be avoided. A person applying for a job in the entertainment, or perhaps early childhood sector will most likely want some a little funkier, but the bottom line is that the CV must look professional, and not the work of a child with a paint box.
We offer a variety of styles to suit different job types or personality types. The common denominator is that all provide the right information in a clear, concise and easily followed manner.
As noted earlier, there are many opinions on what a CV should contain, how it should be set out and just how many pages it should have. Two typically conflicting views suggest no more than one job per page versus CV should be no more than two pages long! Try working that out if you've had three jobs...
It all comes down to what the recipient likes. Some only want a very brief summary that will allow them to decide whether you warrant an interview. It's at the interview that they will ask you to expand on all the bits they are interested in. Other people like detail, and should a CV arrive that is one page long, they may not want to bother taking that application further, so it's a kind of catch 22 situation.
We like to cover the bases, so you can get a full CV and a single page version in the style of your choice for a small additional cost.
We're often asked "Do you do CV's for teachers?" (or doctors, accountants, social workers, pilots etc.) In reality, there's not a lot of difference in CV's for different professions or occupations. The content is different of course, but the same principles remain. We have done CV's for a wide range of people from different occupations, including:
Education / Teaching
Medical / Healthcare
Logistics / Warehousing
Social Services
Police
Industrial
Retail
IT
Construction
Insurance
Finance / Accounting
Automotive
Aviation
Customer Services
Food & Beverage
Engineering
Manufacturing
Boatbuilding / Marine
Management
Sales / Marketing
Hospitality
Administration
Trades
Quality Assurance
Sciences
Public Service
Transport
Banking
Sports
Armed Forces
Law
Politics
Agriculture / Horticulture
If you don't see your particular field here, don't worry - we've probably done it!
Sometimes we're also asked about photos. It is less common to put your photo on a CV in New Zealand, but some jobs do require this. Also, it is standard practice in some countries to include a photo. Putting your photo on the CV is no problem and there is no extra cost for this. You can provide the photo yourself, or if attending for a consultation, we can take it.
Sometimes a question arises about the range of fonts available. It is generally recommended that a plain serif font, such as you see here, or a sans-serif font such as Arial / Helvetica be used. There are two good reasons for this:
These fonts are easy to read, even in small sizes.
They are standard fonts that the recipient will definitely have on their PC.
Even if you have only minimal computer experience, you'll know that if you open a document containing a font that is not installed on your PC, it will be substituted for one you do have. If the creator of the document used a special font to get a particular effect, it will not display and may look stupid.
Here is where the PDF format comes into its own. A PDF file is cross-platform, and takes the form of a virtual image of the source document. It looks exactly like the original, and almost everybody in the world has Adobe's Acrobat Reader (the program needed to open PDFs) on their PC. It's a free download anyway. If you really wanted to use some extra-funky font in your CV, go for it (as long as it is not difficult to read), and simply send the PDF version to others. It will look exactly the way you want it to regardless of whether or not the recipient uses the same fonts you have. There is a huge range of fonts you can download (most we would never consider using for a CV but that's up to you). Just email us the font file. If you need to edit your CV later, just edit the Word file and use one of the free downloadable utilities to convert it in a PDF. Easy! We are also able to produce a range of funky headers and sub-headers using text image files that you will not be able to edit. See the list of samples.
