Writing a Relevant CV
Tags: career
Published: 2019-09-17 22:56:20

---
title: Writing a Relevant CV
published: true
description: How to write an engaging and effective CV 
tags: career
---

For the last few months I've been helping out with the frontend developer hiring process at [Tessian](https://www.tessian.com/careers) (that's right, we're hiring - send me a [DM](https://twitter.com/lukebarnard_)!) and I'd like to share some thoughts on keeping your CV relevant. I must note, these views are entirely my own - not Tessian's.

This will be the first in a series of posts that I want to share from the perspective of someone who has been looking at A LOT of CVs with the sole aim of finding really incredible engineers to join an already awesome tech team.

## Context > Breadth of Knowledge

The first thing I notice when I look at a CV is the number of technologies and frameworks mentioned. I find that lists of entire A-Z of libraries, frameworks, architectures or paradigms can distract from the information that matters the most. A CV that really stands out is one that brings to light the unique parts of someone's experience. Mentioning relevant technologies with your previous roles and projects will help give a much clearer idea of how much experience you've had with a particular bit of tech. It also gives context - reading "PHP" on it's own doesn't give as much insight as "helped rewrite PHP monolith as a set of micr-frontends".

I've also seen some CVs that show how comfortable someone is with certain technologies with graphs or ratings out of 5. When it comes to indicating relative proficiency in certain technologies, I think it's best to stick to the facts, which in this case are previous employment and projects. 

In any case, remember that you can learn anything in time - there should be nothing stopping you from becoming more proficient with a given stack. The projects you list on your CV will showcase this. 

Remember that giving context is more important than the number of technologies you can list.

## Impact > Work

I've noticed a lot of CVs mention very common tasks that you might do as a developer. In particular I notice most people tend to mention one of the below:
 - Developed UI components
 - Fixed bugs
 - Wrote unit tests
 - Participated in SCRUM meetings

Every time I read this I find myself wishing that I could ask the candidate what they _really_ achieved on a particular project and how they had an impact.

My advice is to focus on the unique aspects of a particular project and the impact of the tasks you did, e.g.:
  - Optimised the performance of the checkout page, which lead to an increase in successful purchases
  - Helped rearchitect a Rails monolith to a set of micro frontends to increase maintainability and decouple key products
  - Introduced BDD practice to the team to increase stability in new features
  - Merged multiple repositories into a monorepo, which decreased lead time
  - Maintained development environment for the frontend team to speed up local testing

And if you can't think of many achievements for a particular role, try describing the project and what it achieved or parts of the software that you built and maintained. 

Remember, the impact of your work is more important than the work itself.

## Humility > Exaggeration

When writing your CV it can be tempting to exaggerate or show off about the things you've achieved. This might seem appropriate given that you want to wow a potential employer and appear to be superior to other candidates. For instance, I've seen a few CVs that decorate experience or projects with adjectives and impressive numbers.

The problem with this is that it has unintended biases in the mind of the reader. Exaggeration distracts from the facts themselves. The experience on your CV should be able to stand alone without any exaggeration. Being transparent and humble will go a long way, if the facts are impressive they should impress without the extra additives.

As an example, let's say I decided to write on my CV:

> Optimised the SEO of the landing page which lead to a dramatic increase of traffic (x10)

Compare this with the following:

> Optimised the SEO of the landing page which lead to an increase in the number of users registering

With a small adjustment, the statement is more humble, and focusses more on the impact of the completed task.

Remember, your experience got you to where you are today - it doesn't need exaggeration.

# Conclusion

To summarise, here are three tips for writing a CV:
 - Giving context is important, your work doesn't exist in a vacuum
 - The impact that your work has is more important than the work itself
 - Exaggeration only serves to distract, humility will go a long way

Thanks for reading, for more like this follow me here on [dev.to](https://dev.to/luke) or [on twitter](https://twitter.com/lukebarnard_)! 🚀

*NB: I re-wrote this post because I felt it was too negative and that's really not how I want to share my ideas. Any criticism is hugely valuable for me, so please leave any constructive feedback in the comments.