Making the Perfect CV

CVs are important. They are your first impression to a potential employer and help them see whether you are fit for the job or not. A single paper can not decide your future, but sometimes a well-written CV can surely make the wheels of the recruitment process move in your favour. 

It is the most important document to get your career started and also one of the most difficult ones to get right. Recruiters can know a lot about a person from the way they write and present their CVs, so any mistakes in this document just reflect how you might represent your employer.

How long should your CV be?

By default, they should ideally fit into one A4 sheet or two at max. One should add extra sheets only when they have the right reasons for it. For a hundred candidates, the recruiter already has around two hundred pages to skim through, add any more, and it will just result in more frustration. If you have earned more accolades than can be presented in your CV, just include the most important ones and mention the rest in your interview. 

Structure of a Perfect CV

Most CVs have a heading followed by contact details and an optional summary. Then further details are put under headings like education, experience, and other additional sections like interests, extra-curricular activities, awards and accomplishments, and skills and attributes.

Heading

• The main heading of your CV should be your name. 
• You should not write a CV or Curriculum Vitae or Resume on the top. The recruiter knows what they are reading. 
• Under your name, you should add your phone number and your email address. A couple of things to keep in mind while adding these details is that always put a phone number you have an access to, and do not use the humorous email ID you made in college as your professional one. 
• In addition to this, you can add your current job title, if you have one, or it is relevant to the job you are applying for, or it is something you want your recruiters to know. You can also add your career goals in place of that. So if you are not an ‘Editor’ yet, you can always write ‘Aspiring Editor’. 
• Then you can add your online profiles. Here you can put your LinkedIn, your personal website, blog, or portfolio. 
• You can put your location, but not the entire address. If you live in Mumbai, just writing ‘Mumbai, India’ is enough. 
• You do not need to include your Date of Birth, your age, gender, residential address, marital status, and name of your parents in your CV.

Summary

• This section is also called ‘Profile’, ‘Personal Profile’, “Overview’, ‘Career Objective’, or ‘About Me’.
• Usually, this is the place where experienced candidates summarise their years of professional experience into one common theme, and it is totally optional for new graduates. 
• One should avoid using overused vague subjective words like ‘effective communicator’, ‘team player’, etc., to not make their CV look like something out of a run-mill machine.
• A well-crafted summary can be useful if you are not attaching a cover letter with your CV. Therefore, it should be kept short and simple.
• For example: ‘As a final year student of BA (Hons) in English at Delhi University, I am looking to join a publishing house as an assistant editor and use my language skills and love for literature to help publish the next Bestseller’.

Education

• This section has your university degree, relevant training, licences, micro-credentials, and/or industry certifications.
• Recent graduates can even choose to include their board results if they wish.
• Each listed qualification must have:
  • The name of the institution
  • Start and completion date, or in case it is not complete, then the expected completion date
  • Grades
  • Relevant academic awards and scholarships, if any
  • Any subjects, research projects, dissertations, that may be relevant to the position applied
• The information supplied mostly depends on the requirements of the job applied for.
• The subject details should only be given if they are relevant and might strengthen your application.
• While providing grades or/and marks, always add the maximum marks and the grade scale. Different universities have different scales and the recruiters might not know all of them and might mistake your 7 CGPA out of 9 as 7 out of 10.

Experience

• Recent graduates have very limited experience and employers know this, but still one can add experience earned outside a traditional work environment, that’s why we are not calling it work experience at the moment.
• One can add any or all of the following:
  • Volunteering
  • Fundraising
  • Contribution to Clubs and Societies in the University
  • Sports
  • Freelance assignments
  • Part-time and temporary gigs
  • Internships, if any
• You do not need to put everything, just focus on the ones that you need to highlight and/or the ones that can help you get the job
• This list should be arranged in a reverse chronological order
• Each entry should have:
  • Organisation name
  • Job title
  • Start and Finish Date
  • Short description of what you did there. One can use the STAR framework (Situation, Task, Action, Result) to write this using bullet points. The description should make the experience relevant. If you worked in a restaurant, you can show how working in a place that sits twenty required exceptional customer service, problem-solving skills, and excellent time management. Or, if you gave tuitions, you can write, “developed tutorial content, marketing, pricing, time management strategies to establish a successful small business tutoring class 10th Science students’. Always show evidence and try to use numbers whenever you can. Avoid empty buzzwords. 

Additional Information

In addition to this, you can put your awards, accomplishments, activities, interests, skills and attributes in your CV if there is space left.

• Awards and Accomplishments

You can also put this below the education section if your CV is academic in nature. You should add a short description for each award, with the issuing institution and date 

• Skills and Attributes

List only the skills that are relevant for and related to the position. If there are several, try to break them into subsections. You can have headings like ‘Language Skills’, ‘Software Skills’, etc., to make it easy to look through

• Activities and Interests

You can add your projects, life missions, sports, volunteer work, travel, hobbies, and interests. If they are relevant to the job you applied for. If done properly they can show that you are more than just book smart. But be careful, it is better to not add this section than write ‘movies and songs’ as your interests 

What design to use?

There is no fixed design or aesthetic for a CV. All of this depends on the job one is applying for. But still, there are a few things one must keep in mind:

• The CV should be simple and consistent
• The font and font size should be easily readable
• Subheadings and bullet points add clarity 
• There should be some white space and everything should not be jammed together

After you have written a CV

• Have a friend (or anyone else) look at it and give their honest opinion
• Save the final copy as a PDF but also save the doc file so that it can be edited later on
• Name the file as ‘(Name) CV’
• Always review your CV before you send it for a job application

Points to Note

• Do not add your photograph
• Use PDF
• Do not include references if not asked. Also, do not write ‘references available on request’ because that is understood without saying
• Do not use keywords, just for the sake of it
• Do not include personal, religious, political, and family information
• Add only relevant work history
• Do not score your skills. They might look aesthetically pleasing, but they defeat the purpose. If you have any certifications, do add them.
• Create an elaborate and detailed ‘master’ version which will make it easier. You can then select and edit the appropriate parts every time you apply for a new position.
• If there is a form, then fill in the details, and do not just write ‘see CV attached’.