Architecture CV / Resume TOP TIPS and MISTAKES TO AVOID

0044 - Architecture CV / Resume TOP TIPS and MISTAKES TO AVOID
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Stephen Drew: [00:00:00] Hello everyone, I am Stephen Drew, founder of The Architectural Social, and happy new year. It's that time of year, and I'm sure a few people out there, you're thinking, hey, this is a good time to dust off my CV, or if you're about to enter the industry, it's time to do your first CV. So in my career, I have worked in architectural practice and I've done a few variations of CVs myself, but more importantly, for the last few years, what I do is I work and I lead an architectural team at a leading recruitment consultancy in London.

And I've worked with a lot of excellent architectural practices, such as EPR architects, such as Zaha Hadid, such as Gensler, such as Heatherwick studios. And I've seen a lot of CVs over my career. And during that time, I've seen examples of excellent CVs and I've seen CVs which have failed to capture the attention of employers.

So let's talk about how you can make your CV stand out of the crowd. [00:01:00] Okay. So when you're starting from the beginning or updating your old CV, it's going to be really tempting to go online to one of those websites where you can get a template, you can type in architectural CV, and you'll get a bunch of clean, minimalistic CVs where you can just load up into InDesign.

You want to definitely avoid that, especially as a first port of call, try your best. To build your own CV because your CV needs to be personalized around yourself. And the temptation is when you download a template, you can get easily confined within the constructions there because it's all set out. You might not want to put in a little bit more information and that's really going to hinder you in the long process.

So. It's going to feel tempting to do it at the front, but you should only look at websites like Behance for architectural CB inspirations, but build up the CB, um, template yourself, make your own template, experiment with it. So [00:02:00] download InDesign, don't use something like Photoshop, use a professional piece of software, like InDesign, get the grid set up and build that template and experiment as a designer, as an architect, I'm sure you can make your personality show through.

Now you loaded up InDesign and you're building your CV, you want to start with a nice, clean font, keep it clean, minimalistic. And when you're showcasing your work, it's absolutely fine to put photos in there, but allow everything to breathe. You want to make sure that things are legible. You want to make sure that font is clear.

What you don't want to do is fonts too thin, fonts too thick, everything in uppercase. You want, you don't want any distractions. The beauty of an excellent CV is that everyone focuses on the core details there. They focus on the information you presented because the graphic design supports your work. It supports your structure.

So make sure that you stick with something clean, clear, that supports who you are. Avoid crazy fonts, [00:03:00] avoid big backgrounds, avoid, I think as well as that, avoid black CVs. Uh, in the background, because someone's going to be printing off huge chunks of ink. You want to keep something clean, clear, and minimalistic.

So it's a good, um, guideline. Start with a white background and try to find a font that you think is beautiful and build it up from that using your grid in InDesign. Now that you've got InDesign and you've got your clean font and you've set up your grid and now you're experimenting with it, we've got to put in the content.

So when you're building this. Information now, always think about the message we need to present who you are, what you are, where you're at and why they should hire you. So who you need to say your name, your contact details and what you're all about. So whether you're a part one or a part two, make it very clear at the start statement.

Hi, I'm Stephen Drew, I am a Part 2 Architectural Assistant in London, and I am currently available for work. So you [00:04:00] want it to be clean, crisp, and clear, so that someone, when they're skimming the CVs, if they're busy, imagine that they're in their car, they're in their taxi. Uh, or maybe the internet's really bad.

They load it up and quite quickly they see at the front who you are, what you are, where you are, and why they should hire you in terms of the actual content in the CV, that's going to vary on where you are in your career. A good rule of thumb is though, you generally want to put your most recent work experience in industry at the top.

So if you are a project architect. And you've just finished the high end residential scheme. You want to put that information at the top and you want to put your current employer and most recent project at the top, be literal in the job descriptions. So if you've worked on a high end residential scheme and you've worked on Reba stages one to four on a London based project.

Be specific, talk about your roles and responsibilities. The more literal you are, the better. And if you haven't worked in industry [00:05:00] yet, because you're a graduate, that's no problem. Put your education at the top and put any experience that you've had in industry where you, um, in, in, in an adjacent industry where you can talk about relevant experience.

