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• A clear showing of abilities, and a wide range of them. If you’re applying for a job in the music industry, show that you have explored a variety of pertinent materials including CD design and layout, promotional materials (posters, flats, stickers, web assets, t-shirts, etc.) Advertisements, etc.

• A creative presentation of work. Normally, portfolios are pretty cut and dry, but there are ways to add some individuality to your portfolio by thinking outside the box in regard to the way your work is displayed.

• I know this is rather specific, but speaking on behalf of myself and many working professionals that I know, typography is always a very important aspect to any CV and portfolio, and in my opinion, is a “make or break” area.

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"What amazes me are the levels of arrogance, over-confidence, loucheness, laziness and stupidity that pours into our mail boxes, both physical and electronically". Nick Jones, Browns

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Paul Farrington – Studiotonne
From my experience of advertising for designers I have the following to say:

1. I feel that sometimes designers rely too much on email to apply for jobs. I think that people need to be able to pick up the phone and talk to the person they will be sending their CV too.

2. Send work that is you, not just what you have been doing for college briefs.

3. Give an honest account of your skills, there is no point in saying you are good at Indesign if you are not etc. You will be found out.

4. Learn how to make coffee.

5. Make sure there are no spelling mistakes in your work.

6. Try to keep attachments down to around 3MB. Employers can always ask for more work if they like it.

7. For me I have no desire to know what hobbies and leisurely pursuits are enjoyed by the applicant.

8. The CV itself should be designed nicely. Even boring things like CV reflect your creative skills.

9. Make your CV a project itself. Why does it have to be A4 and standardized?

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Anton Jerges – Studio Liquid
My pet peeve is grammar, presentation and spelling. We are in an industry where first impressions count and attention to detail is of paramount importance. You will not believe how many CVs we get with poor punctuation, presentation and spelling.

If they cannot get it right in how they promote themselves – what guarantee do we have that they will get it right when working for my clients. Mistakes make us look bad and cost money – so my advice would be to make sure there are no silly errors. It sounds like nit picking but it is important – to me anyway!

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Steve Holder - Artavia
I often receive speculative CVs (by email) that fail to make an impression. The key reason is the fact that they appear to be "generic" in nature (probably since they are emailed to many companies) and impersonal. Taking the trouble to understand our business a bit more and focusing on what we may need and how it ties in to the applicants skill set would make more of an impression.

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I have rejected two CVs this morning - one from a Texan who says he can meet me in Bristol!!!! and another from a London based designer who is not aware our studio is in North Devon!!

I will see someone else who is based in London but "qualifies" his interest in a position in North Devon (where we have an office) by indicating he lived here for many years, is still ambitious, and has the skills to make a difference in our business...he has also recognised that he may need to accept a pay cut to relocate and addressed this in his email.

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"Spell check to death". Tony Foggett

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James Green & Graça Morgado – IMG
It is important to think about presenting your CV as well as possible, Word Documents often fail to make an impression, a PDF works much better. The layout should be simple and clean and the colour and font makes a big difference in presentation.

The CV should reflect your design interest – why would a real designer want to present themselves in a Word document? A CV can also include simple graphic elements.

GCSEs and irrelevant work experience don’t need to be included in the CV.

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Anna Kitney – Aquarium Creative
1. Get the name & spelling of the person right. I often get letters with “Dear Sir”. Impersonal and gender is incorrect.

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2. Know something about the company you are writing to. Again I get letters from designers which do not fit my offered services.

3. Perhaps refer to a job you admired by the company that you are writing to. It shows you are genuinely interested in working for them, rather than sending out a template letter to dozens of agencies you happened to get details for.

4. A PDF of work or a website is a must. No CV’s in Microsoft Word. Often Creative’s do not have this software on their computers.

5. If you don’t hear back within a week or two, a phone call is okay. Often there are so many applicants we don’t get a chance to call or write to everyone.

6. If you’re rejected, ask why? Allowing you to improve your portfolio or CV.

7. Creative concepts for CV & presentation of work is memorable. A BW letter & CV is not.

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Mark Lloyd – Webb Scarlett
A CV should be classical and clean – it doesn’t matter what format it is whether it is a PDF or a Word document.

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Often CVs are too designed as if the designer has tried too hard and the result ends up being a CV that is hard to navigate. A CV’s function of is purely informational and should therefore be easy to navigate.

Try and keep your CV relevant to the job that you are applying for, so for example unrelated work experience is not as important as experience that directly relates to the job.

In the end of the CV it is nice to see a few pages of work samples – again kept really simple and clean.

