📝 How to make a CV: from beautiful & useless to professional & effective
Nowadays, candidates for the one workplace are so many that the employer doesn’t have time to gaze on each. That’s why your resume/CV should look good enough to make him interested in you.
After researching how to make a good resume for a software engineer I have noticed that there are so many awful templates that everyone applied for their unique experience.
In this article, I would like to take a glance at:
- what’s the difference between CV and Resume
- common mistakes people make in their resume
- how does a good resume look like
- advantages and disadvantages of attaching a photo
CV OR RESUME AND WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE
As far as I can see, people use the words CV and resume interchangeably. For many people, there is no difference and they are used to saying it depending on how they feel about it. But actually, they are a bit different things even if they send essentially the same message.
Let’s find out the difference between CV and resume.
CV
A CV (Curriculum Vitæ, which means “course of life” in Latin) is an in-depth document that can be laid out over two or more pages and it contains a high level of detail about your achievements, a great deal more than just a career biography. The CV covers your education as well as any other accomplishments like publications, awards, honours, etc.
Resume
A resume, or résumé, is a concise document typically not longer than one page as the intended reader will not dwell on your document for very long. The goal of a resume is to make an individual stand out from the competition.
In brief:
CV — long, covers your entire career, static
Resume — short, no particular format rule, highly customizable and specific to the application
This article will be about CV creation but you can easily customize it into a resume.
COMMON MISTAKES PEOPLE MAKE IN THEIR RESUME
- Self-assessment as a specialist
Most people are quick to evaluate themselves, which is fundamentally wrong. They put progress bars into the resume to show how good of a specialist they are in some technology. And actually, it represents how much they love themselves and not their actual knowledge or experience. - Useless information
This is typical for people who have little experience. They have nothing to say about their experience and it ends up with a lot of free space on the paper. They try to cover it up with any information they have: hobbies, sports clubs they visit, counting how many cats they have, and mention that they’re vegans. Like anyone cares. Try to avoid describing yourself beside your area because this is potentially a space for something important. That may impact the employer’s decision of inviting you to the next stage. - Photo
I don’t recommend putting your photo on your CV because it might impact somehow the relations between you and your future company.
If it sounds stupid to you — try to recall if you ever had that feeling when you don’t like someone and you can’t explain why. You don’t even know the person you don’t like, but you are absolutely sure that you don’t even want to give him a chance to change your mind. That’s how your photo might play against you. Let them rate you as a specialist by focusing on your skills, not on your photo. In case you do prefer to put your photo, make it a bit smaller than you wanted. - Over-designing
Try to avoid common templates and popular layouts of CVs. People are too concerned about how it looks, but not about how readable it is. Almost all of them are information trash bin that says nothing about you as an engineer. And, as a rule of thumb, modern colourful templates are hard to read, so the reader won’t find the needed information. Nobody will spend their time finding out who you are and what you can do. Your interest in making it simple, understandable, and easy to find whatever the reader needs.
If you recognize yourself in any of these points, then you urgently need to update your resume.
HOW DOES A GOOD RESUME LOOK LIKE
- Non-routine description of yourself.
Try to avoid describing yourself in simple words like “I’m very active, positive, and I like to study every day”. This is too general, almost everyone at the beginning can describe themselves like that. Select more professional words that might show who you are, what you’ve done, what you know, what you’ve accomplished. - Professional experience
Except for describing basic information like project duration, name, and others try to describe something more important for the employer.
For instance, what were you doing there, what had you done, what was your impact on the project, what technologies you used, and why this is important. Showing that you know how to code in 2021 won’t surprise anyone. - Technologies
Do not forget to add a list of technologies you had a chance to work with. Of course, you are an open-minded person and you’re able to study something new. No one doubts that. But for the company, it would be good to know what you are familiar with. Knowing how to push your code on GitHub and knowing how to use Pandas while working with Data Science is a bit different knowledge in terms of how hard it is to acquire. It probably would help the company to understand how much time, energy, and money they have to invest in you, as an engineer. - Accomplishments
If you have any accomplishments then do not forget to mention them. It will be a big plus for you as a candidate. In this section, you may include finished courses, victorious places at hackathons or the unique experience you got while working on something. - Education
Please, do not mention how many schools you were visiting and why you decided to change school #138 in your 7th grade. I mean, education for sure is important but this is a-priory understandable that you have graduated from somewhere. Mention your bachelor's degree, master’s degree, or PhD if you have any.
Don’t forget about one important thing: you should match the text you’ve written.
Just because your CV doesn’t look so 🌸 colourful and beautiful 🌸 doesn’t mean it’s bad or boring.
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