How to write a CV that gets read
A CV gets somewhere between six and thirty seconds on the first pass. Everything in it competes for that time, which makes the decision about what to remove more consequential than the decision about what to write.
Put your name, title and contact details at the top, then a three-line summary, then experience in reverse chronological order with results rather than duties, then education, skills and languages. Keep it to one page where you can, two at most, and export it as a PDF.
Fill in the free templateStep by step
- Head it with your name and job title
The title you are applying for, not the one on your last payslip. A recruiter scanning forty CVs sorts them by that line before reading anything else.
- Write three lines about yourself
What you do, what you are good at, what you are looking for. Concrete and specific; every adjective that could describe anybody is wasting one of your thirty seconds.
- List experience with results, not duties
Dates, employer, title, then two or three lines of what actually changed because you were there — numbers where you have them.
- Finish with education, skills and languages
Short, factual, and honest about levels. Then export a PDF and name the file with your own name, not 'cv-final-v3'.
Results beat responsibilities
'Responsible for social media' describes a job description. 'Grew the newsletter from 2,000 to 11,000 subscribers in eighteen months' describes a person. The second one is what gets remembered in the meeting where candidates are compared.
You do not need impressive numbers, only real ones. How many, how much, how often, how fast — any of them turns a line that could be anyone into a line that is only you.
Write for the software as well as the human
Many applications pass through a screening system before a person sees them. Those systems read plain text and struggle with multi-column layouts, text in images, tables, and headings invented by the candidate.
Use ordinary section names, a single column, a normal font and real text. A PDF exported from a text layout reads correctly; a beautiful CV rebuilt in a design tool as one flat image reads as an empty document.
One page, unless you have earned two
Early in a career, one page. After ten or fifteen years, two are normal, and squeezing twenty years onto one does more harm than the extra page ever would.
What fills the space matters more than the count: the last ten years in detail, earlier roles as one line each, and anything irrelevant to this application removed rather than shrunk.
Frequently asked questions
Should I put a photo on my CV?
It depends where you are applying. It is usual in much of continental Europe and actively discouraged in the UK, Ireland and North America, where it raises discrimination concerns. Follow the local convention.
Do I need a different CV for each application?
Not a different CV, but a different top third. Change the title and the summary to match the role, and reorder the experience so the relevant part is read first.
Should I send a CV as PDF or Word?
PDF, unless the employer asks for Word. A PDF looks the same everywhere, while a Word file can reflow on someone else's machine and arrive with your layout broken.