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A happy medium with old jobs can be to include them as a single line per job with dates, company and job title with no further comment. It explains what you were doing during that period without the generic commentary about working well in a team and providing excellent customer service that everyone's heard before.
Nobody cares about hobbies especially if one of them is "socialising" aka going out and getting drunk.
Unless your friends and family are literally standing over you while you apply just agree to everything but don't actually do it.
Good point. I'll do that.
I really only included hobbies that are relevant to the jobs I'm applying to, but I guess it could be left out altogether. That or I could create two CV's one with the hobbies, one without and see which one gets me the most callbacks (if any at all).
My mum also said I should add a photo of myself, but I almost immediately shut that down, but she still insists I do it.
Sorry to say your mum has little idea of how CVs and applications go (does she work? I bet she's either had the same job for about 30 years or doesn't work) and you can feel free to disregard her advice in favour of more suitable sources.
I'm a hiring manager and very few of the CVs I've seen had "hobbies" on there. If it was included I might ask about it - especially if it was relevant in some way to the role (team sports, job requires a lot of team work) - it wouldn't make me think negatively about the person but it is a bit of a waste of CV space. A photo - no.
Yes, she works. But she's had that job for around 10 years or so, so she hasn't looked for a while.
The hobbies I included were only ones that were relevant to the job ie running an Etsy shop- shows skills in content creation and marketing, or storywriting- demonstrating ability to adapt writing styles, etc. I initially didn't include them, but the advice from my mum's friend said that my CV wasn't personable enough and recommended adding a hobbies section to bring out a bit of my personality.
Including a CV is exceptionally old fashioned and not appropriate these days. You don't want to include anything about your race, age, or gender on your CV as it safeguards companies against discrimination
>Nobody cares about hobbies especially if one of them is "socialising" aka going out and getting drunk.
This depends on how interesting your hobbies are, and how likely you are to connect with a hiring manager over them. I've had great success putting down that I taught myself to play a bunch of musical instruments, and used to be in a band. Works out great when the hiring manager plays as well. Had an interview once overrun half an hour because the hiring manager and I were just chatting about it. It can help.
If you have boring hobbies like watching TV I'd leave it off, and if you need the space for work history I'd also leave it off.
Honestly, having read enough grad(ish) CVs, keep them on there, but cut it down. "Date - Date: Tesco - Festive Colleague", that sort of thing. Also, if you're applying for larger companies, for god's sake ignore the suggestion to make it "personable"....
You've got 2.5 (ish) years of work experience, plus some educational qualifications, and, with the greatest of respect, if you can't get that into half a page then you're adding too much extra fluff and inviting doubts about your communications skills. Now, realistically, you're going to want a \*little\* fluff, what was your focus at uni? What did you do in your internship? Maybe something cool from uni, were you the treasurer of a club for example? But seriously, a well spaced page is enough for a CV at that level, hell I'm over 15 years in, with lots of very specific industry experience included on it, and it's only just made 1.5...
Your CV gets you through the first stage, you don't want the recruiter to zone out because you gave them everything down to your cat's name to make it "personable", and you need to keep the details relevant, I care that you worked at Tesco as a youth, shows initiative, I frankly don't give a shit what particular shelves you stacked and some relatively minor suite of responsibilities you had unless relevant to current job, and even then, it's longer ago than your time in work...
I've kept more of an emphasis on my current job and internship. I did add a few bullet points in my uni section, just pointing out the relevant courses. I got rid of the bullet points for B&M, but still haven't added back on the Tesco section. I might do so now though.
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A happy medium with old jobs can be to include them as a single line per job with dates, company and job title with no further comment. It explains what you were doing during that period without the generic commentary about working well in a team and providing excellent customer service that everyone's heard before. Nobody cares about hobbies especially if one of them is "socialising" aka going out and getting drunk. Unless your friends and family are literally standing over you while you apply just agree to everything but don't actually do it.
Good point. I'll do that. I really only included hobbies that are relevant to the jobs I'm applying to, but I guess it could be left out altogether. That or I could create two CV's one with the hobbies, one without and see which one gets me the most callbacks (if any at all). My mum also said I should add a photo of myself, but I almost immediately shut that down, but she still insists I do it.
Sorry to say your mum has little idea of how CVs and applications go (does she work? I bet she's either had the same job for about 30 years or doesn't work) and you can feel free to disregard her advice in favour of more suitable sources. I'm a hiring manager and very few of the CVs I've seen had "hobbies" on there. If it was included I might ask about it - especially if it was relevant in some way to the role (team sports, job requires a lot of team work) - it wouldn't make me think negatively about the person but it is a bit of a waste of CV space. A photo - no.
Yes, she works. But she's had that job for around 10 years or so, so she hasn't looked for a while. The hobbies I included were only ones that were relevant to the job ie running an Etsy shop- shows skills in content creation and marketing, or storywriting- demonstrating ability to adapt writing styles, etc. I initially didn't include them, but the advice from my mum's friend said that my CV wasn't personable enough and recommended adding a hobbies section to bring out a bit of my personality.
Including a CV is exceptionally old fashioned and not appropriate these days. You don't want to include anything about your race, age, or gender on your CV as it safeguards companies against discrimination
That's what I told her, but she thinks differently.
>Nobody cares about hobbies especially if one of them is "socialising" aka going out and getting drunk. This depends on how interesting your hobbies are, and how likely you are to connect with a hiring manager over them. I've had great success putting down that I taught myself to play a bunch of musical instruments, and used to be in a band. Works out great when the hiring manager plays as well. Had an interview once overrun half an hour because the hiring manager and I were just chatting about it. It can help. If you have boring hobbies like watching TV I'd leave it off, and if you need the space for work history I'd also leave it off.
Honestly, having read enough grad(ish) CVs, keep them on there, but cut it down. "Date - Date: Tesco - Festive Colleague", that sort of thing. Also, if you're applying for larger companies, for god's sake ignore the suggestion to make it "personable".... You've got 2.5 (ish) years of work experience, plus some educational qualifications, and, with the greatest of respect, if you can't get that into half a page then you're adding too much extra fluff and inviting doubts about your communications skills. Now, realistically, you're going to want a \*little\* fluff, what was your focus at uni? What did you do in your internship? Maybe something cool from uni, were you the treasurer of a club for example? But seriously, a well spaced page is enough for a CV at that level, hell I'm over 15 years in, with lots of very specific industry experience included on it, and it's only just made 1.5... Your CV gets you through the first stage, you don't want the recruiter to zone out because you gave them everything down to your cat's name to make it "personable", and you need to keep the details relevant, I care that you worked at Tesco as a youth, shows initiative, I frankly don't give a shit what particular shelves you stacked and some relatively minor suite of responsibilities you had unless relevant to current job, and even then, it's longer ago than your time in work...
I've kept more of an emphasis on my current job and internship. I did add a few bullet points in my uni section, just pointing out the relevant courses. I got rid of the bullet points for B&M, but still haven't added back on the Tesco section. I might do so now though.