Brunel CV Example

Founded in 2005, Brunello is a UK-based boutique fashion house renowned for its sustainable luxury knitwear and accessories, blending artisanal craftsmanship with contemporary design. It operates in the fashion and retail industries.

After reading this article, you'll be equipped with all the tools to produce a winning CV that impresses Brunel hiring managers, and identifies you as a suitable fit for the role. Putting these tips into action will give your CV the best chance of passing the ATS screening stage and increase the likelihood of your Brunel application progressing to the interview stage. Now let’s explore the main sections of a CV and see how to structure each one for maximum impact.

Main Brunel CV sections

How you approach writing your Brunel CV will vary according to your experience, your level and the details outlined in the job description.

Regardless of your years of experience, a Brunel CV needs to connect the dots of your career into a cohesive story. In the following sections, we’ll dive into the specific chapters of your CV step-by-step, showing you how to refine everything from your initial introduction to your long-term achievements.

CV Header

Kick off your Brunel 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, listing your LinkedIn profile in your CV header can be valuable. It serves to provide more detailed information about your career journey, your qualifications and your industry standing, in an easily accessible way.

For jobs in the UK, a personal photo is usually not required on your CV. That, along with any other personal details such as age, gender, ethnicity and nationality, are generally discouraged under the terms of the Equality Act 2010, which aims to reduce and eliminate discriminatory practices, such as recruitment bias.

CV Summary

Below your contact information, a short, concise CV summary or CV objective can set the tone for your application and provide brief, basic information on your key skills and qualities that gives a strong indication to the reader about your suitability for the Brunel employee role. A CV summary focuses on your key skills and achievements, while a CV objective provides an alternative approach, showcasing your career ambitions and how the role fits with these. This makes a CV objective ideal for entry-level candidates.

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 Brunel CV summary, with evidence of your impact and neat, well-structured sentences:

The Brunel CV summary above gives you an idea of what to avoid. The differences are subtle, yet significant. 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.

Work Experience

In your work experience section, it's essential to show any relevant previous employment in the engineering recruitment industry. Study the job description and include skills and achievements that reflect the key requirements listed, and that will resonate with Brunel recruiters, showing how you can do a good job for their organisation. List previous jobs relevant to the engineering recruitment sector in reverse-chronological order, starting with your current or most recent role. Include your job title, the name of the employer, its location and the dates you worked there. Under each entry, add several bullet points outlining 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 engineering recruitment sector have led to positive achievements in your career to date.

Your work experience section is unlikely to make a positive impression on the reader if it includes jobs that aren't relevant to the engineering recruitment industry, or if it lacks compelling evidence of the key skills and qualities needed to work in the sector.

Education

Your education section should showcase your most recent and highest qualifications, paying particular attention to anything that's specifically required for the role.

For careers as a Brunel employee, you don't generally need a specific degree. However, it can still be useful to include relevant certifications, training or formal qualifications in your CV's education section, even if these aren't requested by the employer. These could include Lean Six Sigma Green Belt, or any training that shows your skills development in familiarity with risk assessment or expertise in CAD modelling.

When listing your qualifications in your education section, select only the most suitable qualifications and list them in reverse-chronological order, starting with the most recent and working backwards. For each entry into your education section, add the qualification name and level, the institution or awarding body, its location and your dates of study or graduation. For extra emphasis on your education section, include bullet points showcasing projects you worked on, modules you studied, awards you won or societies you participated in, if they help you to prove you're a suitable candidate.

You might also wish to add specialist qualifications, certifications or licences that are required for the role. If you add any of these, you may also wish to add the expiry date, if the qualification requires renewal in the future.

Skills

In your CV's skills section, you'll want to draw attention to some of your strongest skills that make you suitable for the role. Review the job description to get an idea of the most essential skills, and create a list of hard and soft skills, including some of your strongest, most unique qualities that set you apart from other candidates. In a Brunel CV, focus on the most relevant and essential skills in your skills portfolio, such as familiarity with risk assessment and communication, to show you're qualified for the Brunel employee position and to put you in a strong position to progress.

Hard Skills

Hard skills and technical skills are specialist skills that are essential for carrying out the main responsibilities of the role. You might acquire hard skills through study, or through on-the-job training, and some hard skills may require a certification or licence. For Brunel employee roles, hard skills from your career experience, such as competence in project management, and familiarity with risk assessment 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 section will contain a mix of your strongest technical skills and those listed in the job description as 'essential' or 'desirable'. The closer your skills list is to matching the essential job description skills, the better your chances of success.

