Writing An Appealing CV

An appealing CV is highly critical in helping you get your dream job in the company of your choice. A well-constructed CV allows the reader to easily scan, understand, and review your information. A poorly-constructed CV on the other hand encumbers the reader, makes it difficult for them to understand your career backgrounds.

How should I write an appealing CV?

The Style

The first point we must address is the style of the CV. In general, a simpler style is better than a more complicated style. The goal with a well-written CV is that the information is clear and easy to comprehend. If the style interferes with this goal, consider altering your CV to match more suitable needs.

Style is extremely important so let’s go over a few things that help make up the style of a CV.

The template

Many people enjoy a nice and fancy template. Those templates can look very impressive, but if they are used excessively they hinder the reader’s ability to quickly scan for information and analyze the content. Also, certain templates make it difficult for the interviewer to write down notes, which can be a small annoyance during the interview stage when several interviewers might be jotting down notes. A template with a lot of black borders and just a lot of ink in general can sometimes be too much. Instead, opt for a cleaner and simpler look rather than a fancy one.

The grammar

It is quite self-explanatory that the English grammar should be proofread and that there should be no spelling mistakes. It’s very easy to make a grammatical error on a CV and it also reflects very poorly on you if the interviewer sees it. Take a few additional minutes to make sure that the spelling usage and grammar are correct. If you are unsure then do a quick google search to verify.

The writing style

The writing style should not be cumbersome. One should aim for clearness above all followed by very brief writing. Making it easy to understand and short, so that the reader can easily find the information he is looking for and understand the content.

Experiences should also be written and started with dynamic words. For example, it is much better to write “managed three facilities in US, Asia and Europe” versus “I did the management of three facilities in US, Asia and Europe”. A list of resume dynamic words can easily be found in a Google search.

The Content

The content is the heart of an important CV. First it is important that the content is true and reflects your own work experience, you do not want to be caught exaggerating on a skill or experience of yours. A perfect example of this is can be seen in language skills. Many individuals want to stress that their reading, writing, and speaking skills in another language is conversational or even advanced. However, sometimes individuals may have regressed in their language abilities and have failed to accurately portray this in their updated resume. This can lead to great embarrassment if the interviewer is fluent in that language.

Secondly, the content of your resume should reflect the needs and demands of the position. For example, if the position searching for someone with a mechanical engineering background, emphasize experiences, skills, or education related to mechanical engineering first. Afterwards you can bring up other skills such as languages, accounting, and customer service experience.

Likewise, if the position is searching for someone who has experience in Sales and Marketing, tailor your resume to reflect to the needs and demands of that position. Emphasize your soft skills such as communication abilities and your language skills, and save your technical skills towards the bottom of the CV. This does not mean you should not include other skills that are not related to the position you are applying to, employers like to see well-rounded individuals. However, it is important to prioritize the skills related to the position.

How do I know when my CV is finally complete?

The CV will never be complete. It is important to understand that the CV is always changing and a new CV is needed every time you have learned new skills or gone through new experiences.

That being said, once you feel very satisfied with one of your CVs, you may use that CV as a base. You do not need to start from the beginning every time you write a CV, just make the appropriate modifications and edits from your base CV in order to suit the needs of the position.