Building your

Curriculum Vitae
Personal Branding and
Progression
Your Next Steps
Over the course of this activity you will:
1. Identify good and poor approaches to how to market yourself
effectively to a potential employer or program manager
2. Complete a series of activities to support your CV development
3. Begin to write your draft CV (or edit / amend an existing CV)
So, you think you
know how to
write a CV?
• Test your CV knowledge by the
playing the CV do and don’ts quiz
• You can play individually or by
working in pairs

Kahoot link: CV quiz link

https://create.kahoot.it/share/b3642d9
e-0021-40d7-9418-a40bdf7e5785
Top tips for writing your CV
Building your CV
• Writing a CV can feel daunting but if you break it down into
sections, it makes it more manageable.
• If you have access to IT then open a Word document and
create an electronic CV.
• Remember, you will need to have a draft CV for your
presentation at the end of this unit
Step 1 - Heading and Personal
Details
• Your heading should be your name;
remember, do not waste words or space by
writing ‘Curriculum Vitae’ as your title
• Follow your name with your postal address,
email address and contact telephone
number.
• Don’t forget, your email address should be a
formal and professional email address. Avoid
“joke” or humorous sounding email
addresses.
• You DON’T need to include your date of birth
on your CV.
 Step 2 – Writing Your Personal
Profile
• In no more than five sentences, write a personal profile which
briefly outlines:
1. Your particular skills and attributes
2. Your career goals
3. Why you are particularly interested in this program of
study / job sector
For example…
A highly motivated first year performing and production arts student
looking for an agent within the Creative Industries with a focus on
acting. Throughout my career and education, I have demonstrated high
levels of motivation, a strong work ethic and excellent team work to
help me achieve my goals. I wish to utilise these skills to work with the
Creative Industries sector and to ensure high levels of performance and
production quality.
Step 3 – Your
Experience
• If you have held paid work, acted as a
volunteer or undertaken work experience,
include all of these experiences in this
section.
• All work-related experience, no matter how
short, or unpaid, is relevant.
• List your work-related experiences in date
order, most recent first.
• Make sure you include the company name,
job title / role and key responsibilities or
roles.
Step 4 – Your Education
• List your qualifications in date order
(most recent first)
• You can also include the qualification
you are currently studying.
• Simply include the date you started the
qualification, the qualification title and
then indicate the course is ongoing by
putting the word ‘present’ in the date.
For example, September 2019 – present:
Level 2 Performing and Production Arts,
GCSE English, GCSE Maths at Exeter
College
Step 5 – Other Key
Features
• List any other key achievements, qualifications or
interests that might be relevant to a prospective
employer
• For example, you might like to include any
achievements you hold in areas such as music or
sport.
• You could also indicate personal interests (e.g. if
you enjoy studying languages and travelling).
• If you have been awarded any other roles (e.g.
acted as a mentor at school; been a Tutor Rep,
etc.) these are all relevant in this section.
Don’t forget….
• First impressions count!
• Always ask for help with writing a CV from your tutor,
friends and family or online tutorials
• Spelling check your document and then ask a friend or your
tutor to double check it as well.
• Use easy-to-read fonts and make sure the font size is
between 11 or 12
• Don’t use bold, underline or italics; these make your CV
look cluttered
• Don’t include slang, jargon, nicknames or funny email
addresses