Simple, Effective CVs and Resumes
Basic Tips for a Better Career Search
2024 Update: This was written almost 15 years ago when LinkedIn wasn’t as established as it is today. If you are on LinkedIn and using it to look for a job, I’d recommend LinkedIn as your CV. This post is still relevant, if you are looking for ways to have a basic CV that you can easily customize.
Every day, recruiters see a lot of horrible CVs, Resumes and Profiles. They are structured wrong or simply inaccurate and damaging to the people who wrote them. Many recruiters simply discard badly structured profiles, some will try to understand the profile. Recruiters can only deal with so many people and Companies rarely incentivize internal or external recruiters to help job seekers present themselves better. It is possible to make a simple and clear CV which works for most people in most situations.
To skip directly to download an editable sample here.
Basics (Length, Personal Info, Order)
If you have less than 2 years after-university working-experience your profile should be one page. If you have more than 2 years after-university working-experience you can slowly edge up to two pages. All junior, mid to even senior professionals should keep their profiles to two pages. If you have more than five companies you have worked with, start summarizing or completely eliminating the details for each position — title, company, from-to is enough for roles buried deep in your past. You must include at a minimum your full name, phone number, email address and location. Everything in your profile must be listed with the most recent experience first followed in-order to the oldest last. This is simply for speed. I need to know what you are doing now, not what you did 15 years ago.
Short-Summary: Every profile should start with a short 5 to 7 line summary of yourself and your experience. This paragraph contains three things — the actual industries you have worked in, the skills you have learned, a summary of the number of years experience in each industry plus the related role.
Experience: Right after your summary comes your working experiences listed out in order and with a maximum of three accomplishments in each role. Again make this specific and clear. This section shows what you really did in that role and accomplished.
Education: Then you can list out your degrees, diplomas and other formal education.
Certification: If you have attended any formal certification courses like Six Sigma, PMP, Certified Engineer… then list the details in this section. Give the title, school, number of hours, and month/year of certification. Please don’t list every seminar you have ever attended where they gave you a piece of paper for sitting in a chair for the day. Real certification requires dedication, time and a formal test.
Remuneration: I recommend providing a rough range of compensation if you mention anything at all. A sentence towards the end of your resume/CV that mentions: “Open to considering roles which align with my interests, experience and a rough budget range of XXX ~ YYY SGD.”
This was originally published to the internet on google docs in 2011.