Legal Recruitment Blog

You may be able to judge from the above title that we are slightly biased on this point, but having just read through my 30th CV for the day and getting ready to throw the monitor out of the window and bang my head on the desk repeatedly, I have to ask the following question: Which idiot told careers advisers that employers like to see skills in the profile section of a CV? Anyone want to own up? I can't see any logical reason for including them. Let me give you some examples from the CVs I have been reading today.   An enthusiastic and ambitious graduate with broad work experience and focused on building a career in the legal profession. This candidate is in fact a highly experienced property fee earner, but my first reaction having read this would be to delete the email and CV.   An experienced and highly competent civil commercial litigation solicitor who works well under pressure to consistently meet strict deadlines. Fluent and effective communicator with s...

Legal CV Advice Update We have recently given CV advice to a client and thought that some of this was relevant to a wider audience of law students, graduates and solicitors. The advice relates to specific fields of the CV. 1.  Personal Profile and Details I have kept your profile very short and to the point. This is because the profile is there to instantly tell a recruiter or partner exactly who you are, coupled with the personal info at the top of the page, in less than 5 seconds. It needs tailoring to the post you are applying for on every occasion. For example if the post is for an Associate Real Estate Solicitor (ie you are applying to a larger commercial law firm who use different terminology to many others) you will need to describe yourself in this manner or at least get the keywords across in the profile. Very often the first person to see your CV will be a HR Assistant or fairly junior member of staff who will not really appreciate your worth a...