How to write a Curriculum Vitae – CV.

Curriculum Vitae or CV represents the first contact between you and potential employer and that’s why it is very important to make a good first impression and secure an invitation for a job interview. None of us wants to look like an ignorant making school mistakes so let’s have a look together how to avoid being so. Don’t forget that your  CV is attached by a cover letter which complements its information.

Career-wise is CV one of the most important documents you will have to create because it will help you to find a job you want. Take your time to make it work for you. Think of all your positive features and characters, work experience (even a short one), training you have taken, book you have read, presentation you have given and include it in your CV. You never know which detail might grab your potential employer’s attention and make you outstand.

You are giving your CV to people you have never met and you hope them to understand what you are looking for. So take time to think about what you are going to write and what you wrote. Making yourself dazzle is crucial because that is what makes you different from other applicants and places you among the chosen candidates for a job interview.

Step back and pretend you were just given that CV. Are there any unclear, misleading or missing pieces of information? What is your first impression? If you were the HR director would you be interested in hiring such candidate? Write a list of things you don’t like about your CV from HR director’s point of view and try to fix all the bugs.


It is also good to give your CV to a friend or relative and ask them to read over it. This is a double check to see if your CV is understandable and makes your positive features and work experience work for you.

Your CV must stand out from the rest – it is an advert for your skills, abilities and knowledge. Make sure you include all the relevant information. Make a time line of all your jobs and trainings on a separate sheet of paper and create your CV by following your time line.

Make your CV work for you.

• Make professional first impression: clear readable layout. Be careful not to leave any unnecessary smudges on the paper such as your Thursday’s Kung Pao or your favourite Latte.

• If sending CV in the attachment don't forget to write a short e-mail saying what position are you applying for. It’s also good to mention shortly how you found out about the position.
• Your CV should be professional and positive.  Always focus on your positive features which might be useful for your job.
• Tailor your CV to the position you are applying for: one CV doesn’t work across all the applications.
• CV should be concise and short. Clear layout and bullet points are the good CV writing strategy.
• Cover letter should complement not copy the CV.  Cover letter gives you space to develop the information in your CV.



Rules for writing a CV

• Less is more: short CV grabs the attention more than a long one. One or two pages are ideal, the rest is not read in most cases. It also depends on how long your work experience is. I can’t imagine squeezing 20 years of experience into 2 pages without leaving out important facts about your career.
• Tailor your CV to a position you are applying for. Applying for programmer may be a bit different from applying for English teacher, don’t you think? :o)
• Be succinct: write where and when you worked, what you did at that position and what did you achieve.  No need to write that you didn’t like your colleagues’ jokes.
• CV must be structured: focus on relevant information, write in bullet points. Messy layout is difficult and boring to read. Isn’t it so?
• Don’t use different fonts.  Similar to the idea above. Smaller and bigger fonts e.g. for headings make it more difficult to distinguish among more and less important parts.

Usual mistakes

• Don’t use flowery language.  Too many words saying nothing may be more useful on a poem recital than in your skills presentation.
• Careful of unexplained gaps in your career, CV should not contain them: if you were unemployed or you were studying in a certain period, say it. There is nothing wrong in saying: “after my first job I was seeking a suitable job and I used that time for a self study”
• Avoid negativity: avoid doesn’t mean withhold, just use the right words to express a bit of a negative information
• Don’t forget to put in all relevant contact details, such as your phone number and e-mail address.

• Watch out for grammar mistakes and misspellings, avoiding them shows that you double checked your work 


You can find a sample CV here.

GOOD LUCK!