How to write a holiday worthy CV

Bring on the holidays. But will you be sunning yourself on the beach and drinking with your mates? Or is it straight to work?

Much as we all like taking a holiday, what you do in your holidays could have long term benefit for your career. The right holiday job could be a real bonus for your CV and hip pocket!

Follow these seven rules to leapfrog to the front of the holiday job queue:

1. Do: Learn the basics of CV writing. It’s a good idea to use a standard template. Include contact details, your objective, education and qualification, skills, achievements and interests and activities. Remember to keep it short. Australian employers want snappy CVs.
   
    
2. Do: Include part-time jobs. You can learn from any job. Part time work will teach you the value of time-keeping, for example, and employers know this. Even the most basic of jobs such as a holiday stint at McDonald’s or distributing flyers for a family members business will help demonstrate your skills and willingness to work.
   
    
3. Do: Focus on your skills. A skill is the ability to do something, and it could be developed through work, study, sport and recreation or at home. You might, for example, be good at teamwork, planning, influencing, fixing and repairing, or calculating. Maybe you take responsibility readily, or do repetitive tasks reliably. Remember that skills learned at school or home count.
   
    
4. Do: Write a functional CV if your work history is sparse. A functional CV groups together your skills and experience, rather than giving a chronological list of all the jobs and schooling you’ve had.
   
    
5. Do: Give examples. Show how you’ve put your skills into action. “Give examples of the quality of your work with customer/management satisfaction, any differences you've made, any achievements, and any values you added to the business or the field of work,” says Serene Lin-Stephens, career development consultant at Macquarie University’s Career and Employment Service. “Emphasise on your absolute professionalism in every kind of work that you do, be it customer service, retail, or hospitality and regardless of the casual or short term nature.” Demonstrating how you used these skills is better than saying you merely “developed” them, she adds.
   
    
6. Do: Identify your transferrable skills. Holiday jobs can give you a range of skills that can be used across different industries, says Lin-Stephens. That includes skills such as problem solving, client service, communication, team work, planning, and time-management. There are many more transferrable skills.
   
    
7. Do: Consider taking overseas holiday jobs. Job experience overseas is a real “value add” when you’re looking for an internship or your first full-time job. You make yourself more employable by stepping out of your comfort zone and having the confidence to try new things, says Lin-Stephens. For example, one successful applicant for the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s (DFAT) highly competitive graduate recruitment programme impressed the recruiters with experience working in the holidays as a New York bar tender says Lin-Stephens.

Finally, getting any job is better than no job, so don’t be precious. It’s a foot on the ladder. Some people even say that working at McDonald’s has had life-long benefits because it taught them invaluable customer service skills. 

Holiday jobs can give you a range of skills that can be used across different industries, says Lin-Stephens.