Many of my friends and fellow Computer Scientists have come to me and asked if they can use my CV or résumé as template when writing their own. Every time, I get equally happy and give them tons of good advice on what to keep in mind and how to avoid my mistakes.
However, very often I stumble upon CVs that clearly are made up with mine as model, and which have kept most of my errors and added several more. (Why do I have errors I know of in my CV and résumé? Well, because I am stubborn and sentimental…)
That is why I am writing this tutorial on how to write a CV or résumé: to save myself the sweet trouble of giving people lots of advice, and to, if possible, help more than just the ones who contact me personally. Of course, if I at the same time happen to satisfy my great ego in some way, so be it! How to write a Curriculum Vitae
Personal details - here you should include your birth date, contact address, email, telephone number and nationality. In case you have both a permanent and study address, include both, with the dates when you can be contacted at each of them. Personal details can be written with smaller fonts than the rest of your CV, if you want to save space. They do not have to jump in the reader’s attention - you will never convince somebody to hire you because you have a nice email alias! If your CV managed to awaken the reader’s interest, he or she will look after contact details - it is important that they be there, but not that they are the first thing somebody reads in your CV. You should write your name with a bigger font than the rest of the text, so that the reader knows easily whose CV is he or she reading. If you need to save space, you can delete the Curriculum Vitae line on the top of your CV. After all, if you have done a good job writing it, it should be obvious that that piece of paper is a CV, no need to spell it out loud.
Some job applicants are omitting the career statement or objective statement within their CVs and resumes. Rewriting objectives to accommodate every possibility seems challenging, while including over-generalized career statements seems to do more harm than good. Nevertheless, when one considers the real purpose of an objective, the inclusion of it appears to be mandatory.
Avoid vague statements. “Quite often people start with a profile — a short statement setting out who they are — but we see an awful lot that fall into generic phrases,” says Lorna Froud, the head of careers at Oxford Brookes University. “ ‘I am an excellent team worker’ is meaningless without evidence to back it up.
Use as many verbs as possible. Here is a list that should get you started: achieved, acquired, adapted, addressed, administered, analyzed, anticipated, assembled, assisted, audited, budgeted, calculated, centralized, changed, collaborated, composed, condensed, conducted, constructed, contracted, converted, coordinated, created, cultivated, demonstrated, designed, developed, devised, discovered, doubled, drafted, edited, eliminated, enforced, established, evaluated, expanded, explained, forecasted, formed, founded, generated, guided, hired, implemented, improved, informed, insured, interpreted, interviewed, launched, maintained, managed, marketed, minimized, motivated, negotiated, obtained, operated, organized, originated, oversaw, performed, planned, prevented, produced, promoted, provided, publicized, published, recruited, reorganized, reported, researched, resolved, reviewed, selected, separated, set up, simplified, solved, surveyed, staffed, supervised, taught, tested, trained, utilized.
Begin your CV. Write your full name, address, telephone number, email, date of birth, marital status and nationality at the top of the CV.
Write an objective. The objective is a short sentence describing the job you hope to get. This is common only in an American-style CV (called a resumé).
A basic CV may need tailoring to each job application.
The completed CV needs to be checked carefully for grammatical errors and spelling mistakes and to ensure that it makes sense. Ask an ‘independent’ party to review the whole document before it is sent out.
Remember when writing and structuring your CV that it is essentially marketing you and that a potential employer will use the details provided to form interview questions. It should be clear and easy to read. Gaps in career history should be explained and falsehoods and inaccuracies avoided at all costs.
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