Food Vacancies - CV Advice

Food Manufacturing Jobs - CV Advice

Food Manufacturing Recruitment CV Advice...

Deep Blue Recruitment has put together the following advice for writing a great CV that will secure your next FMCG careers move. Its simple and effective and can be used for the following disciplines:

	Food Engineering Jobs
	Food Production Jobs
	Food Manufacturing Jobs
	Food Hygiene Jobs
	Food Quality Jobs

CV Basics - Food Manufacturing Recruitment

Firstly, you need to know what employers are thinking.

Filling a vacancy is going to take up valuable time that the employer would rather spend doing their normal job.

The employer would love to find the perfect person immediately rather than plough through hundreds of CVs for food manufacturing jobs in the UK. It is often a dull and thankless task.

The employer has a job description which includes experience or qualifications that are essential for the job and some attributes that are desirable but not absolutely necessary. Food management jobs require many different skills.

They start going through the pile of CVs on their desk and scans each one for about 30 seconds to make a judgement. Plus there can be many food manufacturing jobs FMCG companies are recruiting for at one moment in time.

Simply put, they are short on time to read a CV that is more than two pages where all the relevant information is hidden in long paragraphs. The CV is filed in the bin.

Fancy formatting, coloured text or multiple fonts do not impress. Is this person trying to hide their lack of experience for the job behind an artistic CV? - Filed it in the bin.

Spelling mistakes and poor punctuation! This person is just sloppy! - Filed it in the bin.

This should tell you a few things about writing your CV.

Keep it concise and to the point. The employer needs to see your work experience, skills and achievements in the first 30 seconds of scanning your CV.

Keep it simple. Plain formatting, simply laid out under headings. The employer wants to see exactly when, where and what you have done.

Fancy formatting makes your CV difficult to read. It may make your CV stand out from the rest but for the wrong reasons. For example food engineering jobs require technical expertise let that stand out with plain formatting.

Keep checking your English. Good spelling, punctuation and grammar are essential. It is the first step in your personal presentation to an employer. It says a lot about you. Also, poor English distracts the employer from reading the content of your CV.

How to Write a CV For all Food Recruitment Jobs

A good CV has two objectives - to illustrate your strengths and maximise your chances of getting through to interview and to put factual information, such as dates, places, names together in a presentable and readable form.

Focal Point

It is claimed that the human eyes are naturally drawn to a focal point one third down from the top of the page. Therefore, put your most useful information in this area.

It might be your Profile, Key Skills, Professional Qualifications or details of your most recent employment. You can choose whichever you think is most important and relevant to your application.

Always get a second opinion when you have put your CV together. It is difficult to be objective about oneself.

Presentation

It is often thought that a CV should be two sides of A4 in length. If you need to go on to a third page make sure that the CV is spread out over 3 whole pages, not one and a half pages as this looks messy.

As a ‘rule of thumb’ there should be more white than black on a page to make it easier to read.

Always write a rough draft first. It can be as long as you like as you will edit it later. Always start with your Career History as this will highlight your Key Skills and help you write your Profile.

Once you have compiled your draft copy you must edit it.

1) Take out anything that will not help you get where you want to be.

2) Never use the past tense e.g. use 'supporting senior management' rather than 'supported senior management'.

3) Use short sharp sentences cutting out any waffle and jargon.

Headings

Name

Print your name in bold type at the centre top of your CV. If there is any doubt as to which is your surname, e.g. Robert John, indicate by using capitals or underlining.

Address

Top left of CV, full address including post code and telephone number.

Personal Details

Personal details should be limited to those that are absolutely necessary. Most employers expect to see your nationality and date of birth but you can choose to leave these out if you think they may go against you.

Other personal details such as number of dependents, driving license and marital status can be included if it is not going to make your CV too long by including them.

These can help employers to get a rounded picture of the person they are going to interview. Do not include names and ages of children or name of spouse. The employer is not interested at this stage.

Profile

This is an introductory statement about who you are and what you have to offer. You should complete this last although it is positioned prominently in the CV, possibly in the Focal Point.

It should be no more than two sentences and include the most important facts about you. Including skills, achievements, responsibility or personal qualities.

’Highly driven Food Production Manager with successful motivational skills and experience in the chilled food industry.’

Employment History

Always start with your most recent employment. Break down your job functions as much as possible. List key achievements with lots of juicy facts and figures, they will impress and will be a talking point during an interview. You should have more to say about your most recent, and therefore most relevant, employment.

Include successes and achievements especially if it saved the company money.

Qualifications

Qualification should be described in terms of selling yourself to the employer. Include all relevant courses, dates passed and name of school or college. But, leave out poor grades and failures. These will not help you get invited for interview.

If you have a university degree you can leave out all of your lower qualifications. Mature applicants may want to leave out ‘Education’ altogether, as your career history and skills are probably more important.

Skills

Skills can be described under three headings: Technical Skills, Professional Courses and Additional Skills. Technical skills are those related to a technical, mechanical or engineering job.

You need to list your skills and how recently you have used them e.g. HACCP for food Production jobs when applying for food management jobs in the UK. Professional Courses are those that you have attended specifically for a particular job.

Additional skills are anything else that may be relevant e.g. languages, keyboard skills, lean manufacturing.

Interests

Only include interests that are unusual or which indicate transferable skills, achievements or responsibilities.

Interview Advice...

In the Interview section, we've put some essential food recruitment interview tips together to help you secure your preferred food industry position...

Food Vacancies