During more than 10 years I interviewed lots of people and passed lots of interviews. This is why in this video I want to share with you 5 most important tips for your CV, how to implement CV better and also show you my CV so you can compare it with your variant and check if everything is correct.
What interviewer will check?
The first question here is of course "What interviewer wants to check in your CV?". The most important part that must stand on the top is short summary and your working experience. This is typically the most interesting thing for the interviewer. Who you are and how many years of experience do you have? Because if person have like 3-5 years of experience probably he knows some stuff and he knows how to implement something. If he sees 0.5-1 year of experience then interviewer can directly understand that person is stiff a junior.
Also it is important to remember that your CV is not a book. It should be short and crisp. Typically it must be not longer that 2 pages because it is enough space to put all necessary information. Nobody want to read your CV if it is 10 or 15 pages.
Also it is important to prioritise your working experience and your projects more than your education. Because actually education is the least interesting thing for the interviewer and he will check it only if you don't have any working experience and any project. So the most important thing in your CV is of course job experience.
But what can you do if you don't have any job experience? Then it is already more difficult for you. But here is a solution. You must attach at least some projects that you did. In this case interviewer can at least check your code and if it is good enough then you will be interesting for the interviewer.
So 2 things which are a must in your CV is a working experience and your projects
And even if you have working experience it is still a good practice to attach projects that you've done so people can see your code and understand your level.
My CV
Now I want to show you my CV so you can compare it with yours and take some things to your CV. I wrote here my CV in a markdown format but typically you want to have it in Word because people from HR department will read it or you might want to upload it to some websites like Linkedin and it is only allowed to upload there in DOC.
Summary
So the first line should be your name, surname and position. In this case interviewer can directly see for what position you are applying Some people also like to add their photo on the right side. It is totally fine but it is not mandatory. And actually all CVs for programmers are really easy in comparison to other professions because companies lack developers so much. This is why there are no strict rules about writing a CV.
# Name Surname, Position
After this we have a summary. And it is really important. It is a small block 2-3 lines. Here interviewer can directly see what is it all about. And the most important line here is to write how many years of experience you have? So I recommend to write it on the first line. After this you must write what you typically are doing at the job.
## Summary
5 years of work experience.
Full-stack back-end Ruby/Ruby on Rails, front-end Javascript / Typescript developer.
So here in a single line I show that I'm a fully stack developer who can do this and that.
Also inside summary you must have all your contacts. Location is super important because sometimes you might be in another country and you might need a working visa so it is a must for HR department. Phone and email are also super important so HR can contact you later.
## Summary
5 years of work experience.
Full-stack back-end Ruby/Ruby on Rails, front-end Javascript / Typescript developer.
Location: ---
Date of Birth: ---
Phone: ---
Email: ---
Linkedin: ---
The next important part is your objective. This is also a single liner. Here you need to write what you want from the company and what exactly you want to do.
## Objective
As a developer, my objective is to make (a) scalable, easy-to-maintain applications and services.
It is super general here but at least interviewer can understand what this person wants.
Working history
The next part is working history.
## Work History
### Position
Company name
November 2015 – Present
Developing and maintaining ...
Technologies: ...
### Position
Company name
September 2014 – October 2015
Developing and maintaining ...
Technologies: ...
### Position
March 2013 - September 2014
Maintaining and developing ...
Technologies: ...
As you can see it is short and crisp blocks and each company is separated in own block. You just need to write the company name, how long did you work there, what you did there and the list of technologies that you used. And it should be really short and crisp because nobody want to read a lot.
Actually after this you must write about your projects that you can show. I don't add it in my CV because I have enough years of experience and nobody asked me about them. But if you don't have a lot of working experience or you don't have it at all then instead of working history you can write your projects.
## Projects
### Project name
Link:
Description:
Technologies:
So it is kind of a replacement for your working experience.
Skill set
After this you have your technologies that you know. And actually you can structure it differently. I split it by segments.
### Skill Set
##### Frontend:
For building SPA, I use Angular, ReactJS or VueJS preferably with Typescript.
I don’t like creating HTML but if you need I can do it. I prefer using stylus as preprocessor with BEM as methodology to do it.
##### Backend:
As a backend language I prefer Ruby with Ruby on Rails, Elixir or NodeJS.
##### Databases:
My favourite DB is PostgreSQL but I also worked with MongoDB and MySQL.
##### Testing:
For frontend testing I use Jasmine or Jest. For E2E testing I use cypress.
##### DevOps:
It’s no problem for me to configure server or deploying to production. I prefer Docker with Docker-compose to do it.
##### Project management:
For project management I use anything but prefer Jira.
##### Other:
I’m also interested in mobile development using javascript.
For example in first paragraph I have Frontend but I don't just write a list of known technologies but some human readable text. In this case an interviewer can better understand my skills. Also it is nice to mention some project management tools like Jira, Scrum, Kanban so people know that you are familiar with standard ways of working in typical programming team.
Other
At the end of you CV you can add an achievements section. It helps to understand what interesting things you did as a programmer. It can be a workshop that you did or anything to show off a bit.
Now it's the time to put your education inside. Not a lot but just what you've studied and what university it was.
Also in other information you can write languages that you can speak so you might communicate with client and marital status. Actually it may be important because lots of companies like to get married people with children as they know that they will stay there for a while.
## Achievements
I achieved the first place in hackathon ...
I made workshop about ...
## Education
Computer Science - ...
## Other Information
English level – Upper-Intermediate
German - Upper-Intermediate
Date of birth: 1990
Marital Status: Married, 1 child
Conclusion
Now you for sure know how to organize your CV better so it is understandable for interviewer. And also if you are interested to know why most programmers fail don't forget to check this post also.