Make sure not to send off too heavy files as it is annoying to download.

The interest section shouldn’t be too crazy.

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David Dunn – 442 design
My view is that a hard copy CV is always preferable to a digital version. Where a CV is personalised or 'designed' you get a clear idea of someone's attention to detail and how serious they are about working for your company.

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A strong, but perhaps expensive technique is to include a stamp addressed envelope. We actually keep the most creative CVs we receive and always contact the people who sent them. We disregard any emailed CVs - unless we are asking for digital design.

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"CVs aren't really about being all gushy and passionate, they are really a list of facts. But if those facts happen to demonstrate a passion for the industry, I'm hooked". Rob Andrews

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Rob Andrews - R&D;&Co;
CVs are pretty straight-forward things - A big long list of information that needs structure and organisation. This should be like manna from heaven for a graphic designer. Everything you've learned about typography plus every thought and opinion you've ever had on the subject can be brought to bear. Do it right, and it can be a little manifesto - your own Die neue Typographie.

Everyone sends a CV and examples of work, but very few send a CV that is an example of the work. But I'll check out a CV as if it were a little type-only poster, and rate it by the same criteria. That doesn't necessarily mean jazz it up, make it illegible, roll it up into a ball an unravel it, write it in chalk pastel with your wrong hand to make a point about the essential duality of the word 'communication' – that means "make it a good piece of typography that does the job that it's supposed to do". That's what working designers do, and that's what fundamentally differentiates them from students. Put yourself in my shoes. Help me out.

Anything you do that is relevant to your perception of what I do is great. It demonstrates understanding. Anything that doesn't isn't. Only your mum is interested in your GCSE results. All they can possibly hope to do is weaken your chances of getting an interview. If you've got less than me then you're probably thick, more than me and you're an unbearable swot. Add to this the fact that designers are de facto rubbish at exams, and it actually tells me very little.

However, if your school qualifications demonstrate relevant skills that are valuable to my business, I'm interested - A level French? Bonus! A level Arabic? We can open a satellite office on the back of your language skills thank you very much! So big up any exam results that give you skills, and use them as a basis to tell me just how useful you are.

I am interested in where you went to college - I'll be able grade your work on the basis of it. I am interested in what grade you got, but I understand that grades are a lottery to an extent, so it won't be the one and only thing I'll be judging on. I'm quite interested to know what you specialised in (if you did) and what you wrote your dissertation on - I'll be able to make a judgment about how thorough you are and how good your analytical skills are and how much you are prepared to challenge yourself. "Driving with dyslexia: analysis of the research of Rosemary Sassoon to develop a new road signage alphabet for slow readers. Grade A" - Fantastic. "Analysis of my best Maclaren Formula 1 graphics. Grade C" - Thanks but no thanks.

CVs aren't really about being all gushy and passionate, they are really a list of facts. But if those facts happen to demonstrate a passion for the industry, I'm hooked. I was at college with a guy who worked at KallKwik every Saturday, and what he didn't know about print wasn't worth knowing. He was giving himself a competitive advantage, and he had a skill set that set him apart from everyone else. I saw the same thing on a CV a year ago, and got the person in on interview (and eventually they got a job) just on that basis. They didn't think that it was that important, I did. I knew they would have the enthusiasm for the job. If you've joined STD or D&AD;or any of those organisations, then that's a commitment and a valuable one - big it up. Say why.

However, the ability not to get the sack from Topshop for the entire summer doesn't prove to me that you're a reliable employee. And neither does the assertion that you took the job because "it allowed you to develop your inter-personal high-pressure-sales-environment skills".

And nothing looks as good as a handful of placements at decent agencies for decent amounts of time (April=good, Tuesday=bad).

Oh, and "socialising with friends" is not a hobby, nor is "going to the cinema".

And why doesn't anyone send landscape CVs that can be read on screen? If it's in an envelope, fair do, but looking at A4 portrait on screen is a pain in the arse.

And last of all, I once heard a quote from one of the design industry's great and good that I still hold dear today - "I've never hired anyone with hobbies on their CV. I don't give a f*** about hobbies. I want them in the office working, not f***ing windsurfing.

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Tony Foggett – Code computer love
Don’t go over the top with the design, I would stick on the side of good typography rather than anything too fancy. CVs are like ecommerce sites, there are global practices that everyone follows so don’t try and rewrite the rules as you will just end up confusing / frustrating the reader.

