AML CV Example

Founded in 2008, AML is a UK-based leader in compliance software and consultancy, revolutionising risk management and anti-money laundering solutions. It operates in the financial services and technology industries.

After reading this article, you'll be empowered to write a CV that makes an impact with AML recruitment teams, and sets you apart from other candidates. Putting these tips into action will give your CV the best chance of passing the ATS screening stage and increase the likelihood of your AML application progressing to the interview stage. Let’s break down the core components of a CV and examine how to build them effectively.

Key sections for an AML CV

Your approach to creating your winning AML CV will differ depending on your experience, your seniority and the details listed in the job description.

However, at any stage of your career, an AML CV serves as a professional biography that must clearly illustrate your career trajectory. To help you tell that story effectively, we will now break down the document piece-by-piece, starting with your contact header and moving through the key pieces of your professional path.

CV Header

Start your AML CV by adding a professional-looking header that contains all your relevant contact information. Include your name, email address, phone number and location (your full address isn't typically necessary for UK job applications). If you have a LinkedIn profile, consider adding a URL to this in your header, to help the reader easily find more information on your career and credentials.

For UK applications, it's not usually a good idea to add a personal photo or any other personal details, such as your age, gender, nationality or ethnicity. These can risk introducing bias to the selection process and, as such, are often discouraged in job adverts under the terms of the Equality Act 2010.

CV Summary

Underneath your contact information, write a brief CV summary or CV objective to introduce yourself and highlight a few key skills and qualities. This can help the employer to quickly form a first impression on your suitability for the AML employee role. While a CV summary showcases your key skills and achievements in the context of your career to date, a CV objective provides an alternative approach. It focuses instead on your ambitions for the future, making it ideal for junior candidates without much work experience.

Whether you choose to write a summary or an objective, aim for a length of two or three sentences, introducing your key skills, unique qualities and key achievements or ambitions, making sure they reflect what's included in the job description.

An effective CV summary will focus on a few of the key skills required for the role and show how you've put them to good use in your career to date. You'll want to give the reader a good impression of your unique qualities and briefly provide evidence of their impact in previous roles. Here's an example of an effective AML CV summary, with evidence of your impact and neat, well-structured sentences:

See above for an example of an ineffective summary, with subtle differences leading to a reduction of impact. There are several factors that could make your summary less engaging. These include using long, poorly-structured sentences, failing to add evidence of your impact, being too generic with the skills you mention and not adapting your CV summary to specifically respond to the job description.

Professional Experience

In your work experience section, you'll want to showcase your relevant experience in the automotive industry. Focus on the job description, and include skills and career achievements that will appeal to AML recruiters, showing how you can make an impact for the organisation. List your previous relevant automotive industry jobs in reverse-chronological order, starting with your present position or most recent relevant job. Include your job title, the name of the employer, its location and your dates of employment. For each entry, list a few bullet points describing your key skills and achievements in the role.

Best practice for a successful work experience section includes listing only the most relevant previous roles, and providing supporting evidence that shows how your skills have contributed towards significant achievements in your career to date.

Your work experience section may fail to make a positive impact on the reader if it includes jobs that aren't relevant to the automotive industry, or lacks evidence of key skills and qualities required for working in the sector.

Education and Qualifications

Your education section is the chance to list your most recent and highest qualifications, and anything that's relevant or required for the role.

AML employee jobs tend to require a relevant university degree just to be eligible for the role, so you'll want to showcase this in your CV. If you have a Bachelor of Science in Finance or another related degree that makes you an eligible candidate for the position, add it to your CV. You could also add other degrees or qualifications that highlight your key skills, like regulatory reporting skills or KYC procedures expertise.

Your education section should contain only the qualifications that you consider most relevant to the role. List them in reverse-chronological order, starting with the most recent and working back from there. For each entry, include the name and level of the degree or certification, the institution, its location and your graduation date or dates of study. To emphasise your qualifications and achievements, you might wish to include one or two bullet points, which highlight things like specialist areas of study, projects, dissertations or society memberships.

