Any CV experts....

[HeinzSight]

Having spent HOURS working on DH's cv we've had an interesting conversation with someone who's been given v clear advise on his cv.

They told him

no colour
no fancy formatting

in other words, don't try and make your cv overly attractive and 'like a brochure'.

Use all the same spacing, typeface etc.

One of the reasons being if you've formatted your cv in a certain way, ie margins etc it won't necessarily translate onto the next persons pc and will shift all over the place.

Any opinions?

I would agree with no colour and fancy formatting unless you're going for particular types of creative/arty jobs, or to work in publishing!
Not sure about not formatting at all - if you're sending it electronically then maybe send two versions, can see what they mean, but would make it look quite unprofessional for someone who just wanted to print it off!

oh damn re colour

I thought it made DH's cv stand out! All I've put as colour is the job titles to give more definition between descriptions.

SO scrap the colour

Great idea about sending two versions.

It needs to be easy to read and follow, easy to email and easy to photocopy.

So no colour certainly, and nothing too fancy in terms of formatting either. Bullets and spacing and stuff ought to be ok though, but don't over-format.

People who send their cvs on pink paper in a folder or binder and with photos on are v irritating. White paper, black ink, and header/footer with page number and name on in case of photocopying mishaps.

With regards to formatting and spacing. The main thing I've done is altered the spacing between paragraphs and enlarged the margins all in order to condense his cv into two pages without making the font too small.

Also, I've made all bullet points bold. Is this OK?

SO if he emails his cv and the other person's pc has differnet margins, will it throw all the formatting/margins out?

also, thanks for tip on footer

Not sure about the margins thing
You could always convert it to PDF!

not sure about margins. I'd say just make sure you don't save it only in most recent version of Word, use a 2003 compatible version or whatever.

Or converting it to a PDF file isn't a bad idea either as SPB says. You can easily download free software to do that if you don't have that function already.

that's great, we have pdf on the laptop, also good thinking about not saving in most recent version of word.