Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment provides free CV reviews, provided you are happy for your CV to be posted on the internet with our advice.
This is a review for an overseas lawyer from India.
Overseas-Lawyer-CV-IndiaOn first glance: easy to read font and set out clearly. I like that you have include your Linkedin connection at the top and also listed your specialisms.
Mobile Phone Numbers – watch out
Be aware that adding in +91 to your mobile number may put some potential employers off as they may think you are not based in the UK. Linking in with this it may be worth putting in your address to make it clear where you are based. You don’t need to put in your full address – London would suffice.
Personal profile is fine – just picking up on the grammar I would rewrite the 2nd sentence to read “Has 2 years commercial and civil litigation experience in India and one year in-house counsel experience in London.”
Also in UK anything ending in “sation” is spelt with an s so we would write commercialisation. Use of z is the American spelling. You have used it in your professional experience section as well.
The core competencies and achievements section looks fine.
Professional Experience – its fine and there is a fair amount of detail. However, I would say that it is unnecessary to restrict your CV to 2 pages anymore. CVs of 3 or 4 pages are very common. Most CVs are submitted via email so its very difference reading a CV on a screen as to a paper copy. Therefore, you do have more room to play with. This means you might want to consider bullet pointing the paragraphs to make it easier to read and secondly adding in further detail especially regarding your current role. You could add in notable cases, or consider adding in some quantifying figures to indicate the value of your work.
Education – this section is fine and nothing to add. This section will increase over time as you will add details of your QLTS qualification and perhaps professional courses in the future.
As no restriction on number of pages you might want to consider adding the following sections:
Additional Skills – here you can put in details on computer skills, language skills with degree of fluency and whether you hold a driving licence
Interests – basically have you any additional interests/hobbies outside of work? Makes you into a more rounded individual and can spark interest in a potential employer especially if you have a shared interest or do something a bit different. Avoid writing things like: reading, socialising, going to the cinema – be a bit more specific and interesting.
Finally, good idea to mention references even if you just put “References available on request” Or if you have references put their names, role and contact number/email on your CV.