If you have any specialist certifications or licences that are necessary for the role, or help you stand out above other candidates, you may wish to mention them here. When adding any special licences, it's a good idea to also reference their expiry or renewal dates, if applicable.

Key Skills

The skills section of an AML CV provides space for showcasing the key skills and qualities that set you apart as a candidate. You'll want to only include the most relevant skills, so review the job description and list hard and soft skills that match the requirements, while reserving some space to mention your own unique characteristics. In an AML CV, only list the most relevant and essential skills you possess, such as attention to detail and suspicious activity reporting, to make a positive first impression and show you're qualified for the AML employee position.

Hard Skills

Hard and technical skills are the essential skills required for carrying out the everyday duties of the role. They might include specialist operation of certain software or equipment, or knowledge of certain industry standards and regulations. You could gain these skills via training, certifications or industry experience. For AML employee jobs, critical hard skills you've gained in your career can include suspicious activity reporting, and transaction monitoring expertise. After checking the job description, include a list of four or five key hard skills in your CV to confirm that you have the necessary expertise for the role.

You'll want to include a list of hard skills that closely matches the skills listed as 'essential' or 'desirable' in the job description, while also reflecting your own strongest technical skills.

Review the examples below to understand which skills are often added to the hard skills section of an AML CV.

Soft Skills

Your soft skills list should contain a list of your personal strengths that make you suitable for the role, and a good fit for the team and the organisation. In contrast to hard skills, these tend to be transferable and applicable to different roles and levels. Owing to the rapidly evolving nature of the work landscape, soft skills are growing in importance for a number of roles and industry sectors where technology is replacing hard skills. Additionally, soft skills are particularly valuable for junior and entry-level candidates, who might not have much work experience but have the right building blocks for a successful career.

As with hard skills, review the job description to understand the best soft skills to mention in your AML CV . The best CV soft skills section includes specific skills that you can evidence with examples throughout your CV. Draft a list of up to five key soft and transferable skills, combining the most essential skills from the job description with your strongest personal qualities.

The section below provides an overview of soft skills often highlighted in an AML CV.

Language Skills

If you speak any languages in addition to your mother tongue, you might want to include them in your AML CV as a languages section. These can be valuable for your application, whether languages are specified as a requirement in the job description or not. In this section, include any foreign languages you speak to a standard that could be useful in the world of work, with an indication of your proficiency level.

The methods for indicating your foreign language skills on your CV include assigning a basic descriptive word, such as:

• English: Fluent
• Spanish: Intermediate

You might choose to adopt an international standard framework for languages, such as the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR). This assigns a standardised level to your language skills, for example:

• A1: Beginner
• A2: Elementary
• B1: Intermediate
• B2: Upper intermediate
• C1: Advanced
• C2: Proficiency

Certifications and Training

If you have extra qualifications beyond the basics of what's expected or required for the role, you might want to include a separate certifications section in your CV. If you've been proactive in pursuing professional development opportunities throughout your career, it's worth showcasing them. Not only do they make you more qualified, they also show a proactive and motivated mindset. Furthermore, if there are any necessary certifications or licences for the job, this CV section takes on even more importance. If you're applying for a technical role or a position that involves the use of specialist software or equipment, these might make it more necessary to include a section showcasing your training.

These example certifications and licences are ideal for candidates applying for AML employee roles:

Additional Sections

In addition to the core sections of your CV, optional sections can be a useful way of proving you've got the necessary AML employee skills. Consider optional sections for your CV if you're looking for ways to show you're right for the job, beyond your work experience. Optional sections are particularly valuable if you haven't had the chance to build up relevant work experience, for example, if you're applying for entry-level roles or you're changing careers to a new industry or role.

You can find more detailed advice on tailoring your CV in our career resources, where we cover proven ways to highlight your skills effectively.

