What’s the key to a brilliant CV?

​Well at least in the legal industry, the answer is simple;

(1) State your experience (be sure to include exact dates including month & year in each position, give a description of the firm for context if necessary)
(2) Detail your major experience/transactions/matters (include all the relevant information, including, what your role/responsibility was on the matter/file, what exact tasks you performed, if you did something particularly noteworthy etc, who you reported to and how closely you worked together & the outcome)
(3) Don’t omit any short stints just because they didn’t work out, better to include some info on why it was a shorter employment period, i.e. a contract, & if you have had several moves in a short time, you can add a succinct sentence describing why in each case (i.e. was headhunted, got an excellent offer, or conversely, left because of high turnover or lack of mentoring etc)
(4) Include a section on business development (i.e. attended industry functions, wrote a blog, article etc)

Don’t worry about quantity of information, just be concerned with quality of information & make sure you can extrapolate on each point in your CV during interview.