Take a look below to see an example of how to present your hard skills section:

Soft Skills

Soft skills are distinct from hard skills and tend to reflect your inherent personal qualities and strengths. These are often more transferable to different roles, and help the reader understand your working style, and your likely fit to the team and the organisational culture. Transferable skills are among the most in-demand skills for employers, with rapidly changing and evolving ways of working requiring ever-more flexible and adaptable employees. Soft skills are also highly valuable for junior and entry-level positions, where candidates aren't expected to have a wealth of relevant work experience and career achievements.

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 Brunel 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.

Review the sample below to see how soft skills can be listed clearly:

Languages

Including a section on language skills can be beneficial, if you speak at least one language to a reasonable level of competency, in addition to your mother tongue. This is true even if language skills aren't a requirement for the role, as foreign language abilities often correlate to other valuable soft skills. Within this section, list the foreign languages you speak to a reasonable degree of competence, together with an indicator of your skill levels.

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 could adopt the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR), as this provides standardised levels to describe your competence levels, as follows:

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

Certifications, Training and Licences

Depending on the role and your qualifications, it might be necessary to include a certifications section. 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, a certifications section is particularly valuable if you're applying for a role that sets out required certifications or licences in the job description. These might include technical roles that require the use of specialist software or equipment.

Take a look at this list of example certifications and licences for Brunel employee candidates:

Additional Sections

Optional sections can be useful to add to your CV, to provide additional evidence that you have the skills for the Brunel employee job. Consider adding optional sections if you're unable to show all the necessary skills for the job through work experience, but could show them through extracurricular activities and other areas of life. This could be especially relevant if you're a junior candidate, or if you're changing careers.

If you're curious about other ways to make your CV more effective, our career resources will help you strengthen your application.

Hobbies and Interests

Hobbies and interests are another legitimate way to showcase your skills, if you have any hobbies relevant to the role. In addition, hobbies and interests can be a useful way of showing your personality, helping to differentiate you from other candidates. 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.

Awards and Achievements

Compiling your key career achievements into a single list is an effective way of making your CV more readable at a glance. 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.

Voluntary Work

Another way of showing employers your skills and experience is through volunteer roles. If you're struggling to show you have the necessary credentials through your work experience, volunteering can provide valuable examples of how you've put your skills into action. In your volunteering section, use a similar structure to your work experience section.

Add your job title or a description of the volunteer role, the organisation name, its location and the dates you volunteered (start and end date). Under this, add bullet points to show the skills you used, and evidence of how they contributed to positive achievements for the organisation.

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 the employer requests references on your CV, choose two or three, and always approach them for permission before including them.

Add their name, their job title, the organisation and their contact details. As an alternative, you could add a brief line confirming you're able to supply references when necessary, such as 'references are available upon request'.

Top action words to use in a Brunel 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').

Brunel CV example

Now we've shown you everything that needs to go into your Brunel CV, we can take a look at how it comes together in its final form in the following example:

If you're not sure what your one-page, finalised CV design might look like, check out our examples.

How to optimise your CV for ATS screening

Employers and recruiters now routinely use applicant tracking systems (ATS) to ease the burden of the selection process. One of the key functions of these systems is CV screening, which reviews CVs and ranks them based on their likely fit for the role. By taking on this task, the systems can save hiring managers the time and effort of reviewing every CV in detail. With vacancies regularly receiving hundreds of applications, increase the efficiency of the recruitment process.

The growing prevalence of ATS apps requires a shift in approach by jobseekers, to prepare a CV with the best chance of passing the ATS screening stage. That's why we've put together a list of key ATS CV tips, to maximise your chances of success:

• Include keywords and phrases that match the job description, giving you the best chance of appearing as a strong fit for the role.
• Use clear, conventional CV headings to make your CV easier to navigate, including 'work experience', 'education' and 'skills'.
• Choose a standard CV layout, avoiding special design elements such as text boxes, columns or unlabelled graphics that can confound ATS scanning apps.
• 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 in place of full sentences and paragraphs, as these are easier for ATS apps to scan and parse, and help your keywords stand out.

It might seem like there's a lot to remember when it comes to making an ATS-compatible CV, but taking care with this stage can really improve your chances of success. To make the process as easy as possible, use one of our expert-designed, ATS-optimised CV templates and boost your chances of success.

Key takeaways for a successful Brunel CV

To make a strong first impression on hiring managers, tailor your CV for every application, adding keywords and phrases that match the job description. Select a suitable CV format that reflects your experience level, and focus on highlighting your key skills, and demonstrating how you've put them to good use to achieve positive outcomes in your career to date.

Finally, building your CV using Jobseeker's HR-approved CV templates can help to catch the eye of recruiters and hiring managers, making your application stand out and giving you the best chance of gaining your dream job.

Sources:

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