Unit 1

CV for job advertisement for a profession related to the tourism sector.

How to write a Curriculum Vitae (CV) for job application

A comprehensive and structured information in the job application phase – from writing an exhaustively and internationally applicable CV in English, through a detailed, well-organized cover letter to practical situations when being interviewed for a job by a future employer. The section will capture both verbal and nonverbal communication, dialogues based on requirements of employers to their future employees in tourist sector, useful advice for the stage of preparation for job interviews and its implementation. The presented situational didactics through the practically oriented dialogues will increase the knowledge of the VET students about the real existence of the requirements and the required qualities on the part of the worker. The module will include different templates, practical oriented exercises for both individual and group work etc. The dialogues will help not only to extract information about what are the most sought-after qualities and skills of employers but will also help students to develop the ability to present their own experience and knowledge through which they will confidently and calmly appear at a job interview.

The process of finding a job generally involves several stages. Once we have found a job posting in different channels for information the first step is applying to the company we want to work. The CV is the employer’s first official contact with the possible future employee. For this it is of utmost importance what first impression we will create, how we will present ourselves and our professional and personal experience and knowledge in the most comprehensive but also specific and accurate way. If we manage to be successful in that stage, we can be sure of getting to the next step - an invitation to a job interview.

The abbreviation CV or Curriculum vitae (from Latin – course of life) is short written information about professional life, education, qualifications, experience, knowledge, previous jobs with which persons introduce themselves to future employers in a process of seeking a job.

According to various scientific studies, the time an employer takes to look at and make a first impression of a potential employee’s CV is around 5-7 seconds. Therefore, it is important to know how to create an impressive CV. There are various templates for creating a CV but regardless there are a few stages of information that must be established that should be included.

Firstly, we start with personal information: name and surname, address, city, country, mobile phone, email and if we want, we can add a social media profile. After that we include information about the position we want to apply for and our work experience. We should give information separately for every job that we have before and include job period, job description, responsibilities, activities, and the company that we worked for. At that stage we introduce our work experience and present our work from the last position we held to the first one in our career path. After that we include information for education, trainings, personal skills, language knowledge, job-related skills, communication, and management skills. If it's applicable, we can add additional information that we believe is very relevant to the position we are applying for. Standard perception is that the optimal document length should be at most 2 pages.

Did you know… Europass CV is the best know and used format for creating a CV in Europe. You can learn more and find templates in the official page following the link: https://europa.eu/europass/en/create-europass-cv

Apart from the content you present in your CV, it is undoubtedly impressive how it is structured and designed visually. For this remember that the appearance also conveys a meaningful message and information to the employer you are applying to. The first thing an employer sees when they review your CV is its layout:

• Summarize yourself – as you already know, the optimal size of a CV is two pages but if you are confident enough you can summarize yourself in one page.
• Easy on the eyes – when you write your CV it’s important to think about the arrangement and layout of the document itself. Use readable fonts and keep font size, headings and the colors consistent so that it’s easily perceived by the eye.
• Air on paper – be sure that you distribute the information and the different sections so that they are arranged and there is air in the text by enough margins and space between the text.
• An eye on small details –use for section titles font size 14-16pt and for normal text 11-12pt.
• Save as – if you save your document only as a Word file there might be changes in formatting. it would be more suitable to save your file as PDF files