CV Development for PMO Professionals

Module Six – Putting the PMO CV Together

Hi, welcome back to the sixth and final module.

In this session, we’re going to put the whole CV together.

We have the personal summary; our career history and some key achievements. We have spent most of our time focusing on the first page so now we need to complete the rest of the CV.

In this session, we’ll look at key skills, education, qualifications and a few other bits and pieces.

We’ll also take a look at a few more real-life examples of CVs so you can make comparisons or take guidance from them.

We’re on the final stretch now, let’s get started.

Key Skills

You have the opportunity to add some additional keywords into the CV with a key skills area.

This is a bullet point list over two short columns where you can add anything you think is appropriate.

For example, you might include project management tools or certain methodologies.

Here are a few real-life examples to get you started:

And another:

This section can be placed either near the personal summary and key achievements – or nearer towards your training and education sections.

Be careful not to include too many key skills because the more you have the less likely they are to be key skills and with too many words they begin to lose their impact on the page:

Also, choose your key skills carefully and consider changing them for each role you’re going for. You can also rearrange the order of them to make some more noticeable than others.

Key skills are useful to allow you to include keywords that will be picked up by recruitment software as well as being readable to the hirer.

Let’s take a look at the training and education section next.

Education First, Then Training

You always lead with your formal education first and it depends on where you are in your career as to how much detail to put.

If you have a degree or several degrees, start with the most recent with the institution, dates, degree title/s and grade.

If you’ve only recently graduated and have limited works experience, give more details about the degree including modules and dissertation.

If it’s been a while since A-Levels and GCSEs – its fine to just have a line item with the A-Level subjects taken with the grade in brackets. For the GCSEs just state how many:

1990-1992 – A-Level – English Language (B) English Literature (B) Business Studies B) – Location

1985-1990 – GCSE – Nine (Grades A-C) – Location

Professional Training

With your professional training, you lead with the professional certifications you might have first.

With these, you need to state the date, where and with whom you took the training.

With popular project management courses like PRINCE2, you should also include your candidate number.

With a candidate number, your certification can be quickly checked by hirers and recruiters using the [Successful Candidate Register]

Make sure the course title is spelt correctly – a common error for PRINCE2 is either written like Prince2 or PRINCE II – it’s an acronym so it’s spelt PRINCE2.

With some courses it’s also appropriate to write out the course title, for example, MSP, should be written Managing Successful Programmes (MSP).

With the professional courses, your aim is to list the ones which you believe are relevant to the position you’re looking to achieve now – in-house corporate courses from years back are probably not the most relevant now!

Here’s a common way we see the education and training area on a CV:

I would prefer to see when the PRINCE2 certification training was completed because there is a requirement to resit that after five years. For the MSP and P3O it would be interesting to see when those were sat and how that tallies up with the career history too. All three of those can also be checked in the Successful Candidate Register so why not be more transparent and include your candidate number too.

The Final Parts

We’ve added key skills and our education and training. That just leaves a few other things to think about.

You don’t need to add anything about hobbies or outside interests unless you think they add to your application. If you’re running a club perhaps or volunteer regularly, these are the kinds of things you would probably add. Use your judgement call on the type of organisation you’re applying to, some have that kind of culture where work/life balance is heavily promoted and would be welcomed to see on your CV.

Finally, there is nearly always a section about references. Don’t include the names and contact details of your references here. Consider their privacy, I’m sure they wouldn’t appreciate their details available for all to see. Just use the line about references being available on request (and be prepared to share those at the right stage in the recruitment process)

You can also add a line, either at the top or bottom of your CV, with your Linkedin profile address. With a Linkedin profile, you can write about yourself in a different style to your CV so it should aim to compliment your CV, not just be a direct copy of your CV.

In Summary

Over six modules we have focused on:

Carrying out a personal stocktake of who we are and what we have to offer.
Creating a personal summary with facts and keywords.
Creating a career history that clearly and concisely shows what we have done and more importantly how we did the role/s.
Crafting key achievements.
Using key skills to add further keywords.
Demonstrating our commitment to the profession with training and education.
Pulling it all together to make a CV which is no more than 3 pages in length.

What Next?

Now is the time to test your new CV.

That’s the best way to see how your new CV will work for you – get it out there by applying for roles you’re interested in.

If you’re looking for further help leave a question and get your answers via the [Learner’s Forum], or just want us to check the CV over and have a chat, take a look at our [1-2-1 service with Lindsay]

That’s the end of your CV Development course from PMO Learning but before we go, we have a little bonus for you! Watch out for the bonus session coming your way in two days time – the PMO Career Portfolio with additional insights on careers, training and networking.