How to get a perfect CV

I can tell you from my experience that to write a good CV is almost as difficult as to write a good novel. And basically you have the same goal: to catch attention of your reader, but you need to fit your wonderful story into one page. And the more experience you have the more difficult it is to exclude some of your achievements from the resume; you always think that each of them is equally important.
In my life I had to rework my resume many times – I’m very curious so I tried different things in my life and for some years was in permanent job search. I spent many hours, reading job postings and tailoring my CV and my efforts were normally rewarded – at least I was always invited for the interview.
So here are my pieces of advice:

Don’t think about what you want to put in – think about what employer wants to see there. Different jobs require different skills and you need to rework you resume, depending on position. It doesn’t mean you need to invent tasks you accomplished to suit the job announcement. It’s very risky – most probably you’ll be asked about those tasks and you will need to be plausible and consistent, so unless you’re not a good actor – it will be hard for you. So, basically you need to rephrase the same accomplishments in different words. For example, our career coach told me that consulting implies analytical abilities, strategic thinking, problem solving, teamwork, whereas investment banking will require usage of mathematical modeling, knowledge of finance and long hours. And those things should be visible in your resume via your achievements.

Be unique. Yesterday, at the finance club, I met very interesting girl – she did undergraduate in poetry and ended up with internship in one of the major investment banks. How did she manage it? The point is that she understood unique advantage that differentiated her from the other applicants with background in finance. Bank was looking a person to work with emerging markets and she has been working in Russia for some time and speaks Russian very well. So she wrote her CV in a way her experience in Russia was dominant. And they invited her for an interview. Of cause then she had to prove that she has all these quantitative abilities and stamina, needed for investment banking, but employer opened the door for her. And sometimes the first step is the most difficult one. Reviewing 10s of 100s of CV employer looks for key words and you need to be sure you understand what those key words are.
Be precise and concise. OK, I love those words, but I put them here not only because of that. CV is not a novel, you want your potential employer to be impressed by it, but you don’t want him to be bored. So, you need to speak about projects you fulfilled, savings you achieved etc, but you must avoid generic phrases that probably look very impressive and stylish to you, but are completely useless. Our career coaches told us, that when writing our resumes we need to speak in terms of accomplishments and not in terms of responsibilities. This is quote true for me. OK - this was about being precise. And now let’s talk about being concise. As I said before your accomplishments need to grab attention of the reader, but there’s no need to tell the whole story in the resume. Leave something to be asked during the interview. You just need to outline each point, you can always give more detailed report when you’re asked.
Be human. I think every employer (though I have some doubts about investment bankers) want to see real people and not bio-robots working for them. That’s why it’s extremely important to put personal touch into your resume. It must contain a part which will show your hobbies and interests. And though people in business school tend to put in such exotic hobbies as taming snakes and saving tourists in mounting, I think anything you are passionate about will be very good.

Oomph, it’s late and I’m flying home for the week-end tomorrow, so I need to go to bed.