One thing that most of my mentees ask me to help them, is to improve their CV.
And they are right! 🫣
Most of the CVs that I’ve been reading, are not telling who you are, they are telling just what you do.
Your CV is your marketing document. But people don’t connect with a bullet list of achievements, they connect with the person behind it.
Having this in mind, your CV should be succinct and easy to read, and preferable with only one page. This is generally a polemic part, since there’s a lot of different opinions on the web, but throughout this post I hope to explain my personal opinion/experience and preference for one page CVs.
A CV is a marketing document. It’s there to help you better sell your services.
When applying for that dream job, you need to immediately engage your buyers(the potential employer). But, how can you do that?😳
Start by letting your buyers know how to contact you; It’s vital that they can reach out to you and even look you up on LinkedIn and go ahead and have a look at your GitHub. These two are complementary assets for you. Make sure your LinkedIn profile is up to date, and your pinned repos in GitHub reflect your latest work.
Then you have your profile/summary section. If you can make me engage with you, wanting to know more about you, it’s here that that will happen.
This means that your profile should be where all your main attention should go. It’s here where you should really sell your services, show me your skills and how you have been using them throughout your experiences, but please do it, in a very succinct way. I don’t wanna be reading a 3 hour long essay of your work life.Â
Next comes your experiences: your recent experiences. So, if you are a dev like me, you know that probably your experience from 10 years ago does not bring that much into play: technology changes so quickly that sometimes it is not even worth mentioning. So stick with the most recent experiences. On the other hand, if you have that experience that really brings a plus to your career, then don’t hesitate to have that on your profile/summary section, because I want to know you better and that is the space to do so.
Here is where you mention the skills you use in each project, which will allow the potential employer to think twice if he/she should be in your GitHub already opening your repos and making sure that you have applied what you are talking about on your CV.
By now, two things have happening:
- I went to your LinkedIn and Github, and I am comparing these two to your CV
- You didn’t caught my eye, so I am already moving to the next CV at hand
This is when my mentees ask me: and my education, and my certificates? All that I can see on your LinkedIn, if I’m interested. Can’t I? 🤔
Remember: your CV is like a marketing flyer; It should sell your services to the potential buyer(employer). Make it neat and easy to read, and with your contacts always visible.