How To Write An Attention Grabbing CV

It's that time of year again when the leading international banks are receiving applications form undergraduates all over Nigeria. For most applicants the first hurdle to cross is the CV. Since banking employers don’t have the chance to meet everybody, they ask you to send a representation of you that they can have a quick look at and use to decide whether to meet you in person or not. That representation is your CV or Resume. Sadly, this is where a majority of people get it wrong.

Two key things to remember is that most bankers looking at your CV don’t have a lot of time, also they have tons of others just like yours that they need to see. So your resume needs to do 2 things

1. Be concise and to the point

2. Stand out in positive light

Be Concise and To The Point

It’s best your CV be no more than 1 page long, maximum of 1.5 pages, if you really have to extend the length. Keeping it this concise will force you to focus on the KEY things that make you stand out from the crowd and prevent you from filling it up with material that isn’t relevant

Stand Out in Positive Light

The CV is your representative to the banker who is also reading lots of other CVs, so it has to stand out. The easiest way to do this is not with fancy font, your best picture and lots of rainbow colours, rather you make sure that it is well laid out, devoid of spelling and grammatical errors and highlights your strong skills that are relevant to the job

It’s usually best to follow a simple layout with sections on your contact details, education, experience, skills and extracurricular activities. Also, for international banks, leave out your personal details like age, sex, etc. Under the experience section don’t forget to make use of strong action words, talk about your achievements rather just what you did and try and quantify as much of your achievements as you can.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch has a wonderful guide with CV writing tips you can download here. You can also download a sample CV here to give you a practical idea of what your CV should look like.

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