The CV Book: Your Definitive Guide To Writing The Perfect CV

by James Innes

The CV Book is the definitive guide to CV writing, authored by James Innes, the Founder and Managing Director of The CV Centre – the UK’s leading CV consultancy. James is widely considered to be one of the UK’s leading experts on the topic of CVs; it is arguable that nobody has more up-to-date, relevant experience. The advice given is tried, tested and proven on a daily basis within The CV Centre – responsible for writing tens of thousands of CVs annually. The CV Book includes free bonuses such as CV and cover letter templates for download and immediate use. The templates cover all circumstances – from graduates to executives, and include ‘special cases’, e.g. legal, medical, IT, teaching, etc. There’s also a special offer for The CV Centre’s services. A key feature of the book – nothing quite like it exists in competing titles – is a chapter covering the 15 most common CV writing mistakes and how to avoid them (based on extensive statistical analysis The CV Centre has undertaken of many thousands of CVs). Only a tiny percentage of CVs manage to avoid all these mistakes and most are victim to several. Avoiding these mistakes makes all the difference to whether the CV ends up in the ‘yes’ pile or the ‘no’ pile – also known as the bin! Companion www.ineedacv.co.uk/readertools

Genres: Nonfiction

249 pages, Paperback

First published July 30, 2009

Reviews

[Abdo · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great book for people who are struggling with writing their CVs “Curriculum Vitae” especially for people who live in the UK. In addition to explaining each section of your CV the author also gives recommendations, CV & Cover Letter samples and a brief explaining and recommendations for Writing Cover letters and filling the job applications and winning the interview. For the individuals who want to submit their CVs to other countries he also gives the way how their CVs should be.

Why did I gave this book 4 stars?
You might read the whole book, and if you did that you will notice the repetition of some ideas in some chapters. Why? Because, in my opinion I think this book for people who need to know how to write their CV urgently, so you could read the sections which you are not sure what to write in them.

And here are some tips that you should consider while writing a CV?

- Never write one CV for all the job opportunities you are applying for ( tailor your cv)

- Write using third person and strip out pronouns ( stay away from I-strain )

- your CV is not a biography make it short and concise

- know the right type of CV for you

- when writing your CV aim for getting the interview and it’s too early to negotiate the salary or your travel plans

- CV is individual yours is so much different from your colleague’s

- Have balance between white spaces and texts

- The first quarter of the first page is the golden quarter because it is the first thing the the recruiter will get his eyes at

- Never Ever handwrite your CV or make any handwritten corrections. You must and should use word-processing software in your computer to write your CV ( Microsoft Office )

-Finally think positively while writing your CV.

[Holly · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best of the four CV books that I have read. The author begins with a great 'Apology in advance...' intro in which he introduces the book and tells the reader that he has tried to use as wide a scope as possible and deliver a book that points to as many circumstances and covers as many potential issues that the reader may face. The introduction continues with a part that highlights the most important aspects; "if you are in a hurry, read these bits first" along with the top questions that are often asked by job hunters.

Innes writes with a warm tone throughout the title and this is actually the most 'friendly' book I've read on this subject. It's also the most useful and most well structures of the four titles I've read recently on CV writing. All four have said to tailor your CV to each job position applied for, but this is the first book that has taught me how to write a master CV first and THEN how to tailor it. This is exactly the method that works for me and I found it very practical.

This book also definitely helped me to improve the layout of my CV, especially with the education section - this being the first book on the subject I have read which does so.

Easy to read with exceedingly well laid out chapters. The Mr Kipling of CV books.

[Is Jem · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thought about this more and I'd class this as 2 stars instead of 3 stars. It does have some useful stuff in there (for example, the use of an IT Skills/Further Skills section), and there's tons of examples of different people's CVs. But it's called THE DEFINITE guide to writing the perfect CV and I don't feel like it is that. All the examples of CVs it uses seem to be from people who are either highly educated (MA and up) or have a fuckton of high up posistions (sales manager, etc). Since I'm solidly in the middle, with a BA, some Volunteer Work and I'm still on my first job, this is not realllllly that useful to me. Also, considering he talks about the importance of one page CVs a lot, a surprising amount of the CVs he uses as examples are two pages.

[Nik0k0 · Rating 2 out of 5]

The best part of this book are the cv examples at the end and what mistakes to avoid, other than that most of the information seems pretty redundant or trival. In addition, the same advice is repeated multiple times throughout the book.

[gramakri · Rating 3 out of 5]

What do you need to do to make your CV stand out and catch their eye and get you called for an interview ? This is precisely what James Innes, MD of one of UK's leading CV consulting firm tries to answer through this book.
This extremely well laid out and highly readable book.
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