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So first, what is the purpose of a CV? In many cases, when not required to add a cover letter or application form, your CV is a company’s or hiring manager’s first impression of you. You might be the most gifted candidate in your field but if you don’t engage the reader; include relevant info or stand out then you’ll be limiting your opportunities and losing out to potentially less skilled candidates. Where do people go wrong? There are a few things that this stems back to; sometimes it’s down to people using generic templates or looking for what should be in a CV online. There’s also the people teaching how to write CVs. Most of us are taught how to write a CV while at school, college or university by people who have likely never had to hire anyone in their lives. So on that point, here are some tips on writing a better CV. 1. Personal Statements Now I’m all for writing personal statements to introduce you and your CV but they don’t need to be more than a line or two. Hiring managers aren’t really that interested in this area of your CV, they want to know what you have done and what you have achieved. Instead of writing you can ‘work well as part of a team or on your own’ or ‘I am (adjective), (adjective) and (adjective)’ Save it, display it in your work history section. 2. Work History Don’t just write what you have done throughout your roles; put some achievements in there and try to add statistics if you can or if it’s relevant. As mentioned in the above section this is where displaying you’re able to work in a team or alone is more relevant, discuss your team and the role YOU played – it’s more impactful to discuss your personal attributes within this section giving relevant examples. 3. Education Within this section if you have qualifications relevant to the job role for example Prince2 for Project management or ISTQB for Testing, put them before that F you got in Art in 2001. Always include the grades and dates. With GCSEs - as important as they are - a simple ’10 GCSE’s A*-C, (including English Language (B), Maths (B))’ is enough information. 4. Layout Layout is hugely important; it needs to be clean and professional. Choose a font that’s easy to read and remains professional, usually I’d suggest any of the following; Ariel, Calibri, Georgia or Trebuchet MS. Try to use size 11/12 font and if your CV exceeds 2 pages... so what! As long as it’s well spaced out and easy to read with relevant and interesting information, we don’t care! Some people use layout to stand out from other candidates it’s a good opportunity to be creative and different. NEVER USE COMIC SANS. 5. Stand out This is where it’s up to you; be different, be creative but always be you.

A History of the NHS: 70 Years On Post-War Predicament On the 2nd of September 1945 World War II came to an end. Of course it was not without its repercussions, the British public had endured a pretty serious case of being bombed, and therefore people weren’t generally very well. Along comes Aneurin Bevan who starts aggressively pursuing a massive healthcare reform, a sort of National Health Service, but the Conservative opposition were quick to try and shoot it down. They feared that if hospitals were nationally owned then they would lose the close patient-doctor relationship. The Labour government beat back these amendments and on July 5th 1948, at the Park Hospital in Manchester, the NHS was officially launched after only three years of constant arguing. The genesis of the idea really only came alive in the ‘Beveridge Report’, written by Liberal economist William Beveridge, which proposed massive social reforms, one of which was the idea for a welfare state. In the study he found that rations during the time of rationing the cases of deficiency diseases and infant mortality dropped a great deal, the conclusion to draw from this is that poorer families were actually healthier during a period of national intervention. Upon discovering this, Beveridge had a massive light bulb pop up over his head, he would advise an increase of national intervention on a huge scale. Cue Bevan; cue the first paragraph of this blog. Over the Years Not long after its introduction to British life, the NHS began innovating, and hasn’t stopped since. In the early sixties the contraceptive pill was made widely available, which proved to be a massive step in the right direction for the rights of women. Around the same sort of time they also stopped just throwing mentally ill people into asylums and forgetting about them, a treatment technique that was waning in popularity and needed very serious reform. During the seventies they mastered the power of painkillers with the discovery of endorphins, and managed to master the bone marrow transplant. With every new decade the levels of tech used within hospitals increased, with new machinery and research helping to diagnose and treat people. The following decades led to more innovations, too many to write about without just making a long list, and still the NHS kept fighting on. What’s Next? The question is; will the NHS last another 70 years? The answer; nobody knows. There are massive budget constraints in place right now, and the NHS has always suffered from being an incredibly expensive endeavour, these add up and I’m sure there are some people in government positions who want completely privatise health. I think that would be a great shame for this great public service. We shouldn’t point at its weaknesses as reasons to destroy it, we should help to fix those weaknesses and make the NHS stronger. I’ll finish this blog by stating the three core principles the NHS was founded on: i.That it meets the needs of everyone. ii.That it’s free at the point to delivery. iii.That it’s based on clinical need, not ability to pay. Here’s hoping we’re working with the NHS for another 70 years!