How to: craft the perfect CV to ace your Bright Network internship application.

Tip 1: Pay attention to the appearance of your CV

Your CV is your opportunity to leave a great first impression. If there are spelling mistakes, issues with punctuation or capitalisation, or general poor formatting on your CV, it can send a poor message.

Before submitting your CV, consider asking a friend to sense-check it for you - it’s easy to miss small errors in your own work! It’s probably also a good idea to save and upload your CV in PDF form to avoid any potential formatting mistakes when submitting.

Also consider what you can do to make your CV stand out visually. Lots of candidates will use standard black and white templates, so adding some colour and avoiding generic templates found on MS Word or Google Docs is a great way to get noticed when competition is fierce. This is particularly useful if applying for a position where creativity is a key skill (such as a marketing role), because it shows you have an ability to think outside the box, and a keen eye for creating visually-appealing collateral. 

Tip 2: Focus on your achievements rather than responsibilities

It’s important to use your CV to explain your previous relevant experience. However, by only listing the responsibilities of your role, it’s hard for us to understand what specific contributions you made. It can also make your CV feel generic and too similar to other candidates’.

Instead of listing just your responsibilities, try to demonstrate your achievements in each position with specific detail. For example, if you were the events secretary of a university society, rather than writing ‘responsible for organising and promoting events to society members’, consider writing something like ‘led on organising eight events and increased attendance by 55% through email and social media marketing campaigns’.

Not only does this personalise your application, but it also shows that you’re results-orientated, and understand the impact that your role has had.

Tip 3: Put the focus on relevant information 

When writing your CV, it’s sometimes hard to decide what to include and what to leave off. It’s tempting to feel that the more information you include, the stronger your application. In reality, the reverse is true. When putting together your CV, follow the principle of “less is more”.

For our intern roles, we don’t expect bags of experience, but we do want to see a strong interest in the field you’ve applied for. Does the information on your CV show that? If not, you might consider removing it. Aim for no more than two pages of A4, but even better if you can fit it on just one page!

Tip 4: Personalise the CV

We get it - you’re probably using your CV to apply to roles at other companies too. But the most successful candidates for our roles will always be ones who we feel are as passionate about Bright Network as we are! We’re proud of our mission and want to speak to candidates who seem excited by what we’re doing. If your CV feels generic and like it could be sent to any other company, it’s hard for us to feel that you’re really interested in us and our role.

Personalising your CV to the role you’ve applied for doesn’t have to take a lot of time. Consider referencing Bright Network and our mission in the introductory part of your CV. Show that you know what we’re doing and the impact we’re having, and express an interest in being a part of it! If we feel that you’re really invested in our opportunity, we’re much more likely to be excited by your application.

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We’re regularly recruiting for internship positions across many teams within our business, and an internship is often a great path way to becoming a permanent member of Bright Network staff. Are you ready to submit your application?