The curriculum vitae, abbreviated CV, is one of the most important tools you will need when searching for a job. It is almost always requested as an attachment for a job application, and it is one of the documents that recruiters will give more importance to. 

It is very important then that your CV will look professional and that It will be complete in including all the information needed. But how can you write a CV if you never did one, or how can you adjust your existing CV?

During the years. I wrote and rewrote my CV many times, and not only because the information in it had to be upgraded. I had it reviewed by some professionals of the human resources department, and I also did a course that also spoke about it. Now I want to share with you my experience and what I learnt.

Have a look at the next image for a possible model of a CV. We will talk about the four sections of it in this article.

General concepts

First of all, what is a CV? It is a short document (ideally one page) that presents the professional you, and contains all the information a recruiter needs to make an informed choice when deciding to hire you. 

The CV is not the cover letter, where you can be more articulate in presenting yourself and your interest for the job. The CV is schematic and brief. Probably the recruiter will read many CVs when scanning through potential candidates, and I don’t think it will take him or her more than one minute when reading a CV.

The visual aspect should be curated. The main things I would suggest is to take care of using the same format throughout all of the text, and to have the text properly aligned and justified. 

It is also great if you want to add some visually nice elements, like colors, a nice font or decorations. Be sure just to keep it adequate to a professional setting.

Now let’s see in detail how to prepare the four main sections of the CV:

• Personal information.
• Job experiences.
• Education.
• Skills and “about” section.

1. Personal information

In this section, you can list the most important information about you:

• Name
• Surname
• Address
• Phone number 
• Email
• …

Obviously, share just what you are comfortable sharing.

Then, you can add a photo of yourself. You don’t have to look super elegant, but I would not use a photo of myself wearing too casual clothes.

2. Job experiences

This is a very important part of your CV. Listing the latest jobs you did gives an idea to the recruiter of what you did the latest years of your life, your competences, and also the pay you are used to receive.

You should list the jobs in chronological order, latest first, using the indication “year-year”, or “year.month – year.month”. Indicate the position you took, the company you worked for and the place where you worked. 

The latest two or three jobs should be enough to list, but, let’s say you worked the same job for 25 years, maybe you should indicate it, because that is a relevant part of your career.

If you have little to no job experience, maybe because you are at the beginning of your career, you could consider putting the “Job experiences” section after the “Education” section, or to skip it altogether.

3. Education

This is also an important part of your resume, because it indicates what schools you went to, which school certifications do you have, and in general what kind of education you had. 

You should indicate here too the time you went to a certain school in the format “year-year” or “year.month – year.month”. Then you can indicate the school you went to, the place where it is or was, and the school certificate you received. If you also want to indicate particular information you consider meaningful, perhaps like the title of your thesis, you can write it here. 

Usually it is not necessary to indicate schools like kindergarten or primary school, unless it is not required by the job announcement. List the latest two or three schools you went to. 

4. Skills and the “about” section

There probably isn’t much space for other things in your page, but we have to say a few more things, so we have to be very concise. I would divide this section into three different columns: a) “languages”; b) “IT skills/ particular skills”; c) “about me”.

a. “Languages”

In this section you can write the languages you know with a little description or the level you are at, whether that is basic or excellent, in writing, speaking or understanding. 

b. “IT skills/ particular skills”

Here you can indicate your IT skills, which nowadays are very important. Or, if you have some specific and particular skills which are interesting or even required by the recruiter, you can write them here.

c. “About me”

Describe in a few words your personality and your qualities, so that the recruiter will have an idea of you.

Conclusion

In this article we’ve seen a few ideas about writing a good CV that will leave a good impression on your recruiter. Give yourself as much time as you need to to write it and remember to revise it during the years when your situation changes.