So when I was a part one. I put the fact that I worked in a bar, I put the fact that I worked in waitress and customer service and those transferable skills. As well as education and experience in industry, you always on the first sheet, you want to try to sneak in somewhere, the software experience you've got.

Now I see a lot of CVs with these big whirly bars and. 100% s and 4 out of 5s, but in my belief, try to be as literal as possible. If you're going to say you're a 5, you need to say how many years of experience you've used the software, because what one person thinks they're an expert in, the other person might be more modest.

So I've seen examples where someone who's a BIM manager has rated themselves 7 and I've seen examples of someone new in the industry rate themselves 8 out of 10. So what you want [00:06:00] to do is you want. Quantify that where it's possible and say that you've used Revit for two years and you believe that you are advanced.

And then you back that up by saying that you've done a Revit course and you put down the credentials for it. A whirly bar with 80 percent to me doesn't mean anything. And at the end of the CV, it's always a good time to put a little bit of your personality in. So think about it in a constructive way. If you've been part of a debates team, or you've been helping charities out, or if you've done anything constructive that helps with society, or if you do artwork, or if you've done anything positive that kind of gets the creative juices going, or you've been It could be teamwork, it could be sports related, you should always put that in because that's a really nice touch at the end of the CV, which helps the employer visualize who you are as a person, and sometimes that can be the thing that you talk about in an interview that lands you the job.

[00:07:00] Once you're happy with the flow of all the information in your CV, it's quite clear who you are. What you're about, you've got your mission statement, you showcase your professional work. You talk about AI education, you talk about all the software you use, and now a little bit of your personality. Make sure that the contact details are at the top.

They're really easy. To find, because after all that work, it would be a shame if the person can't contact you and make sure that, and double check that that email is correct and double check that that mobile works, because if someone calls you and they can't get through, or it doesn't work, they could get busy.

They could bring the next person. So always, always, always make sure that the contact details are up to date. Now all the information is there, the most important thing is that you actually spell check the document. You wouldn't believe the amount of CVs that I see, which have spelling mistakes. And more importantly, while it doesn't necessarily bother me per se, [00:08:00] I know so many architectural practices where they read the CV and when they see a spelling mistake, They find it distracting and it takes away from that brilliant new put that layout that you've done and all the information there, because the more and more that the employer sees spelling mistakes, the more they're taken out of the zone.

And that could cost you that chance of getting an interview. So you want to spell check your work. One of the great ways to do that is using Grammarly. You can do it for free. I use the premium account, which I think costs 20 bucks a month or 20, uh, 25 pound a month or something like that. But when you're doing your CV, load it up for a month and turn it off later.

But that 25 pounds could get you that job interview. If you don't want to use Grammarly, what you want to do is speak to your parent, speak to someone that is non architectural related, because. They're going to look at it with a fresh set of eyes, and they're going to, they're going to pick out words that you might not have noticed that you have spelling mistakes in, because when you're designing [00:09:00] a CV, you're in that design zone, you're thinking of the layout, you're thinking of all the points that need to be in there, and it's very, very easy to make a spelling mistake by accident, because when you're scanning the words, When you're, when you're, um, spelling, just checking, you will miss stuff because you're interpreting what you've mentioned there, but you're not actually picking up the words.

I've done this so, so, so much. I do it all the time. So that's why I always try to use something like Grammarly, or I always try to get someone else to proofread the document. Thank you so much, everyone. I hope that's been helpful. You can find me on the architectural social, which is a community of over 3000 professionals in the architecture and design industry.

And we have in further detail, more courses on CV, and you can check out in this channel before in the year, I did a one hour long debate about CV. So if you want to go in more details, you can check out that video as well. If you are, if you want me to cover another topic. Let me know your comments [00:10:00] below and do subscribe for more, because I'm going to go through every part and I'll let you know my thoughts and any questions you have, we can talk about the stuff that I've seen from candidates that have done really, really well, the stuff that I think works and the stuff that I think you should avoid.

Hope it all goes well. Let's get that dream job.