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Try and put something in your interests section that will stand out – those bits are always so dull – “In my spare time, I like going to the gym, reading, socialising and watching films…”

Oh and spell check to death

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Typography is always a very important aspect to any CV and portfolio. In my opinion, it's a make or break area. Ryan Clark

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Sarah-Jane Higgins - Black Pig Ltd
Your CV is essentially a marketing tool used to sell yourself and as a result people fret endlessly over the content and layout because it can be your only chance of showing off who you are, what you can do and what you have done. After the initial complex of having to write and brag about yourself some people can find it difficult to stop!

For this reason my main three pointers are to be clear, concise, and confident and to tailor your CV and covering letter specifically to the job and company.

What to include

• All contact details

• Achievements to date

• Language skills

• Grades

• Computer skills

• Activities which can be related to work

• Relevant coursework to the position

• Volunteer / charitable work

Style
The CV is traditionally a very formal document but one approach to it is to have it reflect your persona and character in the way you describe yourself and your achievements.

There is no standard way of laying out your CV, there are hundreds of different templates available on the web and indeed built into word processing programmes (these are very easy to spot and if truth be told a bit naff) but the most important aspect of the layout is to include your contact and personal details at the top then the rest in descending chronological order.

Make it stand out
There is often a lot of competition for jobs in the creative industry and for this reason you’ll want to make your CV and application stand out from the crowd. A common way of doing this is to use your expertise in relation to your CV, for example producing a beautifully laid out and designed portfolio style CV or creating a website CV which also demonstrates your understanding and use of new media.

Personalise
Its very easy to draft a generic CV and covering letter which can be fired off at a whim to any job that tickles your fancy, however, this is a sure fire way of having little success. If you put time into personalising your application to the role and indeed company, this should include an explanation as to why you would want to work for the company in question. It’s easy to spot applications which have had time and effort put into them.

Size
Once again, due to the level of competition in the creative industry there are often hundreds of applications for a single job, especially if it’s in well known and respected agency. For this reason it is important to keep your CV and application concise and short, Directors and HR staff simply won’t have time to read about every aspect of your career, education and personal attributes. This is another reason why it is important to keep the content relevant to the job that you’re applying to.

Format
In today’s technology heavy workplace it’s easy to just email over a CV with links and attachments of portfolios. However, it can more effective and indeed nicer to receive a well written and presented letter and posted portfolio. This also demonstrates that more time and consideration has been put into the application.

If you prefer to email bear in mind that in general attachments are regarded with a level of suspicion in business, and in some cases computer systems will remove them unless they’re from a trusted contact which in the case of job applicants makes life a lot more difficult. To combat this it is essential that emailed CVs should include the covering letter in the body of the document and have a clear subject heading. It might not look pretty but at least it will alert the reader as to what the email is about and if attachments have been removed the reader will at least have an email address to request details from.

Don’t lie!
Some people find that it’s completely acceptable to ‘stretch the truth’ on your CV. This is not the case and never should be. In the vast majority of these cases the applicant can be very quickly found out and this is more than certainly guaranteed to put you out of the running. Also bear in mind that it is actually a sackable offence to lie about your qualifications and these can be easily checked to see if they’re accurate.

Be internet savvy
More and more employers are using the internet to get a better understanding of their staff, after all your MySpace page will tell a lot more about your personality than your CV. This isn’t to say that you should remove all details of yourself from social sites; employers do understand that you have a life beyond your desk, but it’s a reminder not to bad mouth your previous job or colleagues.

Show passion
One of the more important aspects of any job application is to demonstrate passion and if you feel it’s relevant to express some of your knowledge of the subject that will demonstrate this then do so. If a role was to be narrowed to two candidates, one with perfect grades and excellent experience but didn’t seem too bothered, and the other with mediocre experience and qualifications but oozed enthusiasm, chances are that the latter will get the position. Remember, experience can be built on and further qualifications gained but enthusiasm and passion is slightly more difficult to come by.

Explain yourself
By keeping your CV concise you’re helping to keep the employers attention but it is important to be scrupulous with every shred of information on the CV. Every single item must earn its keep; just stating that you have an interest in literature isn’t good enough- explain that your passion for reading helps to boost your literacy and writing ability.

Mind your language
For some reason people tend to use overly complicated language and words on their CV and covering letters. This can seem like a good way of impressing employers with your vast repertoire of complex vocabulary (I’m at it now!) but it often comes across as needless waffle. However, it is advisable to use ‘power words’ such as “developed”, “established”, “examined” and “generated”. Basically these are just verbs which ‘big up’ your achievements.

If you follow these pointers and with a little bit of luck you’ll get through to the interview stage, which is an entirely different kettle of fish.