These 9 Great CV writing Tips will secure the interviews you want.Because you must have a CV that gets you the interview.

It's not about revving up your CV / Resume with wonderful power words and phrases that are not a true reflection of the "real" you. As a recruitment consultant I meet quite a few people who's CV / Resume is not an accurate reflection of their capabilities, many are considerably "overstated".

And I can assure you this is not the route to take.

What you need is a CV / Resume that honestly reflects your skills, capabilities and personal motivations. Packed with YOUR unique personality, prioratised to fit the READERS needs.

This is how to create a unique, compelling CV / Resume, packed with personality that readers will love!

1. Clearly define your objective (no I don't mean your objective statement for your CV / Resume). Spend as long as it takes to identify what you want your CV / Resume to do for you. Is it a general document for posting on a job board to test the water, or maybe a highly targeted response to a job advert or Job description?

Your job is to research beyond the job spec to really understand what skills, experience, and characteristics your target career demands.

2. Learn from the behaviour of Successful People. History shows us that though successful people come in all shapes and sizes, they share key behavioural competencies / characteristics (self belief, ideas and vision, determination and persistence to never give up being just a few). Companies looking to recruit the best candidates know that their high achievers share these characteristics. Therefore you're CV / Resume's job is to demonstrate honestly the characteristics you possess in the order of importance for the role or career you targeted at step 1.

3. Know yourself. This step is critical, and though most people feel they know themselves, for the purpose of writing a great CV / Resume they don't!

Simply take advantage of the free online personality tests and personal motivation tests available, it will take you 30 - 45 minutes and you will end up with assessments that are pure CV gold in their professional and compelling descriptive wording. This is the stuff that conveys your unique and likable personality.

4. STAR Stories. No not stories of your favorite personalities to take your readers mind of your CV / Resume. STAR stands for Specific, Target, Action, Results and is a great technique for answering tough interview questions. So what's this got to do with great CV writing tips then?

This CV WILL get you interview's, and will prompt the interviewer's questions, so now is the time to discuss STAR stories.

STAR is an acronym to make relating your experience easy to remember for you and entertaining and meaningful for your audience. You communicate your experience by describing SPECIFIC situations, the business objectives or TARGETs, the ACTION you took and the RESULTS of those actions. For your CV you keep this very concise (use of bullet points helps). In the interview you wrap you answers into short story answers.

5. Tailor your CV / Resume for each role you apply for. This will mean developing a dedicated CV / Resume folder system on your PC, as you will develop many variations as your experience and career develops. Well worth the effort.

6. It's the words that sell. Don't get bogged down with formatting, and adding graphics to your document, simple font, size 10 to 12 for body copy two sizes bigger for headings, with some simple underlining or bolding if required. Free templates are available everywhere on the internet which you can download and use, Microsoft Word has excellent free templates, as do most word processing applications.

7. The order or your CV / Resume information is CRITICAL. Reviewers of CV's tend to have piles to read through, so you MUST hit them between the eyes with your relevance for their role. And this has to happen in the first or second chapter (if your early in your career with little experience it's probable that your education / qualifications will occupy top spot after your name and contact details Provided they are good and relevant for the reader). If you are more experienced you may open with an Objective, Summary, or Profile statement, and demote the qualifications to further down the order.

The Objective, Summary, or Profile statement SCREAMS (nothing understated here) at the reader that possess everything they are looking for. A highly crafted chapter that may take you longer to write than the rest of the document put together. Not long, but concise, compelling and LIKABLE.

The rest of the document demonstrates the relevant experience, skills, and personality as you will have identified and prioratised from step 1.

8. If you have a jaw droppingly great achievement that's recent and highly relevant, add a short quoted testimonial after its description in speech marked italics from somebody senior or a client. This testimonial MUST be willing to be referenced. This is incredibly powerful, as basically it confirms your summary or profile statement as being fact.

9. Where possible always add a cover letter to your CV / Resume it really does improve your chances.