CV Changes For Part Time Job Applications

There are many considerable advantages in taking part time work over full time work, including greater flexibility and the freedom to arrange your working life around your other commitments. However, at the end of the day, one of the reasons people go for part time work is that, in many cases, it is easier to obtain if you are only staying in the role for a short while, or if opportunities for full time employment are looking thin on the ground.

This is not to say that landing a part time job is any sort of a walk over. Far from it! As with any other job, you'll need to be able to demonstrate the experiences and skills that make you capable of performing the required tasks and that's just on the CV, never mind once you've actually got the job!

Laying Out Your CV

There are a few different schools of thought on how you should layout a CV. The two most popular are the 'chronological' style and the 'functional' style.

With the former, as the name suggests, you go through the relevant details of your career history in chronological order (or reverse chronological order to be exact, as you always place the most recent pieces of information at the top of the page and work down.)

With the later you group your relevant experiences together according to how you think they make you eligible for the position, regardless of when they happened. So, for example, you may give details of different examples of dealing with very busy shifts under a heading 'Able to Cope with Pressure' even if the experiences you talk about happened years apart.

Which should you choose? Most employers have been shown to prefer the chronological style, so it normally pays to go with that option. However, depending on your circumstances this may not be the case.

Exceptions to the Rule

There are a number of reasons why you may prefer to go with the 'functional' style. For one thing, as you do not present your work history in order and, as you're not obliged (or indeed likely) to include all the things you've ever done, 'functional' CVs do make it easier to play down any gaps you may have in your working life. Understandably, many people worry that periods of unemployment in the past may put a recruiter off even when applying for part time roles.

Ironically, another situation in which you may prefer to show off your skills using a functional CV, rather than a chronological one, is if you are over qualified for the post.

Too Much of a Good Thing

It is not a secret that many part time jobs require less specialist skills, training and experience than full time posts and that, in many cases, they are lower paid. If you are applying for such a post you may want to consider playing down your work history if it involves higher paid, more specialised full time work with only a few part time roles.

A functional CV will allow you to focus on these more relevant experiences and play down your glittering career history. But, why would you want to do this? Put simply, the reason recruiters worry about over qualified people is that they assume they will get bored easily when not making the most of their qualifications.

So, if you are a licensed vet trying to gain work as a waitress, you'll find most employers will assume that anyone who had the passion and drive to train to be a vet probably cares about that a lot more than working in a restaurant.

From this they'll deduce that you don't want the job, you merely need it. You have to find a way of demonstrating that, despite the path of your career, you do enjoy such work, as nobody wants to employ someone they suspect will be miserable in the role!