A CV (Curriculum Vitae), is a written overview of your skills, education, and work experience.

They may be used for a variety of reasons, however, the most common of these is to send to prospective employers when looking for a new job.

A CV is an essential part of any job search, not to mention a great way to put all of your skills, experience, and qualifications in one place. In fact, a well written CV could be the difference between getting an interview and not being considered for the role.

A personal statement is a brief personal summary given to prospective employers to help you stand apart from the competition. A personal statement is also required for university applications, but will usually be much more detailed.

A personal statement supports your application to study at a university or college. It’s a chance for you to articulate why you’d like to study a particular course or subject, and what skills and experience you possess that show your passion for your chosen field.

Personal Statement Guidelines From Colchester Sixth Form College

Your Personal Statement gives us a guide to your level of literacy and communication skills. So you might want to check your spelling and think about your sentence construction.

As with our own students applying to university, we want to see if your personal statement supports your course choices and career ideas.

Organise your statement into a structure that will make it read well. You should include some of the following:

• An outline of your current career plan and any relevant steps that have already been taken towards this goal. For example job shadowing, careers advice from a professional body, career- based mentoring or any specific university ambitions that you have.

• Work experience undertaken through Trident and any current part-time employment. What have these taught you?

• Why do you want to come to College? What is the rationale behind your course combination?

• Responsibilities in the home, at school, or in other organisations. This may include caring for siblings, or a parent, or making a significant contribution to any aspect of helping at home. In school it might be being a prefect; being on the school council, or organising charity, arts or sports events. Outside of school this may involve helping with the local Brownie pack; being involved with a Youth Council/Group, or helping with a junior football team.

• Special interests and the specific activities by which they have been pursued in the last couple of years. What are you really enthusiastic about? Please don’t include shopping, watching the television or video gaming – these are taken as given.

• What have you read? What books are you reading at present?

• Who are your heroes? What inspires you?

• Any significant achievements in the last two years– awards at school, representative sporting honours, public performances in the arts, maths/science Olympiad results.

• Personal qualities and maybe a suggestion as to some of your weaknesses that might be revealing, but not too damning.

• Please do tell us about any specific learning difficulty for which you have been receiving help at school and any other significant difficulty in your life that you have had to deal with. These help us to understand your position and make us more able to support you. This information is not used to determine your suitability for a place at College.