How to Write A CV That Employers Pay Attention To

A curriculum vitae, or CV, is a formal document that you share with potential employers to introduce yourself and share your strengths as a candidate. A standard, two-page CV format is a small space to share your accomplishments, so it’s vital to be strategic in the information you share and how you share it. 

Every word has a potential impact. Your content's language, structure, and order are your first tools for engaging a recruiter and making them interested in hiring you.

Explore how to write a CV tailored to the job you want and how to arrange your CV so your accomplishments and skills shine.

How to write a CV

Your CV reflects who you are professionally, including your academic achievements, skills, past projects, work, and learning experiences. You are a unique individual, and creating a CV is a personal process that will vary depending on your background and the job you’re applying for. 

At the same time, you should follow a few standard formatting guidelines. First, keep it to no more than two A4 pages, not including your cover letter. Your font should be black, size 10 to 12, and have a clear, easy-to-read typeface like Arial or Times New Roman to avoid distraction. Approach your CV’s layout so recruiters and employers can quickly make sense of your credentials and qualifications. Lastly, you will need to add the relevant information in sections on the page. 

Is a CV the same as a resume?

Although a CV and a resume fulfil similar purposes, the two are different. A resume is a shorter document, usually one page, which concisely lists your credentials, skills, and experience. Other countries, like the US or Canada, use a resume instead of a CV for most job applications, except in cases where a more extensive survey is necessary, such as for a job in academia. 

What should you include on your CV?

You have some flexibility in expressing yourself on your CV, but potential employers will expect to see a few standard pieces of information. For example, it is imperative to include your contact information, a personal statement expressing your career goals, and sections outlining your achievements and work history. 

A way to contact you

Your CV must include a section that showcases your name, phone number, and email address. A physical address, which used to be standard, is no longer necessary. Instead, consider adding your professional LinkedIn profile and a link to your portfolio if you have one.

Your personal statement

You should write a few lines of personal statement in the passive third person tense. Arrange this supporting statement in the prime top-third real estate on the first page of your CV. Having researched the recruiter's mindset, you should be able to write a personal statement that resonates with them. 

How to write a personal statement for a CV

Your personal statement should be a short statement or paragraph describing why you are a good fit for the role you’re applying for. Of all the information you’ll include on your CV, a personal statement is the most obvious place to showcase what makes you unique and stand out from other applicants.

Your achievements

Next, you will need a section that highlights your key achievements. This section is where you can list any awards you have won and times when you demonstrated high achievement. Consider including six to eight bullet points across a two-column table. If you’re writing a technical CV, you might use this section to describe your experience with core technologies necessary to your target job.

Work history

You should detail your professional experiences, going back at most 15 years or your last five or six jobs. Work history blends into achievement or skill sections in some CV formats. You need to make sure you detail your employers and job roles to help recruiters understand where you worked and when.

When writing your work history, make sure that you use active, strong language. You want to use words like:

• Discovered

• Won

• Managed

• Successfully implemented

• Completed

• Innovated

• Grew

Extracurricular activities

Hobbies and interests can provide personality and background to what is usually quite a formal document. If you are an entry-level candidate or a graduate, your extracurricular activities may become prominent in your CV to describe who you are and why you have potential.

When you don't have the skills and experience to sell yourself, you need to demonstrate immense potential in other ways to beat other candidates and get the job. However, you can omit this section if you have extensive experience and need the space for your professional achievements. 

What makes up a good CV?

Your CV is that it must be easy for employers and recruiters to understand, at a glance, why you are a qualified candidate. Knowing what to put on a CV, what to omit from it, and how to format your document can make it more impactful. If your CV has a distracting layout or features that will vary from device to device—like coloured fonts or complex formatting—it will make it more difficult for employers to see how talented you are.

How to write a CV tailored to a job

Begin by researching the position and the company. Put yourself into the recruiter’s place and consider what they want to know about you based on the job advert and company website details. List your relevant experiences or education related to those skills. Some industries or fields use specialised CV formats that can help you organise your CV in the proper order, even if you aren’t sure what the recruiter might be looking for. Explore these methods of tailoring your CV to the job below. 

