When applying for a job, your curriculum vitae is often the first insight the company you are hoping to interview for has of you. Much of the time it is the only insight as so many candidates do not pass the CV review stage. It is imperative that you write your CV effectively to make the most of the opportunity and secure an interview.
Over the years, I have reviewed many CVs and tailored my own CV to great success, and I would like to share with you my thoughts and experience that have helped me secure many interviews at some truly great companies.
The Heading
A CV should start off with a clear heading of your name and current job title. Your name should be the largest font size in the document to make it stand out. You can also make it bold and in capital letters for greater impact if you want to. You want your name to stand out, it is the most important piece of information in the whole document.
Next, include your email address, and make sure it is correct with no typos! If you don’t want to be contacted in any other way, you do not need to include other contact details, but email is a must.
It’s also a good idea to have links to relevant social media, e.g LinkedIn, github. These links should be written out so they can be viewed when the document is printed in case they need to be referenced in an in person interview where the cv has been printed out.
Introduction
After the heading, it’s useful to write a brief introduction paragraph stating your current position and company with an overview of the main areas you have focussed on in your career. You can also include a short sentence or two about personal interests, if you would like to.
An example of this could be.
- I am currently a senior software engineer at salesforce, working on the internal reporting tools. Throughout my career, I have focused mainly on the front end side of web development with a wealth of experience and expertise in Javascript, CSS and the Node.js ecosystem. In my spare time I enjoy climbing and cooking meals inspired from various cultures around the world.
Technical skills.
Next I find that it is always good to have a section detailing technical skills to highlight your technical expertise. The idea here is to allow the person reading the cv to quickly gauge your expertise at a glance to see if you are a fit for the role. This section could be a bulleted list of technologies you are comfortable using and could speak about with confidence.
They should be prioritised in the order which is most relevant to the role you are applying for and weighted to your strongest skills first.
You should be able to answer questions on these topics. Do not include anything you wouldn’t feel confident in being questioned on in an interview.
Feel free to leave out skills that are not relevant to the role or areas which you do not want to progress with. People do not want to read about skills in flash / dead technologies. In a similar fashion do not put skills in Microsoft Word / googling. These are a given and including them on your cv make it look like you have nothing better to say.
Experience / Past Roles
Have clearly defined sections for each role and clearly state the name of the company you worked for and the time spent there as a section title.
Fill out experience with bulleted lists of a short sentence or two of achievements in past roles and how you did it, and their effect (if known)
An example
• Reduced page load time from 3 seconds to 0.8 seconds by creating split Javascript bundles, optimising images and reducing css load. This lead to an increase in conversions in our sign up process.
I like to highlight key words in bold to draw the readers attention to significant parts. This could be either be a technology or a significant outcome.
Projects (optional)
If you have previous work which you would like to show, you can add a short section of recent projects with a link. Keep this list short, no more than 5 projects.
The goal here is to just link to your recent work. No additional information is needed, it is covered in the experience section.
The link should be viewable to someone who has printed off the cv. You can use a url shortener service if the link is really long.
If the project is a library, link to github, otherwise link to a deployed version of the project rather than the code. If the project is inaccessible to the public, you could try and find a marketing page or video about the product and link to that.
Education (optional)
If you feel education is significant then put your highest level achieved.
If you went to university and graduated, include that. It may not be relevant but could give you some common ground with an interviewer.
Some companies do favour candidates with good academic qualifications, so for me the education section is worth keeping in if you have a good level of academic achievement.
I like to leave my qualifications / education in, even though I have considerable experience and in practice my education does not really come up in interviews any more.
Things to leave out
There is a lot of information that candidates put on their cv which is unnecessary at best or at worst, detrimental to their chances of being put forward to interview stage.
Remember, the CV should be clear and concise and only contain information which is relevant to secure a role at the company you are applying for.
Address
There are several disadvantages to putting your address on your cv.
Firstly, cvs get passed around all over the place and it’s not very secure to have your home address available to so many people.
Secondly, you may negatively impact chances of success compared to a candidate that lives closer to the place of work. Other candidates may be seen to have an advantage if they have a shorter commute.
Thirdly, if the company you are working for offers location based salaries, you could unknowingly be offered reduced remuneration if you live in an area which is deemed cheaper to live in.
Unless the information is asked for, for a specific reason, there is no reason to put your address on your cv.
Date of birth
Including your date of birth leaves you open to bias against your age. The person reviewing your cv may feel you could be inexperienced if you are young, or on the flip side, if you a bit older, they might feel you have more responsibilities outside of work, which could make you inflexible.
If you fall heavily either side of the average age of a company’s employees/those employed by a company, the person reviewing the cv may have reservations about your ability to fit in before even giving you a chance to interview.
I think it’s better to let your experience do the talking and leave out your date of birth all together.
Phone number
I think it’s a mistake to add your phone number to your CV. CVs get passed around to many people. Having your phone number circulated can lead to a lot of unsolicited phone calls.
I think it is better to initiate contact via email and then if you want to pursue further communication you can exchange phone numbers via email.
Picture
What you look like is not relevant when applying for technical positions. There is no reason to include a photo, no matter how good you think you look.
Unfortunately, people judge on appearance. It shouldn’t be like that, but it is, and having a photo on your cv not only takes up valuable real estate, but will lead to you being judged before someone has even read your cv.
If you don’t include a photo, you don’t give the reviewer the chance to judge you on anything but the content of your cv.
General tips
Keep your cv concise and straight to the point. Do not waffle or include any information that is not relevant to the person reading the cv.
Keep the cv monochrome. Use a very dark grey, as that is slightly easier on the eyes than pure black when reading on a screen. Don’t use colour as it can make the cv harder to read and can be distracting. Having one colour also means that the cv will print well consistently when being referenced in interviews.
The cv must look good and be legible when printed. Check that the document prints well. A lot of people like to print off documents when they have a lot to read, such as reviewing multiple cvs. The last thing you want is for your cv to not print properly and for that to derail an interview.
Avoid design trends, keep it simple and timeless and you won’t have to constantly update it. I have had the same design for my cv for 10 years. This is a technical cv, you are not being judged on your design skills.
I like to keep my cv to a maximum of 2 pages, although I don’t think 3 is too many. Anything above 3 pages is too much. You don’t have to include every job you have ever had. It’s sufficient to include the past 2 or 3 roles. Additional roles can be made available upon request.
Always export your cv to a pdf. Pdfs are more professional than word documents and cannot be edited easily. I have a post about how I write my cv in Javascript, style with css and export to pdf here.