How To Write a CV for Experienced Professionals (in 3 Steps)

If you're an experienced professional, looking for senior opportunities, how do we go about writing a CV, or curriculum vitae, for that kind of situation?

CVs for experienced professionals need another level of quality

This is where the stakes get higher, the quality of CV writing you need to produce needs to be better, and the content that you focus on needs to be more strategic. Don't write a CV and be just another job application for the employers to sift through.

One of the issues we see is job seekers who have progressed from middle management to senior leadership, but the CV still feels middle management.

The tone, the style, and the sophistication of it just isn't there. Perhaps it's still relying on tactical level skills rather than bringing it up a level and talking about strategic level experience. The sophistication comes out in the style of writing and the vocabulary that's used.

Writing a CV for a senior executives

So we need to bring things up a level, giving it a level of sophistication that's commensurate with being an executive level job seeker to capture and maintain the attention of the hiring manager.

Ask a standard CV writer what you should include in your CV layout and they might list some of these sections:

Work history including your recent job
Language skills
Professional achievements
Transferable skills
Soft skills and hard skills

They might suggest those things to be listed in bullet points and maybe throw in a cover letter too but that's no good for an exec role. As accredited and executive-focused CV writers, we do things differently with a greater degree of sophistication.

You need more than a list of your employment history to get the attention of decision makers that hire executives, and transferable skills, behavioural competencies, volunteering experience, hobbies and interests just aren't going to make much difference when up against high calibre job seekers.

So, what sections do you have on a CV for someone with extensive experience and higher level professional qualifications? Our award-winning team of personal branding specialists have some thoughts.

How to write a CV for an experienced professional

Professional summary
Key skills
Career highlights in the STAR methodology
Career history
Earlier career
Qualifications
Recommendations

Professional summary

We would recommend that you start with a professional or executive summary. It's what you might call the Profile. That should tell people what you are, what your value proposition is, and then home in on four key strengths.

These are things that you will do within an organisation that add real value and you'll then have a key skills section.

STAR Methodology

The next key section is one of our innovations, called the Career Highlights using the STAR methodology.

That's where you'll have three case studies written in the STAR methodology.

Why do you need to use the STAR methodology?

STAR is an acronym for Situation, Task, Action and Results. You need the STAR methodology to write mini case studies that promote the biggest projects and achievements that you've had in your career. Of course, these need to be aligned with the challenges of the organisation that you are applying for a job with.

3. Career history

Then you'll have your career history and the really important thing there is to make sure that it's as evidence-based as possible.

Far too many CVs focus on just tasks and the nuts and bolts of the role, rather than focusing on outcomes and achievements and where you've delivered tangible measurable business benefits and performed against hard KPIs.

What makes a professional CV great?

The crux of a good senior level CV is to make it as evidence-based as possible and to really demonstrate that you're good at your job. Over here we do free CV appraisals and typically the main thing we're saying to people is:

"Look I've read your CV, there's some good stuff in there, but how can we tell that you're good at your job?"

At that point there's usually a pause and the response will be:

"yes you can't really can you"

And that's where the achievements, key projects, business benefits and outcomes come into play.