The CV Guide

Published: 03.07.09

Sending informative and well-written CV’s to our clients is important in delivering quality personnel. Read on for InsideOmega’s extensive guide to writing the perfect Curriculum Vitae.

Avoid CV gaps

It is important that you avoid gaps in the chronology of your CV. Employers are generally quick to question the candidates when there are longer periods of time not covered in the CV.

An ideal CV is complete, tidy and clear. Looking back at the life and career may not always be pleasant, but a good CV contains a thorough rundown of the entire working life. In addition to jobs, you should include periods such as military service, maternity leaves, jobs in other sectors, rehabilitation and longer journeys. Remember to include dates (year) in your job and education entries.

Honesty and openness is the basis for all recruiting work at Omega. If you have personal difficulties, medical problems or other conditions creating “black holes” in your CV, you should inform your contact person at Omega about it and discuss how to inform the possible employer(s). This information is kept confidential by Omega. Purely private matters such as marital status, health issues or children does not belong in the CV. Nevertheless, the CV’s objective is to give the employer a complete overview of you as an employee.

Include everything

When writing your CV, you should include everything that a potential employer should know about you as an employee. It is your most important sales tool. Employers only read CV’s, and prefer not to make extra phone calls about individual candidates. Therefore, it is not much use to tell us at Omega what you are capable of if it is not reflected in your CV.

Some people are good at talking about themselves, and start pouring out sentences so long that employers barely want to start reading the CV. A candidate with two years of experience and a 10-page CV has written too much. Others are more modest and resist writing about themselves, and a candidate with 30 years of experience and a one-page CV has too little content. Trying to write as concrete as possible will aid you in finding a reasonable middle ground.

Depending on what is applicable for each job, you should include information about tasks, personnel and manager responsibilities, the nature of the project, knowledge of procedures, project managent tools that were used, equipment that was used, equipment manufacturers or suppliers that you may have worked with if this is a requested special competence, reporting responsibility, whether you worked in the field, what kind of site you were mainly working on (office, shipyard, plant etc.).

Please keep in mind that the hiring processes for most client positions at Omega are speedy. When a client identifies a need for a consultant, they would rather have the consultant at their desk the same day. At this stage, a personnel coordinator typically gets a “shopping list” with required qualifications. It is important that this personnel coordinator finds the applicable qualifications in your CV so they can more easily find the right person for the position.

Consequently, the people reading your CV initially are not the same specialised personnel as you are likely to be working with. You should therefore avoid the most advanced trade jargon, and rather write complete sentences about your tasks and responsibilities. Writing keywords may be useful in some contexts, but it can also be more confusing when it is not clear whether a candidate has worked extensively in a certain field or just touched on the field through managing on a larger scale.

Language and spelling

It is hard to market yourself as a structured, thorough and quality-conscious individual if your CV is unorganised and filled with spelling errors. A good way to spell check your CV is to read it out loud to yourself or make someone else read it. This makes it easier to see coherence and get an overview.

Remember to pick one language for your CV, and stick to it. Mixing Norwegian and English words seems unprofessional and messy. In the oil and gas industry there is a lot of trade jargon that has been “Norwegianised” over the years and may not mean the same to English and Norwegian employees. These confusing words should be avoided, and there are usually applicable Norwegian words.

Our CV setup helps you with the chronology, as it sorts your jobs chronologically regardless of how you enter them. You may access your CV online at any time using the link you have received from us, and enter a few jobs and key qualifications. After saving, you may wait a couple of days and then go back to edit additional details.

Search category

Adding a search category to each of the jobs listed on a CV, makes it easier for Omega to find you as a candidate. The search categories will not show on the final CV.

The categories have two functions. Most importantly, they put the candidate in the right category so it is easier to find candidates with the relevant experience for the client. They are also used to measure seniority. Therefore, no more than one search category should be set for each period of time.

Please check if the search categories set on your CV are applicable. It may be useful to vary categories if one category does not cover the range of your work. Please contact the Omega Service Centre if you need any help with the categories.