Hobbies and Interests

Your hobbies and interests can be a useful way of showcasing additional skills that are relevant to the job description, but that you haven't been able to prove via your work experience. Additionally, this section gives you the chance to show employers different facets of your personality and interests beyond work, which can help them to differentiate you from other applicants. However, only mention hobbies and interests that are relevant to the role, and that help you prove skills that you haven't been able to show in your work experience or other CV sections.

Key Achievements

Compiling your key career achievements into a single list is an effective way of making your CV more readable at a glance. Add any awards you've won or career milestones you've reached, so employers can easily see the impact you've made in your career to date.

Volunteer Roles

Another valuable optional section for your CV is volunteering. This section can offer a great alternative showcase for your skills and experience, if you don't have much relevant work experience. Consider adding this section if you have any relevant unpaid experience, either as a junior candidate or a career changer. Approach your volunteering section in much the same way as your work experience section.

For each entry, include a job title or description of your role, the organisation, its location and the dates you volunteered. Adding bullet points can also help you to show how you developed relevant skills, and used them to good effect.

References

For UK job applications, it's rare to include references on a CV. However, it's a good idea to check the job advert and have some references ready to go in case the employer wants you to include them on your CV. If you need to add them to your CV, include two or three references, adding their name, job title, organisation and contact details.

Be sure to ask their permission before you include anyone as a reference in your AML CV . Alternatively, you could simply add a line to your CV indicating you can provide references when necessary, such as 'references are available upon request'.

Best action words for an AML CV

Starting each of your work experience bullet points with strong action verbs is a great way to showcase your key skills and qualities, and demonstrate the impact they've had in your career to date. Start each bullet point with a verb linked to the skills required in the job description, to add focus to your work experience section and make it easy for the reader to identify your strengths. When adding action verbs to your work experience bullet points, just remember to always provide quantifiable evidence that shows the value you added for each employer. Use past tense for any action verbs that describe previous roles (for example, 'developed') and present tense for current roles (for example 'collaborating').

AML CV sample

Now that we've covered the main sections to include in your AML CV , we can see how it would all come together in its final form in the example below:

If you want to get a feel for how your CV will look once you finalise its design and layout, check out our CV examples for inspiration.

Tips for optimising your CV for ATS

Applicant tracking systems (ATS) are a valuable tool for many recruiters and employers, helping them manage the recruitment process by scanning and assessing CVs based on their likely fit to the job description. By taking on this task, the hiring manager can reduce the time and resources they spend on the initial selection process, making recruitment more efficient and cost-effective.

Because ATS software is becoming more common in the recruitment process, it's important to make some concessions in your CV to give yourself the best chance of progressing beyond the initial screening. With that in mind, here are some tips on preparing your CV for ATS screening:

• Include keywords and phrases that match the job description, making it easy for ATS apps to identify a strong fit for the role.
• Use clear, standard CV headings that are easily recognisable, such as 'work experience', 'education' and 'skills'.
• Choose a simple, standard CV structure and omit any design elements that might make your CV less easy to read by automated systems, such as text boxes and columns.
• Select a font that can enhance the readability of your CV, such as popular serif and sans serif fonts, with size 10 to 12 for body text and 14 to 16 for headings.
• Use bullet points instead of writing full sentences, to reduce the overall length of your CV, make it more keyword-dense and help ATS apps to scan it more easily.

There are lots of things to think about when crafting an effective, engaging AML CV , but ATS compatibility is something that's easy to overcome. Use one of our expert-designed, ATS-compatible CV templates and remove the stress from creating a CV that puts you in the frame for the role.

Key takeaways for a successful AML CV

To grab the attention of the reader with your CV, tailor it to the exact specifications of the job description, incorporating keywords and phrases that match the employer's requirements. Pick a CV format that matches your experience level, and focus on showing the reader how you've developed relevant skills and put them to good use to add value for previous employers.

Finally, using an eye-catching, expert-designed CV template from Jobseeker can really give your CV an edge over those from rival candidates, helping you to achieve success in your job applications.

Citations:

1. Transport for London (TfL), Writing a CV and cover letter
2. Jobseeker, HR Statistics