You’ve decided to change jobs. About when it’s worth doing this is covered in the first post in the “candidate guide” series. The next step is writing or updating your CV. This doesn’t have to be difficult or time-consuming. Postponing this activity “forever” means that positive change in your professional life doesn’t happen and you remain stuck in an unsatisfying situation. Below I’ve gathered some tips based on my experience as a recruiter. I hope they will help you quickly and efficiently get through the CV preparation stage.
How should you write a CV then? In my opinion: short, concise and to the point.
I suggest looking at your resume more as a marketing text than as a formal document. What is the essence of marketing communication? Convincing the recipient that you have a solution to their problem, an answer to their need. As Seth Godin writes, “a lifeguard doesn’t need to sell their services to a drowning person”.
You write a CV to convince the people who will read it – the recruiter and your potential manager – that you can solve their problem. If you are the right person for the right position, the CV’s job is to clearly convince them of this. Their reaction should be a feeling of relief and immediate initiation of the next stages of the recruitment process, i.e., inviting you for an interview.
Let’s therefore look at the needs that your CV should address:
Manager’s needs:
- the manager is looking for a person they can trust to take some work off their hands and help achieve goals for which they are accountable to the organization. The manager looks for confirmation in the CV that you will be able to perform your tasks well and independently, or that you have the potential to learn them quickly.
Recruiter’s needs:
- the recruiter needs to close the position because their work evaluation (KPI) and bonus depend on it. The recruiter looks for elements in the CV that will convince the manager that it’s worth inviting you for an interview, convergence between the information they received (job description, briefing) and those contained in the CV.
Assuming you believe you can meet the requirements of the position you’re applying for, what should you focus on when writing your CV to convince the person reading it?
In my opinion:
- Ensure a simple and clear structure
- Describe what you did in individual positions in your career
- Describe comprehensively everything that’s necessary (and omit what’s unnecessary)
Let’s look at all these tips in order.
1. Ensure a simple and clear structure that facilitates navigation
It’s worth helping managers and recruiters make decisions as quickly as possible about whether it’s worth inviting you for an interview by making it easy to find needed information quickly. You can use one of the known templates for this purpose (LinkedIn profile, Europass), but it’s not necessary. It’s enough that individual sections are clearly distinguished and it will be easy to track your experience history.
From experience, I know that many recruiters and managers review CVs in the following order:
- current experience (description)
- experience history
- education, training, certificates.
It’s worth making this easier for them. The most valuable information for most recruiters and managers is found in the job duties description of your current position. Next, they will trace back your career progression, then check elements like education, certificates, if they correspond to key requirements. If you don’t have professional experience yet – they will first check your education, certificates, additional training, language skills – anything that suggests you have the aptitude to quickly learn this work.
If you have a certificate that is key to the position, or for changing qualifications (for example, you’re retraining to be a Scrum Master and have PSM 1), mention it at the very top, after personal data, preferably copying the logo. If not – start with employment history, written in reverse chronology.
What you enter in the “skills” section should find confirmation in descriptions of specific experiences.
Regarding job titles, I suggest sticking to generally accepted forms (Java Developer, SCRUM Master, Architect) and not making anyone guess anything. Let the recruiter and manager find what they’re looking for as quickly as possible. Maybe it’s worth using Google Trends and comparing the most frequently searched phrases among several alternative names for your position? In this case, creativity doesn’t work in our favor.
Remember about editing and saving the file. Nothing can be “misaligned”. We always send CVs in .pdf files so they display the same way regardless of the program they’re opened in.
You can export your LinkedIn profile to a PDF file if you first fill out all experience-related sections according to the guidelines below.
2. Write what you did in individual positions in your career
Job duties in consecutive positions are best described by providing specifics and numbers. Managing people? Write how large the groups were. Project management? Write how large the budgets and teams implementing projects were. Did you implement a large system? Write for how many end users.
For salespeople, I suggest providing amounts, targets and degree of target achievement from several previous years.
In a programmer’s, IT architect’s or technical leader’s CV, there should be plenty of details about implemented projects:
- technology stack
- architecture (monolith, microservices)
- tools
- methodologies
- client (industry, size)
- Your role in the project (if tasks were divided, for example, into architecture design, technical team management and code writing – it’s worth writing what percentage of time each took).
I’ve encountered opinions from various trainings that when describing individual experiences, it’s worth doing it in the form of achievements or realized goals, using the SMART formula. It’s probably worth it if it suits you, on the other hand, in my opinion, applying the guidelines described above should be completely sufficient.
3. Describe comprehensively everything that’s necessary (and omit what’s unnecessary)
CV length is less important. There’s a persistent myth that a CV should be no longer than one page – I suggest you forget about this. In my opinion, a CV should be long enough to include everything important, but written in concise factual language and clear in form. It’s important that the entire experience can be easily “grasped” and you don’t have to search long for needed information. It’s worth ensuring graphic and editorial consistency (distinctive dates, client names and individual positions). Regarding date formats for experience, I suggest providing year and month.
Career objective I suggest including only if it makes sense, for example, in a situation when having several years of non-IT experience you want to switch to Scrum Master. If your development path is more or less standard, writing generalities like “continuous development to provide the greatest value to company clients” will only create information noise.
Certificates – it’s worth listing all those related to the work you’re looking for, but highlighting selected ones (placing them at the top of the first page) if justified (e.g., you want to change industries and got a certificate in that area). Regarding training, I also suggest listing all related to the work you’re looking for (so if it’s IT, you list those related to IT, if your position requires customer contact and you have marketing or sales training, it’s also worth mentioning.
Skills – it’s worth including such a section and listing hard, technical skills there. I suggest treating this as a form of summary; the most important place where they should be found is in experience descriptions, where they are embedded in specific context.
Always include knowledge of foreign languages. Here list everything, adding generally accepted level designations (e.g., advanced, proficient, native, or B2, C1, etc.) and all certificates confirming them.
Interests section: sure, you can include it. Not everyone will look there though.
Photo is an element that in my opinion can definitely be omitted. Specific information about your experience, education and the idea you have for yourself should speak for themselves.
I would also suggest starting to include the following elements in CVs:
- salary expectations (ranges)
- notice period (availability).
Widespread use of this practice will simplify a lot. Especially in times when salary ranges are commonly provided (at least in IT) in job postings.
It’s also worth mentioning writing CVs “for” specific offers. My tip is to try to create a document general enough to represent you well everywhere – you’ll save time that way. If you have a lot of experience in areas that are not substantively related to offers you’re applying for, summarize them briefly, not devoting valuable space to them. You can, for example, write “2007-2014: activities unrelated to IT”. Or limit yourself to dates and job titles, without duty descriptions. I suggest not mentioning additional jobs unless the experience from them is directly related to the work that interests you.
In IT, in most recruitment processes, an English language version will be sufficient; a CV in Polish is optional.
Last tip – always write the truth. If you don’t remember exact dates of individual employment stages – check them on work certificates. If the same company hired you for an internship and you went through consecutive rungs of the ladder to be promoted to manager – describe all stages accurately. Many companies outsource “background checks” to external firms, where among other things, the truthfulness of information in your CV is verified. Background checks are initiated with your consent, usually after positive completion of the recruitment process. It would be a shame to waste all that effort at such a moment due to oversight or inaccuracy in the CV.
I hope reading this post will help you “unblock” yourself and quickly write a CV. Or improve the one you already have. Maybe you’ll simply see that you have a sufficiently good CV, and there’s nothing to wait for – you need to start sending it?
Where to send your CV? Where to look for offers, how to read them and decide whether it’s worth applying? You’ll read about this in the next post in the “candidate guide” series.
