Excerpted from SEAK’s streaming course: How to Make More Money as an Expert Witness.
So here is an example of a business valuation expert, and just a great… You know, she uses a logo here that she had professionally developed, you know, she uses the formatting of, here’s her photo and then her contact info is over here, offset from the other text on the CV. And I think that does a great job. It makes it very easy to find out how to contact her, and then you know, okay, on the other side, on the right-hand side of the CV, I can read more. I can read her elevator speech, I can read more about what she’s done. Now, you might notice she does sort of a longer summary of her professional experience, and then does reference her education right here, but her education is impressive. And so for her, it made sense to put her education and her certifications on page one. And then, you know, there’s more, you can dig in deeper as you go down the CV. But I think this is a very well-formatted CV, and something that, you know, it’s not all that difficult to implement things like this. There are templates in Word, and you can certainly find those online and get help with that.
And then another point on her, Kelly, which is a very easy thing to do, she uses a little bit of color, right?
Exactly.
So she has the name in blue, she has the top thing on blue, and I think that makes it stand out. Little stuff like that takes you about 30 seconds or a minute, makes you stand out for all the reasons that you listed.
Exactly. Another example of sort of some simpler formatting, right? This doesn’t need to be intricate, it doesn’t need to be… You know, you don’t have to spend a ton of money to get this right. This example shows just, you know, a simple border, the use of a line underneath his elevator speech. Again, I think this CV could use a photograph, it could use an indication if this is a cell phone, but just a very simple way of laying this out. I also, I very much appreciate when you put the dates of your whatever it is, your education or your professional experience, kind of right hand justified, because it really offsets it from the rest of the text on the page, and so it’s very easy to find how long was this person in this particular position. And it’s just easy to see, easy to understand. So I absolutely recommend that.
And I think this expert just does a great job of, you know, utilizing the space. This is not a long CV, but he offsets things, you know, with these lines, and the centered headings, and I think it looks great. So again, doesn’t need to be super intricate. You don’t need to go over the top with the formatting. And this is just an example of a simple way of doing it. You wanna remember that you only get one shot with this first impression, right? You know, depending on how a lawyer finds you, whether it’s online, or in a directory, whatnot, they’re going to get to your CV at some point, and that first page, that first impression, is what it’s all about. So make it look good, put your best stuff up front.