What should my Covering Letter and CV include

What to include in your Covering Letter.

Your CV should include…

When writ­ing your cov­er let­ter keep it brief, while mak­ing sure it empha­sis­es your suit­abil­i­ty for the job. It can be bro­ken down into the fol­low­ing sections:

• First para­graph — The open­ing state­ment should set out why you’re writ­ing the let­ter. Begin by stat­ing the posi­tion you’re apply­ing for, when you are avail­able to start and where you saw the opportunity.
• Sec­ond para­graph — High­light rel­e­vant expe­ri­ence and demon­strate how your skills match the spe­cif­ic require­ments of the job descrip­tion. Sum­marise any addi­tion­al strengths and explain how these could ben­e­fit the organisation.
• Third para­graph — Cov­er why you’re suit­able for the job, what attract­ed you to this type of work, why you’re inter­est­ed in work­ing for the organ­i­sa­tion and what you can offer the organisation. 
• Con­sid­er­a­tions:  Please use this oppor­tu­ni­ty to let us know if you need us to take any­thing into con­sid­er­a­tion that will bet­ter enable you to attend inter­view, and if suc­cess­ful occu­py the adver­tised post.
• Last para­graph — Use the clos­ing para­graph to round up your let­ter. Reit­er­ate your inter­est in the role, men­tion any unavail­able dates.
• How long: Please ensure your Cov­er­ing Let­ter is no more than 2 sides of A4, about 600 words.

Before sub­mit­ting your CV please check to make sure it is up to date and accu­rate­ly reflects your expe­ri­ence and skills.

• Con­tact details 
• Pro­file: The pro­file should be con­cise state­ment that high­lights your key attrib­ut­es and helps you stand out from the crowd. 
• Edu­ca­tion — List and date all pre­vi­ous edu­ca­tion, includ­ing pro­fes­sion­al qual­i­fi­ca­tions. Place the most recent first. Include qual­i­fi­ca­tion type/grades, and the dates. Men­tion spe­cif­ic mod­ules only where relevant.
• Work expe­ri­ence — List your work expe­ri­ence in reverse date order, mak­ing sure that any­thing you men­tion is rel­e­vant to the job you’re apply­ing for. Include your job title, the name of the com­pa­ny, how long you were with the organ­i­sa­tion and key responsibilities. 
• Skills and achieve­ments: Don’t exag­ger­ate your abil­i­ties, as you’ll need to back up your claims at inter­view. If you’ve got lots of job-spe­cif­ic skills you should do a skills-based CV.
• Inter­ests — Ensure these are rel­e­vant to the post.  If you don’t have any rel­e­vant hob­bies or inter­ests leave this sec­tion out.
• Ref­er­ences — You don’t need to pro­vide the names of ref­er­ees at this stage. You can say ‘ref­er­ences avail­able upon request.