Fashion CV tips – How to make your CV stand out from the crowd

Fashion CV tips – How to make your CV stand out from the crowd

Fashion sells & CV’s sell… Time to hone your skills to land that dream fashion job!

Fashion recruitment is tough – it’s an extremely competitive sector with strong talent fighting it out for the top jobs. Your CV is your chance to get extremely personal and sell yourself as the ideal candidate for the fashion job you are seeking. Take your time in doing this, and make sure you put every effort in to get it right to give yourself the best possible chance of success.

There is a standard formula for best practice with a CV, with the required information laid out with maximum clarity. This is no different for a strong fashion CV, though in this series of tips we pull out a few industry-specific pointers to ensure your CV is the most effective sales tool for you.

• Follow the usual form: contact details, then education and qualifications. Next comes your work experience with the most recent at the top.

• Make your personal profile concise and bespoke to the position you are applying for.

• List your jobs and experience in a clear format - use a consistent style and avoid indulging in excessive underlining and capitals.

• Try a different or larger font for headings and use bold for emphasis.

• Add precise dates and clear job titles, and for each description focus on your responsibilities and achievements in each role with illustrations of where skills were used or deployed. Take skills from the job description and highlight them in your CV.

• Use competency-based words at the start of sentences that stress the skill, quality or achievement you are highlighting.

• Take the opportunity to tailor your CV to the needs and philosophy of the company. If you can do this well enough to be noticed by the employer and you have the necessary skills, your application will be very strong. Communicating an understanding of the brand values of a fashion company is a very smart move.

• To reinforce the above point, each CV you send with an application should be unique to that application.

• Unless the role you are applying for is very creative, avoid coloured paper or other ‘tricks’.

• Write in the first person, not the third – it’s your CV.

• Stick to 2 pages as interviewers are busy and see a lot of CVs

• Content must be factual and accurate, and remember what you included in order to answer questions.

• Get the permission of anyone you are including as a referee. Ensure that these are your previous employers and remember to include their contact details.

• Check spelling and grammar once, twice, and then ask a third party to read and check.

Good Luck!

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