Ok, lets look at some reasons your CV is not getting you in front of employers and recruiters.
1) Poor grammar and spelling.
This is not purely directed at professionals whom English is not their first language. We are seeing plenty of kiwis who are using (US English) spell check and are not reviewing or getting someone to review their CV. Please use the UK English setting on your device. If you are not fluent in English we would advise going to a CV writing professional.
2) Too long.................Most IT hiring manager have a few mins to review your CV and cover. You have to make them sit up and take notice immediately. A guide to help you would be 1 written page per 8-10 years of work experience. Let'e face it technology moves so quickly that really it's the last 5 years that holds all the interest! This applies to both permanent and contract IT professionals. No longer than 3 pages no matter what!
3) Poor time lines and lack of explanation around gaps in CV and role types (contract, perm, fixed contract).
If you take a gap year, or sail around the world with your family or take out a long period of time to do up the house don't hide from or not mention it. Someone who has been in a mix of contract and permanent roles needs to make that clear in brackets next to the role title on your CV. Often hiring manager get twitchy if then see too much movement on what they may think would be a permanent career history. Its quite normal these days for someone to have a mix of different role types in their career but please make it obvious and clear!
4) A cover letter that is generic for all roles being applied to.
With each role you apply for there will be subtle, sometimes profound differences of duties in the position so its here in your cover letter where you can adjust, change and tweak to highlight the key areas where you can add value for each particular role.
There a ton of other stuff, like good formatting, try https://resume.io/create-resume or even https://www.careers.govt.nz/job-hunting/cvs-and-cover-letters/templates/ to help guide you there.
Additionally it is our opinion (others may disagree) that CV's written in the 3rd person just don't work (in NZ), please keep it to a CV written in the 1st person.
Thank you for reading,
John
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