Create a personalised profile at the top of your CV. It’s important that employers can immediately understand your key skills and what you can do.

If you are a technical specialist, create a skills table outlining your strengths and proficiency level.

Keep it relevant and concise, cutting out unnecessary text.  If you have a long career, employers will only be interested in your most recent experience.  Length-wise, get it as close to 3 pages as possible - employers won’t have time to read more than this if they are looking at multiple applications.

Be consistent with formatting – font size, margins, colours.  Don’t overly format your CV; a clean look with plenty of white space is much easier to read and looks more professional.

Detailing the profile, responsibilities and achievements in a structured format for each of your positions will make it easier for the interviewer to read, particularly if you are a contractor with a long list of previous roles.

Spelling and punctuation are important, use spell check to pick up on any typos.  This is an obvious one, but plenty of candidates still fail to do this.  Ask someone else to review it for you if necessary.

List your experience chronologically, most recent first.  If you’ve only recently finished your education, then this can appear towards the top of the CV, otherwise, your most recent work experience should come first.

Quantify your achievements wherever possible – if you have increased efficiency, say by how much.  Specifics are much more interesting to a future employer than alluding to vague achievements.

Look at the job description and tailor your CV to each job, focusing on the experience that best matches the role.   Make sure you know your own CV inside out and are comfortable talking about it at interview.

Explain any gaps in your experience, as positively as possible. If it’s not true, don’t put it in, it’s never worth it.