Do's and Don’ts of CV creation
Tags: career, jobapplication, jobsearch, cv
Published: 2022-05-02 13:11:04

As a hiring manager I'm exposed to some amount of CVs per day. There are good CVs and bad CVs. And the difference between them lies not in the experiences or skills people have (surprised, huh?). Although it of course matters.
The difference between good and bad CV is readability. Resume makes a first impression about you to the person reading it. And it's in your interest to make it easy and enjoyable to read.
Therefore I have some tips how to make your CV to stand out of the crowd.

## Do's and Don'ts of CV creation

1. Pretty please read your CV after you compose it. Unbelievable but this step is neglected by so many people. It makes me think that the CV is just a formality for them, they write it for a sake of having it and not with a pursue of finding a job with it.
2. Fix all comma positions while you read your CV. There is no space between a word and following comma (unless you write in French and next punctuation is an exclamation or question mark). Especially if you want to mention "I have a keen eye for the details" in your CV, commas should have a proper position.
3. Don't share private information what is not necessary for your employment. What is your marital status, where do you live (actual address with a street and house number), how many children do you have, how do you look (photo) are not the business of a hiring manager, and it could affect our judgement (and not always in a positive way, yes, we are people as well) and this info should be excluded from the CV.
4. Describe your working experience first and do it as laconic as possible. I've seen people listing their education first, extensive information about themselves, hobbies, etc. As a hiring manager I want to see what value you bring to the team though already acquired experiences elsewhere.
5. Please mention with what technologies you have worked during each employment. Write down technologies for each job and not as a separate summary called "Skills". Technology develops and improves rapidly. If you have been working with Java five years ago and never since, that experience could be not relevant anymore. Also what Java was that?
6. Don't copy-paste your roles and responsibilities between the job positions. If you done the same things years in and years out, what was the difference between these jobs then?
7. Make your CV fit on one page. My own CV went trough the iterations and with time it gets only shorter. I know it is hard. Especially if you have ten years of experience and want to tell about everything you have done in your work life. Believe me, hiring manager will appreciate if you list important things and leave the non-essential information out of the CV.
8. If you mention GitHub, LinkedIn, Twitter on your CV, please make sure there is something to see. In case of GitHub have some repositories what are your pet projects, not only coding challenges for the other companies. In case of LinkedIn check that the job positions, what you had, have a description and/or your responsibilities.

I hope this information is useful for you and will have a positive impact on your job search.
Good luck!