BBC CV Example

Founded in 1922 in the United Kingdom, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a public service broadcaster and global leader in media and entertainment, delivering news, television, radio and digital services. It operates in the media and entertainment industries.

After reading this article, you'll be empowered to write a CV that makes an impact with BBC recruitment teams, and sets you apart from other candidates. Acting on the advice in this guide will boost your chances of your CV ranking highly in the ATS screening stage, and improve your chance of gaining an interview at BBC. Now let’s explore the main sections of a CV and see how to structure each one for maximum impact.

Main BBC CV sections

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

At the end of the day, though, a BBC CV is just a way to tell the story of how you’ve grown in your career. Regardless of your experience level, you want that progression to feel seamless and easy to follow for recruiters. To help you get there, we’re going to walk through each part of the CV step-by-step, starting with the basics in your header and working our way through to your professional achievements.

CV Header

Kick off your BBC CV with a header listing the essential contact information such as your name, email address, phone number and location. You don't typically need to include your full address. Incorporate design elements that set the tone and design language of your document. Additionally, including your LinkedIn profile as a URL can be useful, as it will help the reader to quickly and easily access further information about your career and credentials.

For UK jobs, it's generally not a good idea to add a photo or any other personal details beyond your basic contact information. This means leaving off details such as your age, gender, ethnicity and nationality, as these can introduce bias to the selection process and complications related to the Equality Act 2010.

CV Objective

Under your header, write a brief CV summary or CV objective, outlining a few of your key skills, qualities and achievements. This short paragraph can help employers to quickly assess your suitability for the role, setting the tone for your BBC CV. As an alternative to the CV summary, you might wish to write a CV objective. This serves a similar purpose, but instead of focusing on your experience, it highlights you career ambitions and objectives.

In your summary or objective, write two or three sentences introducing your key skills, unique qualities and career achievements, making sure they match the key requirements listed in the job description.

A good CV summary will highlight one or two key skills that match those listed in the job description, and show how you've put them to good use in your career to date. You'll want to set yourself apart from other candidates by focusing on unique qualities or particular areas of strength that have shaped your career to date. Below you'll find an example of a strong BBC CV summary.

Above is an example of CV summary that doesn't follow best practice, with some subtle shortcomings and failings. 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, it's essential to show any relevant previous employment in the broadcasting and media industry. Study the job description and include skills and achievements that reflect the key requirements listed, and that will resonate with BBC recruiters, showing how you can do a good job for their organisation. List your previous relevant broadcasting and media 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.

A successful CV should emphasise relevant previous roles in the industry, providing evidence to show how your key skills related to the broadcasting and media sector have led to positive achievements in your career to date.

Your work experience section could miss the mark if it places too much emphasis on jobs that aren't relevant to the broadcasting and media industry, or if it fails to offer suitable evidence to confirm you have the key skills and qualities needed to work in the sector.

Education

In your education section, list any formal qualifications you've gained, particularly those that are most recent or required for the role.

Working as a BBC employee doesn't tend to require a specific degree. However, while employers may not request a degree in the job description, it can be useful to include other relevant qualifications, certifications or training in your CV's education section. These might include Digital Audio Editing Diploma, or courses that show your skills, such as studio broadcasting equipment operation or audio mixing console 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. When adding each qualification, include the name and level of the award, the institution, its location (if necessary), and the dates you attended or graduated. It can also be valuable to add bullet points outlining your key achievements and activities, such as projects you worked on, modules you completed, awards you won or societies you participated in while studying.

Specialist licences or certifications can also be a valuable addition to your CV's education section. If these are essential for the job and are referenced in the job description, it's a good idea to include them here rather than further down your CV. Include any expiration or renewal dates for certifications, if applicable.

Key Skills

A CV's skills section is the place to show the reader, in an easily accessible format, that you have the necessary skills for the job. Read the job description to understand the most essential skills, and create a list of both hard and soft skills, ensuring you include some of your strongest, most unique characteristics and qualities to set you apart from the competition. In a BBC CV, only list the most relevant and essential skills you possess, such as teamwork and audio mixing console expertise, to make a positive first impression and show you're qualified for the BBC employee position.

Hard Skills

Hard skills refer to the technical and specialist skills required for the everyday duties of the job. They might include specialist knowledge, or the use of certain software and equipment. You can gain these skills through study, training or industry experience, and they might require a licence or certification. For BBC employee roles, hard skills from your career experience, such as audio mixing console expertise, and multilingual transcription translation skills tend to be prioritised by employers and recruiters. Firstly, check the job description, then add four or five key hard skills in your CV that help the employer to decide if you're a good fit for the role.

The best hard skills to include are typically listed as 'essential' or 'required' in the job description. Aim for a mix of the most desirable skills, together with those you have the highest proficiency in. For the best chance of success, you'll want your strongest skills to match closely with those most desired by the employer.

