Many people, whether they are experts with many years of experience or just at the beginning of their career path, when ready to start looking for the job, ask themselves a question - what to include in the CV and what not?
Well, there are probably a few things that you definitely should put into your CV, and there are also some unnecessary details, which you shouldn't.
So what should a perfect CV include? Let's name a few important things:
- Your name and surname - it's pretty obvious - but don't forget about that, some people unfortunately do...
- Contact details - ideally both the phone number and your e-mail address. Sure due to RODO rules, you may give only one of them, but giving both would make it easier for a Recruiter or Hiring Manager to contact you.
- A city you live in - don't put your whole address with all the details like a street and the number of the house, it's absolutely unnecessary, we're not going to pay you a visit at home :)
- Your experience:
👉 Focus on the experience relevant to the role that you're applying for - don't put everything that you have ever done unless it's important for this role;
👉 Order your experience achronologically - put a current place on top, and the oldest ones at the end;
👉 For every position - list the name of a company, your role, the time you worked there, the scope of your responsibilities, your achievements in this role if you would like to share them;
👉 Try to be specific - list all the most important responsibilities for each position, especially for the last 3-5 works. If you have more the name of the company, years of experience, and job position would be enough;
👉 If you don't have any experience yet and you're looking for your first job - you can write about your additional projects, maybe some projects that you did at the university. Any additional information describing you, your hobbies, activities would be helpful.
- Your education:
👉Focus on a last level of education - the most common one is a university degree.
👉Put the name of the school you graduated from, your academic title (Bachelor of Science, etc.), year of graduation, the field of study.
👉Some people also write the title of their graduate work - it's unnecessary, but if you're looking for a first job, this info may be helpful.
Nice to have:
- Linkedin profile or other web pages that could be helpful - e.g., if you're a developer, you can link your GitHub, etc.
- Additional training and certificates - all additional courses that you finished or have in progress, simply name them, the year of graduation, and the scope of the training. Again - they should be relevant to the job.
- Language skills - more and more companies require knowledge of foreign languages, write them all and describe how advanced you are. The best scale is the internationally recognized one (A1 to C2). Some skills or achievements that you would like to share - any skills or achievements relevant to this job you would like to show off - maybe your initiative boosted performance and brought some fresh light to the case you worked on? This may be interesting!
- Additional information - if there is something more that is relevant to the job and you would like to share it, just do it! Interests - if you would like to share them, why not! Sometimes it could be helpful if it's similar to the job you are applying for, saying a lot about your motivation and inner drive. Interests could also be a good ice breaker for the meeting, so feel free to include them (space allows).
What don't you need to include?
- Your photo - unless you really want to, just do it, but to avoid biases you don't have to - your look shouldn't affect whether you get the job or not (unless you apply for a modeling position or similar ;)
- Address details - exact detailed address. As mentioned above, the city is enough. Marital status, children - it's irrelevant at all.
- Other personal details like nationality, sex, etc. - as above, they're also irrelevant to any kind of work.
While building your resume, remember to keep it simple and clear, easy to read, and easy to find the essential things - try to use one font, limit the number of colors/styles. Try to think from a recruiter's or manager's view, so from the view of the person who has to go through hundreds of CVs monthly 🙈 - you just need to keep it simple and clear.
And, as the last tip, it's good to ask for feedback - if you have some friend who works in HR, you can ask them to check your resume before sending it, or if not while talking to the recruiter, you can ask them what do they think about your CV and whether or not should you change something - there is nothing bad asking questions and believe me, recruiters like many professional like to share their expertise ;)
So... are you ready to build your perfect resume? Hopefully, now it should be at least a bit easier.
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