For many years I, in common with many others, assumed that compiling a cv was a question of recalling and recording the historical facts and setting them out in a comprehensible manner, possibly with the most desirable interpretation.

It is only in the last couple of decades that I have realised that a cv is not so much a record of the past as an advertisement for the future. The significance of this is that for a cv to serve it’s optimum purpose it needs far more input than just the historical facts.

I was hired once to help 30 NHS executives who had not been able to secure new roles at a time when NHS executives had been forced to give up their roles and reapply. I was surprised that they all had c.20 page cvs and equally surprised that within 6 weeks of writing 2 page cvs for them they were all re-employed in the NHS.

In a cv tell the truth, tell nothing but the truth, but for heaven’s sake do not bore everyone with the whole truth. Before writing a cv one needs to:

1. Recall and record the facts
2. Identify one’s primary skills
3. Identify the features one wants out of a new role
4. Identify the type of role and employer that are likely to provide 3 above and make the best use of 2 above and what that job title is likely to be
5. Find a way of confirming that your assumptions at 4 above are correct
6. Establish the reward level that is likely to apply to the role, without being fooled if around the £200k break point above which the best opportunities are not advertised
7. Write the dates and job titles and employers for each historical role
8. Insert for each the objective of your appointment
9. Insert below the preferably quantified extent to which you achieved 8 above
10. Insert between 8 and 9 above how you did it
11. Cut it down to about 1.5 pages with more 10 above in the later roles, avoiding irrelevances and repetition and concentrating on the 2 and 3 above.
12. Insert qualifications, location, languages, nationality and other relevant features.
13. Insert a paragraph at the top, which is more an instruction to the reader as to what they should be looking at you for than a summary of the past, and emphasise your skills
14. Ensure your referees are going to support your cv
15. If seeking under £200k/$300k apply for ads and talk to the Selection Consultants who advertise vacancies and if over that level talk to the Search Consultants who do not advertise their assignments, but either way try 2 or 3 first to be sure you are going down well.