Below, you can find the types of skills typically featured in the hard skills section of a BBC CV:

Soft Skills

Soft skills differ from hard skills because they tend to be more transferable and applicable to different roles. Soft skills are the personal strengths and qualities that define your style of working and determine how well you're likely to fit in with the team and wider organisation. The world of work is evolving at a rapid pace, changing the types of hard skills required for many roles, and therefore rendering soft and transferable skills more valuable than ever. Soft skills are also extremely valuable for junior and entry-level roles, where candidates aren't necessarily expected to have a wealth of relevant work experience.

Similar to your hard skills section, it's best to first review the job description to know which soft skills to focus on in your BBC CV. You'll want to include a combination of soft skills that you can provide evidence for throughout your CV. Craft a list of up to five key soft and transferable skills that reflect the job description, while also including some of your strongest, most unique skills to stand out from the crowd.

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

Foreign Languages

If you speak any languages in addition to your mother tongue, you might want to include them in your BBC 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. List any foreign languages you speak, together with an indication of your proficiency level.

There are a few acceptable ways of citing your foreign language proficiency levels. The simplest way is to assign a basic descriptive word to indicate your skills, 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 Licences

To showcase additional qualifications and training beyond the basic requirements for the role, consider adding a certifications section to your CV. It can be a valuable way of differentiating yourself from other candidates and showing employers your dedication, motivation and commitment to professional development. Furthermore, the CV certifications and training section is a great showcase for official licences and certifications when applying for roles where these are a key requirement listed in the job description. These could include positions where the use of specialist software and equipment is a routine part of your everyday responsibilities.

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

Additional Sections

Optional sections can be useful to add to your CV, to provide additional evidence that you have the skills for the BBC employee job. 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

If you have any hobbies and interests that can showcase skills relevant to the job description, it might be worth including them. In addition, this section is the ideal way to show aspects of your personality that might not otherwise shine through in your CV, helping to offer a point of difference compared to other candidates. However, a hobbies and interests section will only make an impact with the reader if the skills you showcase are relevant to the role. As such, only include this section if it helps you fulfil requirements of the role that you've been unable to show elsewhere.

Key Achievements

Including an achievements and awards section is an effective way of showing the reader the value you've added for employers in your career to date. If you've been awarded any prizes or accolades, or reached any key career milestones, these can all help to show you have the required status and experience for the role.

Volunteer Roles

Another alternative to showcasing your skills and experience through work experience is by adding a volunteering section. This can give you a valuable showcase of your skills, particularly if you're a junior candidate or career changer without much relevant work experience. 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

When applying for roles in the UK, it's not standard to include references on your CV, and employers only tend to require them later in the process. Nevertheless, it's worth checking the job advert and being ready just in case. If references are needed, opt for two or three, and always make sure you approach them for permission before including them.

Add their name, their job title, the organisation they work for and their contact details. Alternatively, if references aren't required you could simply add a line to your CV confirming you can provide them when needed, such as 'references are available upon request'.

Most impactful action verbs for a BBC CV

Including strong action verbs with your work experience bullet points can help you show the impact you made in previous roles. Starting each bullet point with an action verb is a great way to match your experience and achievements to the job description, giving the reader an easy way of identifying your key skills and seeing how you've applied them. 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').

BBC CV sample

Now that you're aware of the key steps to creating a winning BBC CV, you can review a complete example to see how a final CV looks:

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.

How to optimise your CV for ATS screening

Many employers now use applicant tracking systems (ATS) to assist with managing the recruitment process. One of the key elements of most ATS apps is the ability to scan CVs and rank them according to their likely match to the job description. This task can relieve some of the strain on hiring managers through the recruitment process, which can become very resource-intensive, with roles often eliciting hundreds of applications.

The growing prevalence of ATS means candidates need to write and format their CV in a way that's compatible with the software, giving it the best chance of being accurately scanned and parsed, and ranking highly against other candidates. Here are some tips on how to optimise your CV for ATS screening:

• Include keywords and phrases from the job description that are easy for ATS apps to identify, and help make you appear a strong fit for the role.
• Use standard CV headings that clearly identify each section, 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 enhances the readability of your CV, including recognised serif and sans serif fonts between sizes 10 and 12 for body text, and 14 and 16 for headings.
• Use bullet points rather than writing long, full sentences, as this will make your CV easier to scan and parse, and help your keywords and phrases to stand out.

It's easy to get overwhelmed by the steps to creating an ATS-compatible BBC CV, but a few small changes can make a big difference. To smooth the process, use one of our expert-designed, ATS-optimised CV templates to increase your chances of success at this stage of the screening process.

Key takeaways for an impactful BBC 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. Select a suitable CV format for your experience level, and show the reader how you've used skills relevant to the role, to create a positive impact in your career to date.

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.

Sources:

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