Courses

Make an orderly list of the courses you have taken that are relevant for your job. Safety courses and certificates that are mandatory for your job (offshore certificate, crane operator certificate etc.) should be included with their expiry date. Please also included HSE and first aid courses. The list should not extend too far back in time, but rather include the 5–10 most important courses.

Computer skills

Showing that you are not lost in front of a computer is important in most client positions. Highlight the applications that you use in the workplace. Even if they are mentioned in other fields in your CV, this is where computer skills are summarised. The most important thing is to include any business specific applications that you may master, such as drawing, project control or process applications. Word processing, spreadsheet and presentation applications should also be included.

References

At Omega, we like to contact your reference persons well ahead of time before we offer you for a client position. When we want to offer you as a candidate, it is usually a speedy process, and the reference persons with contact information (phone number and/or e-mail address) should already be in place. Naturally, you would have to confirm with the reference persons that they do indeed want to be listed. Our CV’s are not openly available online, and we never show a CV to one of our clients without your express consent as a candidate. All the candidates in our database are therefore confidential until they choose to be offered by Omega for a client position.

Education

All your education starting with upper secondary school should be listed with the name of the school, type of degree and years in which the education was carried out. More companies are now demanding that the education sections needs to be dated (with years) and will not accept CV’s in which this is not done.

Key qualifications

This field has proved to be the most important when presenting candidates for our clients. It is a summary of your qualifications and a quick presentation of you as a candidate. Consider what type of jobs you would like in the future, and write your key qualifications with the prospective employer in mind. Write approximately three–five sentences. Try to give a full overview of your experience whilst focusing mainly on your most recent jobs.

Key qualifications should be about your actual, occupational qualifications. Business experience, management experience and specialised knowledge in certain fields are also important to include. Personal qualities will be covered by your references and during interviews, but if there are special qualities required for the job you may include this. Avoid the clichés.

As the CV is your own presentation of yourself, it should be written in first person. Remember that the key qualifications should correspond with the rest of the CV. There is no use in highlighting leadership skills if you have listed job experience without leadership responsibility. You should also keep this field updated and pertinent to the position in question.

Present company

Enter the company you are working for. If you are employed by a consultancy company hiring out personnel (e.g. Omega) you should enter the company where you are part of the organisation and is considered a regular employee. This also applies to the jobs listed in the CV.

Current position

Remember to update your current position when you change jobs, and add the new job in the Experience field.

Picture on your CV

You might not embrace the idea of having your picture on your CV. However, Omega encourages all candidates and employees to include a photo of themselves in the presentation of yourself that is the Curriculum Vitae. The simple explanation is that it makes it easier for clients to recognise and memorise candidates.

Most of Omega’s clients prefer to receive CV’s with pictures. We have many times received feedback from clients that the candidate received the job because they are recognized and approved by former colleagues and managers. Many jobs also have a great number of candidates, many of which may not be from Omega, and it is then a big help for the employer to have a visual memory of a candidate from their CV.

You do not need a professional photographer and a make-up artist to take a good photo for your CV. The picture simply needs to be of your face on a quiet background. White is preferred, but anything that does not interfere too much with your face will work.

The easiest way to get the right light levels is to go outside and take the picture in overcast weather and daylight. That way you will get just the right amount of light without any reflections.

You can not insert the picture into the CV yourself, but you may just send it to mail@omega.no or by mail to “Omega AS, 5582 Ølensvåg”. We can scan and crop your picture if needed.

Your CV online

When you receive a link to your CV it is always available online to edit. You are editing directly into our database, and the people at Omega working with personnel can also track your changes. This makes it easy to discuss your CV content with your contact person at Omega, and you can work together to make a good presentation of your candidacy. Use the refresh button or close the window and go to the link again if you want to make sure your updates are saved.

No one except yourself and the relevant personnel at Omega have access to your CV. You do not need a password to access it, but it is not possible to search for it on our web site. If you do not have the link, or you have lost it, please contact the Service Centre (contact information below). Omega employees have access to the system using a login name and a password.

Contact

Omega Service Centre
(+47) 5377 5377
service@omega.no