Struggling with CV

[RooDaisy]

I was made redundant in June, I'd been at my company for 11 years and was ready to move on. I had a really tough time over the final 18 months, think not supported properly and having to deal with difficult customers and office politics.

I started claiming JSA at the end of Sept but unfortunately by Nan died unexpectedly a week later so I've been signed off by the doctor for the past 4 weeks.

I feel ready to start looking again and am really eager to get back into work. I've completed a skills assessment which has helped me to look at different roles that will suit my skill set but I'm really struggling with my CV.
I've applied for about 4 jobs over the past week but I've not had any interviews or replies and am starting to worry my CV is shit.

I'm trying to be positive but due to the crap time I had before I left work and feeling delicate about my Nan, I'm prone to look at the negatives rather than the positives which isn't helping me when I'm trying to re-vamp and update my CV. Plus there's so many different types of CV's out there, I'm not sure which I should be using.

Does anyone have any tips or advice?

[MerylPeril]

Have you registered with any agencies? It's amazing how many jobs are temp to permanent now.
I'm doing a temporary job through an agency just now and it's been a real foot in the door to get into an area of work I wanted to get into.
I did hundreds of applications (few jobs where I live) and got nowhere but agencies had quite a bit of work but most of them didn't fit my hours to be honest.

[RooDaisy]

I haven't yet, I was due to and then my Nan passed but it is on my list of things I need to do after I sign back on tomorrow.

I think it'll help as they are the experts and can hopefully match my skills to something I maybe wouldn't think of.

Thank You.

[indigox]

What industry do you work in?

Are there any free courses online you could do through something like Coursera do make your CV look a bit more "proactive"? It's not always about your CV, how are your cover letters?

Depending on what job/industry you work in you'll probably have better luck working with a recruitment agency. It's their job to "sell" you to their clients so they'll help you improve your CV, write up a profile before they send your application and you're more likely to get feedback than when applying for jobs directly. My CV is great, it's been through 3 different recruiters, each improving it in different ways, yet whenever I apply for a position direct I hear nothing back, recruitment consultants have always got me to at least the interview stage, then useful feedback/job offer and they've then negotiated the salary for me which led to £4k over what I was asking for, because of course it's in their best interests to get you as high of a salary as possible.

[RooDaisy]

thanks indigox

I had an interview last Thursday and got offered the job on Friday, it's a different industry and an extremely small company compared to what I'm used to but there seems to be the potential for a lot of growth and influence so hopefully it'll be a good move.

If not, at least I'm back in work and can look elsewhere, it's much easier to get a job when you already have one.