This section assumes that you have already got most of the key points down, and helps you to refine that information so that it is communicated with impact to your reader - with the aim that they ask you in for a chat.

What we will do here is to put phrases around the general notes from the content section. We will do this in way that will go over well to your prospective employer. What we are not doing here is reducing the content so that it fits on two pages - that is the next step. Also bear in mind that we will customise your CV to a specific job after that, so here, just concentrate on the phrasing...

Stating your key skills with impact

Of course the oft-repeated cliche about CVs is that you are selling yourself, and lessons from people selling their products, say on eBay are applicable here too:

• Giving detail builds credibility: the people who give me all the measurements I might need on a shirt I want to buy make it easy to see if it would fit me. Less risk to me means more confidence in buying and more credibility to the seller. They often get a higher price for removing from me the hassle of asking them for this information.
• Explaining why or how builds trust: Just saying something is in good condition means nothing - of course they would say that - good photos from all around the item so that I can see there are no problems, and statements like "freshly dry-cleaned" or "from a pet and smoke free home" are used to inspire trust in buying.

In the same way we will use a formula to build your key skills statements that builds credibility and trust.

Where we start however is with the verb. Your prospective employer is looking at your CV to see 'what can they do for me?' - if they think what you can do is useful to them they'll have you in for a chat - the whole point of the CV. So what we need to lead with is a description of what you can do for them, a verb, an action. So the first rule is that each point will start with a verb and will describe an action - like "motivating staff".

Now of course anyone can say they do something, what will lend some credibility is giving some detail - to continue my example of "motivating staff", how do I motivate staff? If I say I have a key skill of "motivating staff by clearly communicating, listening and working with them on their development", you can immediately see that this carries more impact and credibility than simply saying I have a key skill of "motivating staff". Although it is still just me providing the evidence, the fact that I provide information about how I did this that is reasonable-sounding and logically leads to the result I claim adds the credibility and builds trust in the reader.

Other detail you can add to build trust is why you did that action (e.g. Delegating responsibilities to develop staff), or what the result is when you undertake that action (e.g. creating team ethos that encourages collaborative working). However note that these examples - without a how> - carry less impact, so if you do add 'why' and 'result' parts to your structure, make sure you still include the 'how'.

So, your formula for your key skills is:

action - how? - [optional: why and result]

Go through each of the points you made earlier under your key skills section applying this formula - you will end up with one or more points under each of your key skill headings. It is entirely possible that as you go through and try and phrase your items that you will merge or split out your different points.

Don't worry if you feel you have too many or too few at this stage. We're going to get on with the next section and come back to selecting and arranging the points later. Also, you might worry that some of your key skills points potentially duplicate some of your employment achievements. However, they are at a different level - your key skills will state how you do the things you do (e.g. motivating teams), and you employment achievements will state what you did with those skills in real life (e.g. restructured team, doubling productivity)

This might look something like:

Stating your employment achievements with impact

This section naturally carries extra credibility as it is to do with what you have actually done. What you prospective employer is going to do here is to try and draw comparisons with what they read and what they know of their work environment - to see if you could do something useful in their workplace.

The formula here is:

what you did - specific detail - beneficial result for the organisation

Again you will lead with a verb and briefly describe what you did (e.g. restructured team). Here however, the credibility comes less from how you did it (which might be a long and complex story anyhow), instead it comes from the detail and specificity you use.

To continue this example, you might extend the statement by saying "restructured team, doubling productivity in first year without staff or plant spending increases" - the detail about costs and the amount of productivity increase adds credibility. Of course, you also want to give the reader a clear idea of what you can do for them, and this is where the result part of the formula comes in.

Maybe the result of your achievement was a company award and whilst this is great, what you want to get to is the reason behind the award: maybe they started making more money on that product, maybe it meant your organisation could prices down and beat the competition - those are things that another company might look at and think "I want some of that for me" - and then they are reaching for the phone to ask you to interview... So, focus on the beneficial results to the organisation (not to you), to extend our example: "restructured team, doubling productivity in first year without staff or plant spending increases, enabling us to reduce prices and increase market share 15%". Again note that specificity adds credibility and impact, so use it in the result part as well.

Now you need to repeat this with every point under each of the headings for jobs and roles in your employment section. You should end up with multiple points under each one - some may seem rather long and clunky, but the important thing here is that you have phrased everything that you want to get across in a reader-friendly way: as achievements where they can see the results and judge whether they want some of that for themselves.

This might look something like:

What next?

A good way to do this is to pause and step away from the CV for a while, this can be overnight, or a decent period of time where you go out and do something completely different. Going and making cup of tea is unlikely to give you sufficient perspective here...

Once you're back, re-read through what you have created so far asking yourself all the time if someone else would understand. Imagine you have something like "Rationalised filing of F7-request forms, saving time and reducing lost forms across 4PS section". Now as a reader of your CV this sounds like it would be useful, I think, but unless I am in your organisation I don't know, so I'll ignore this point. Phrase things more generically and keep the perspective external: "Improved order process, increasing productivity and customer satisfaction with my department" - now that sounds handy, and I can understand it.

Obviously some technical jobs and roles will require you to use jargon, and you will gain credibility for doing so, but what you are aiming to do is to make sure that your reader can quickly and easily identify how you can be of use in their organisation. The fact that they can work it out from what you say is not enough - remember you have 15-30 seconds - you have to bash them over the head with it.

Now you have gone through it all again you will most likely have a CV that is too long and feels a bit wordy. You will also have a CV that is only part formatted...

Next: Step 4: presentation

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