Name Surname

Address: Buckingham Palace London | Tel No: +44999 999 9999 | Email:

Linkedin: Linkedin profile address

Don’t put other details here, like “date of birth”, “sex” etc – we don’t put these on English CVs.

Most importantly, don’t put a photo!

Professional profile

Here you have to write a summary of your career – both your professional career and educational. If you graduated more than 2 years ago, it’s best to concentrate more on your professional career.

This is the most important part of the CV, if you don’t make an impression here, the recruiter will not continue reading and you won’t get the job!

For examples of Professional Profiles, click here.

Employment History

Name of Company–Your job title From –To(if you still work there, write ‘Present’)

A brief description of your job and also of the company if it’s not well-known.

  • Write your successes and not just normal tasks you did!
  • For example: “Organised Events” becomes “Organised various events for staff and customers, including the Birmingham conference for 500 people” – be specific and use numbers!
  • Begin every point with an action verb, like: “Analysed” “Created” “Designed”. For a list of action verbs to use, click here.
  • If you still work there, write all the action verbs with the –ing form.For example,“Creating”, “Analysing”, “Designing” etc.
  • If you don’t work there anymore, write the verbs in the past tense “Analysed, Designed, Created”.

Example:

Italy Law (Rome) - Associate LawyerMarch 2014 – Present

Responsible for managing an international client base and resolving their problems and liaising with them on a daily basis, in English and Italian, to update them on the status of their cases.

  • Advising and maintaining relationships with private and corporate international clients on wide range of issues such as regulatory compliance, refinancing, acquisitions and mergers, as well as environmental and real estate issues.
  • Drafting and negotiating contracts, corporate documents and shareholders agreements for small businesses, large corporations, and private clients for matters such as franchising, agencies, distribution agreements and sub-contracts.
  • Analysing and obtaining data to advise clients on all the aforementioned areas of law.

If there are spaces in your CV where you weren’t working or studying, the employer will ask “what was he / she doing during this time?”, so you need to explain the reasons like the following:

Example

Study Leave to prepare for exams to enter the Italian BarApril 2012 – Nov 2013

Self-study leave from professional career to prepare for the written exam (2012) and verbal exam (2013) to enter the Italian Bar and successfully passed both exams at the first attempt.

Education

Study Title – Name and type of organisation From – To

The important thing here is to write things that are connected to the working world (transferable skills). If you have just graduated, obviously write more for this sections.

Example:

Law Degree – The University of PalermoApril 2004 – Oct 2009

Achieved a mark of 109/110 and completed the thesis in criminal procedural law after in depth study of all aspects of criminal law during the course such as comparative criminal law, juvenile criminal law and environmental criminal law.

Further Qualifications and Personal Development

Here write all the other qualifications and successes that you’ve had, as well as other courses that you’ve done. Remember to include your computer skills and English level ;)

Example:

Self-Study of English

Constant self-study to work towards achieving a fluent level of English by studying the style of writing of legal documents and speaking with international colleagues on a daily basis.

Interests

If you don’t have any space, or if you’re not very passionate about anything in particular, leave this part blank. Don’t write things like “reading, socialising with friends” it would be the same as writing “brathing, eating, sleeping” – these are things that we all do! Try to be creative in this section, as it can be a good end of interview conversation topic.

Most importantly, remember that an English CV should never be more than 2 pages!