Certainly, you can disagree with the fact that CV is the main thing while you are applying for the new job. A person with unique skills and experience will be invited to an interview, even if his work experience is written on a napkin. Another thing happens if you do not belong to the category of rare super-professionals. Then there are great chances to enter into a competitive struggle for the dream work, and the quality of CV become super prioritized.
Change the font and format the text
Change the standard Times New Roman or Calibri to Arial, Helvetica or Verdana. A simple and readable font will not affect the content of the resume, but will add points in the eyes of HR. Clear duplicate spaces, reduce indentations, create headers, lists, and markers in a single style to make the text look neat. Save the resume in PDF format.
Add links to social media
Links to Instagram will be relevant only if you are looking for a post in social media. But on Facebook it makes sense to refer to almost everyone. Just before adding links to pages, be sure to clean up the profile, particularly, delete the photo from the fun corporate party or the reposts of the drawings. The first impression of a person comes from his page in social media.
Check spellings
There is no need to explain why you should check errors in the text.
Delete CV template phrases
Clear your resume from such unnecessary phrases as “I am a hard-working professional who wants to work in your company.”
Paraphrase your sentences
Read the CV and replace boring phrases with more energetic and active ones. “Being engaged in sales” or “leading a corporate page in social networks” does not sound very good, but “raised sales by N%”, “closed 5 vacancies per month” or “increased the number of subscribers by 30% for 2 months” already say something .
Refresh skills
Add new certificates from courses, latest jobs or publications in the portfolio. Remove outdated skills such as a “confident PC user”. If you are a specialist in several areas, group the skills by industry and tell them in detail about each.
Get rid of contractions
Decrypt abbreviations or use both spelling options for a term or title – abbreviated and full.
Leave a history in the past
Experienced professionals with experience of 7-10 years can not specify all jobs. Describe the last 5 years of work experience and those positions that are in common with the vacancy.
Read your CV out aloud
This way, you will find errors that you missed and understand how the phrases actually sound.
Reduce responsibilities and add numbers
Describe no more than 6-7 responsibilities for each of the past job positions. Of course, you had more of them, but look at your activities critically and leave only the most important thing.
If you are just starting a career and re-reading the resume, understand that experience is not enough, remember about free internships, summer practices, volunteering and describe it.
Ask for an opinion from the outside
Give CV to a not-so-familiar friend and after 30 seconds, ask which items he remembered and what impression has developed.
