CV Writing for fresh graduates and students

About CV writing:

I would say that CV writing is an art that a person acquires only by practice. And the most interesting thing about this art is that the CV would approach perfection if and only if a person writes his/her own CV rather than refilling a template, or customizing a friend's CV or requesting someone else to write a CV for you. The reason behind this is the fact that no one else knows you better than yourself and hence when it comes towards creating a "Marketing Document" that would sell your skills than I would recommend you to do it yourself. Now most of you might be thinking from where should I start writing my CV and where to end it.
Just follow these steps and I am sure you will a perfect CV for yourself.

i) Brainstroming:

Take a page and a pencil and dive into your past. Keeping all your certificates, medals and other stuff in front of you will help alot in recalling your past achievements, your voluntry work, sports, hobbies, interests. At this moment dont think of filtering things, just write each and every thing that comes to your mind.

ii) Organize:

The next step is to classify whatever you have written in a number of groups.Be carefull in this grouping as these groups will become the sub headings on your CV. There is no hard and fast rule about the number of these sub headings. In order to give you an idea I am listing the subheadings of my CV in the order of their occurance.

a) Contact Details

b) Career Objective

c) Qualifications

d) Internships

e) Projects

f) Leadership Exposure

g) Achievements

h) Management Exposure

i) National and International Participations

j) Workshops and Seminars

k) Softwares

l) Languages

Whatever you have written on that piece of paper group them under these subheadings. If there is a need for an extra category, make it. Either put the most important things at top and least important things at bottom or arrange the most recent on top and the oldest at bottom. Once you are done with this you can easily decide which data is relatively less important and should not be incorporated in the CV. While filtering out the data assume that you are your own recruiter and think like one. Ignore those things which would be irrelevent to the job you are applying for.

c) Designing the CV:

The next step is to design the CV. I would suggest you to first google for some CVs, download those that are attractive and different but still give a professional and decent look. Try mixing the features that you like the most, select an appropriate color scheme. And don't worry making a new CV from scrap is not that difficult. Anyhow, within a week I will write an article that would make you familier with different tools in word that would help you make your own customized CV.