How to Write CV

Writing or updating your CV is always a stress. First of all, because you usually do it when you are looking for a job, so it means that your life is not stable. It is also a time of self-doubt and futile attempts to remember what you did on the last job?

The situation is even worse if this is just the beginning of your career and you do not have a lot of experience to show. What to do in that case?

Let me give some hints about what I would do if I needed to write my first CV today. Or to rewrite my existing from scratch.

The first page of your CV is the most important one; many hiring managers would not read past it. What to put there? Three most important parts of it!
1 - Your name and contacts (email and phone) at the very top of the page
2 - I like to have a one-liner or a small paragraph with a quick overview of myself. Like “DevOps consultant with strong business acumen and a generalist IT background”. You can take inspiration for that on Twitter or LinkedIn - the bio part of some tech people.
3 - Finally, the rest of the page should show your experience.

The list of experiences should sell yourself to the employer. It needs to show that you are interested in your profession and can get the job done.

If you are an experienced specialist, you probably have an extensive list of jobs that would speak for itself. If you are a junior specialist, the best bet would be to show your non-commercial work. It could be a personal website, your blog, or GitHub history. It would be good if those test projects were different and some were bigger than others (so you do not have only ten small landing pages). Even better, if you worked on an open source project, it could be a small PR, but still, it will show that you can work with someone else’s code.

Now another part is what to include for each of the points of your experience? They should not be too big, but you want to include essential bits. You need to focus on the presentation and clearly display what you did on the job or project and what your achievements were. Just please do not put something like “Improved the stability of the application by 100500%” unless you can explain what the 100500 number really means. In my CV, I do not have a single number. The first presentation part is easy - the name of the company/project and what your role is. The second is easy too - dates when you worked for or on it. The next part is often forgotten, but it would be nice to add a link to the company website or the project page - where it would be possible to see it in action. After that, I usually put a tech stack used for it, and it is basically a list of keywords HR people are looking for - so pick those relevant to the job ad! And the last bit - bullet points of your tasks and wins. I like when those are put as “did something”, for example, “Designed and implemented cloud infrastructure”.

Obviously, the latest job or project goes first on your list, and the oldest - last. Also, the oldest job/project does not need as much detail as the latest one - most likely, no one will read it through anyway. Most hiring managers will skim-read the whole CV anyway and pay attention only to the 2-3 latest.

The last part of the CV is your educational profile. And I do not think I need to add anything else for that.

There is also a super-duper secret “trick” I use in my current template. Split the page into two columns as 3-to-1. The first more prominent column is for experience, while the second is for keywords. Those keywords should be related to you and the position you are applying for. They can be a list of tech or soft skills you have or a list of certificates, or something else you think will be helpful in a shortened version.

You can construct your CV in a generic manner that will suit all the jobs you are interested in. But still, I would recommend editing it a bit for each job ad. It could be a small change like reordering your list of skills or a bigger one like focusing on different job results. To fully fine-tune your application for each of the applications, you need to write a cover letter. It is a must. That’s where you explain who you are, why you liked the position, and why you think you will be a good fit. Employers will be interested in your motivation and want to grow as a specialist. Do not write a novel; couple of pages max.

Two last things I wanted to add are that you can and should apply to positions you do not have a 100% match. Probably you would never have it anyway. If you would - it would mean fewer opportunities to learn something new. And if you have a perfect job ad for which you do not have all skills - the cooler it would be to land this job! If you want something - you will achieve it! And another piece of advice - send as many CVs as humanly possible; if you are genuinely looking for a job, do not try to limit yourself only to one or two positions, expend your search horizon.

I hope this will help someone. Let me know if you agree or want to add something to the post?