Always start with the job

Before writing your CV, research the position you’re applying for. You should consider the job description and the responsibilities you will have. You should also consider the company’s website, such as an About Us page, to learn more about the company. This research will help you understand where your skills line up with what the recruiter is looking for, which you can translate into sections like: 

• Qualifications and certifications

• Past work history

• Extracurricular activities

How do I list degrees on a CV?

In some roles, you want your education and certifications to be at the top of your CV. In other roles, like sales roles, you may want to relegate your education history to the bottom half of the second page of your CV. You should have the highest qualifications on your CV.

Understand the job role from the recruiter's point of view

When you have identified how you map onto the role, you need to think about the recruiter's language to describe the job. What are the keywords in their semantic web for understanding the role? 

Once you’re confident that you know what the recruiter wants to see and the language they use to describe a successful person in the role, you’ll have a more complete picture of how your CV should look to get noticed.

What is the best CV format?

The best format for your CV depends on the type of position you’re applying for. A few basic types of CV format include academic CVs (those used to apply for a job in academia), CVs for technical or skill-based work, CVs for creative work best demonstrated in a portfolio, and the well-tested but still relevant traditional style.

Academic CVs

These tend to be fairly long and detailed CVs, lifting qualifications into the prime real estate of the top half of the first page. They detail every time you have been published in a peer-reviewed journal. Study other academic CVs so that you get the formatting and academic style correct throughout your CV.

Skills or achievements based on CVs

With this type of CV, you will generally group your experience into categories of skill or types of achievement rather than using a chronological work history. You may have a skills-focused top section underneath your personal statement, with bold text for the core competencies that map onto the role.

Creative or portfolio CVs

For those working in digital media and graphics-based industries, it has become the norm to use more flamboyant CVs, with stylish typefaces, graphics, links to portfolios, and even embedded images of portfolio items. This type of CV allows for much more creativity. The medium is the message.

Traditional or chronological CVs

This type of CV is the most common and is historically the 'right' way to do a CV. You would list your work history in reverse chronological order, starting with recent experience and working backward as you demonstrate your career progression.

Is it okay to have gaps in your CV? 

It’s perfectly normal to have gaps in your CV or time spent on projects unrelated to your professional career. Although it’s a common misconception that gaps on your CV are negative, the truth is that you can often communicate why you have a gap in a way that looks positive for you. For example, returning to university demonstrates your commitment to learning and development. Taking a career break for family reasons, such as caring for the children of a loved one, is common and holds no bearing on whether or not you’re qualified for the work. 

You can also frame breaks like these to emphasise the positive–took the proactive choice to reassess career goals, completed a new certification, enjoyed stay-at-home parenting". Typically, it's best to explain career gaps in your cover letter, which can ensure that the space available in your CV communicates competencies, experiences, and personality traits.

How to write a good CV

Writing a good CV is a delicate art requiring detailing all your professional history in a space-constrained and straightforward format. Although you can include many things on your resume, you should avoid a few things, such as your age, date of birth, marital status, or nationality on your CV. In addition, skip adding a photograph to your CV unless you work in an industry where it is the norm, such as acting or modelling.

Check out a few more tips on how to write a great CV that gets you noticed. 

• Reach out for help: Connect with people in your field and ask to review their CVs. Speak to people in your organisation, or get in touch with people in your network on LinkedIn. You might end up with a CV template ideal for your target role and some wisdom about your field.

• Keep things positive: If you encountered challenges and adversity in other roles, focus on how you overcame them instead of what went wrong. 

• Keep things concise and interesting: Keep the recruiter’s attention span in mind and only mention the tasks and duties relevant to the role you’re applying for. Sometimes, a keyword will describe what you did, as well as three lines of text.

Discover more about how to write a CV in the UK

A recruiter will spend about six seconds on average deciding whether to proceed with your candidacy. That makes it important that you present a clear and concise CV outlining why you are the best candidate for the role.

As you create your CV, you may need to brush up on your technical or workplace skills to meet the job criteria for your desired position. In that case, consider taking a course on teamwork, communication, or other workplace skills. To learn more about writing an effective CV and preparing for your interview, look at the course Career Planning: A Pathway to Employment, offered by Tomsk State University on Coursera.