Although you’d like nothing more than to just go on vacation and take a step back, I’d like to urge you to think of your career as well. While you do need to recharge and take a break from work, your CV has had the longest break in being updated possible. Am I right?

It’s time to grab a beer (or a nice glass of Montenegrin wine) and sit down with your CV – to update it. Why? For one thing, you never seem to have time to do it over the rest of the year. This leads to missing potential opportunities that could have come along the way.

That project you did, but never added to your CV? Forgotten. The great reference you could have gotten from that very satisfied client? It’s outdated. Don’t even tell me that you are still using a Word-generated CV.

Use This Summer to Improve Your Career

You deserve better. Think of it as a Summer of .Me and be true to yourself. You’re going to update your CV and I have the right tool for the job: JobCV.Me! And it’s going to take just 15 minutes!

The first step is, of course, signing up for JobCV.Me. The service will ask you for your first and last name, as well as a username, email and password. Pretty standard for a web service.

The next step will give you a selection of a number of 6 templates that all feature a clean and readable design, but differ in the primary colours and layout. While just one of the designs is actually called “clean”, all of them have a very clean design and utilise JobCV’s main font.

Keep in mind that JobCV.Me is a premium service so while the demo design is free, the rest are paid, premium designs which you can access for $9. This is a promotional price down from 20$, that includes not just access to all the designs, but also the feature to publish your CV as a PDF, as well as attach certificates, diplomas.

Setup the CV

For this tutorial I opted for the simple’s design which lead me to the CV editor. The WYSIWYG editor gives you a number of options at the top of the screen, that include:

• Changing your photo which is pretty self-explanatory. Add a, hopefully professional, photo to the CV so you look the part. This will also show your potential employer that you are dedicated enough to have a photo taken for your next job, which shows that you are committed.
• The Design Colors might seem like a subjective choice that is only relevant to your favourite, but keep in mind that colors are very important to the viewers eye, in this case your potential employer’s eye. I would recommend aligning the main color of the CV to the main brand color of the company you are applying to. A subtle move that might, in fact,  be that one more “point” you need in their minds!

• The Visibily of the CV is obvious and should actually be the final step. When you are done with your CV, just set it up as “public” in order to share it over relevant social networks.
• If you’re not happy with the template you chose for the CV, you can always Change the Design before publishing it.

Add Your Content: Employment, References…

After doing the basics, it’s time to add all the information that will be relevant to your employer. JobCV.Me is very customizable and lets you add: A professional profile, language skills, skills, employment record, academic experience and other content as “modules”.

The great thing about this approach is that you can not just edit the content of the modules, but also move them around to better suit the priority of the information for your employer. Your language skills might be the most important information if applying as a travel agent, while if you don’t haven’t worked for long, you might opt to downplay your employment record

If the modules that JobCV.Me offers you are not enough, you can add your own, with a custom heading a content. Knowing that cover letters and references are very important, JobCV.Me already includes it in the template. Just don’t use the template cover letter – it should be something special, right? 😉

While 15 minutes might not be enough to add ALL the information you need, it’s more than enough to update your CV with relevant projects and jobs. Do take more time to make it even better, especially because JobCV.Me‘s features do lend themselves to creating a superb, yet readable CV! Now your CV is as hot as this summer is going to be!