A strong Curriculum Vitae is essential if you want to get ahead. Having worked in executive recruitment during the 1980s and 1990s, I became fascinated by the first impression people chose to make. I saw time and again that the individuals who invested their effort into making a first class CV presentation were the ones who secured the most interesting and best paid jobs. Traditional CV writing styles and techniques have become obsolete and the rules have changed, those in the know reap the benefits.

Writing your Curriculum Vitae or CV can be a nightmare. What should it include - what can you leave out - what order should it all go in - why is it so difficult to get the format looking good. Keeping it updated can often be an unwelcome chore when time is precious; the free Curriculum Vitae template packages available out there are more often than not pretty well impossible to adapt yourself and provide no useful guidance about how to describe your experience and tailor them for specific job requirements so that your CV will appeal to professional recruiters and give you the advantage you want.

Choosing the right structure for your CV is essential, first of all the CV you use to introduce yourself to prospective employers should be just two pages long. Thousands and thousands of CVs go straight in the bin simply because they are too long.

There are two basic structures for the information in your CV, the chronological or functional approach. Recruiters occasionally talk about a hybrid CV a CV that uses a mixture of both approaches; another description for the hybrid might be a CV that lacks a logical structure and is often difficult to read. When writing your CV plan what deserves prominence and what messages you want or need to get across. With 20 years experience and having reviewed tens of thousands of CVs I know that Curriculum Vitae content is usually totally inadequate, providing either far too much detail or not nearly enough!

The first page of your Curriculum Vitae will determine the response you get if the content does not grab the recruiters attention it is very unlikely they will read on. Starting your CV with a summary can be an excellent way of catching the readers attention. Here you can highlight your key selling points and generally set the scene for all that follows. Alternatively for technical specialists, professionals and academics, qualifications are often a critical component of the recruitment criteria and so you may want to give this priority.

Things that should be left out in particular are for example details of reasons for leaving, do not mention that you were head hunted, you may have been flattered but from a prospective employers point of view the head hunter persuaded you to leave your employment - and may do again.

Hobbies and interests should only be detailed when they say something positive about you that is not apparent from your career history. Hobbies such as reading swimming, TV and restaurants etc are not going to add much; describing high risk interests such as parachuting, diving with sharks or sword swallowing may influence the reader not to interview you.