One of the hardest tasks in job hunting within the dental industry is writing a CV that will be seen favourably by dental recruitment agencies,  dental practice owners and dental practice managers. In order to help you out I have listed some top tips to help you out.

1. Be real
Believe it or not but employers spend on average just 8 seconds looking at a CV, so keep your CV to 2 pages and make it as easy to read as possible.  If you would like a free CV template then do get in touch and we can send you one.

2. Keep the format simple
Over formatted CVs can be a distraction and make your CV hard to read. Dont overuse different fonts, italics bold and other formatting in order to get your point across. Try and keep the same font throughout but subtly change the format for headers and titles. Ensure you don’t have blocks of texts, especially when describing your responsibilities, and instead use bullet points.

3. Include a personal profile
Always ensure you write a 3-4 line personal profile at the top of your CV. Ensure you get across a summary of your experience, your key skills and what you are looking for (and ideally why i.e. why you are looking for a new role). This is a great way to sell yourself and also it will increase your chances of getting into the ‘Yes’ pile as the employer can quickly get a picture of your experience.

4. Don’t leave gaps
Try to add in all the dates for your whole career and try and not just put the years but the months also. Try not to leave gaps on your CV also and instead state why you may not have been employed for periods of time (e.g. maternity leave, health reasons, unemployed, travel etc).

5. Keep it updated
Its always the case that you may come to write a CV suddenly if your circumstances change and then your scrabbling around trying to remember what you have done for the last 10 years. Instead keep your CV updated every year.

6. Avoid errors, especially spelling and grammar
You have heard this time and time again but it is really important that you avoid errors on your CV. Especially with Microsoft Word having a built in spelling and grammar checker there is really no excuse. It is a real put off for employers and especially if you are going for a job where your English skills count!

7. Do not lie
Be honest and don’t lie. It is really important to be open and honest on your CV as you don’t want to mis-sell yourself or find yourself getting caught out at a later date. Avoid adding in responsibilities that were not really yours and don’t cover up times where you may have been employed when you really were not.

8. Achievements
Employers love to see achievements, especially if you can attach some tangible numbers e.g. ‘helped to increase the total amount of dental patients from 2000 to 2500″ or “saved the practice £2000 by looking at stock control through the Software of Excellence / Exact system”.

9. Format
Try to send your CV out in a Word format or a PDF and avoid using other formats (notepad, publisher etc). Most dental recruitment agencies like DentRecruit have a recruitment software that reads CVs and automatically inputs into a recruitment database. These can read .doc and .pdf files easily, with other formats being problematic. Employers and agencies may not ask for a different format if they cant see your CV so avoid being rejected over this technicality.

10. Keywords are important
If your uploading your CV to a job board then most likely recruiters and employers will be searching for your CV using keywords. This means if you have more relevant keywords on your CV it will come up higher in results! Mostly employers will search on job titles and system experience so ensure you have got down Dental Receptionist or Dental Nurse and also got down your system experience also (SOE Exact, Kodak R4, Statuspoint, Systems for Dentists etc).

I hope this helps, if you need any other assistance then please get in touch!