The essentials in 30 seconds
- 01Tailor the headline and keywords to each advert.
- 02Numbers in at least three achievements.
- 03Name the file like this: CV-First-Last-Role.pdf
01
Start with the headline, not your details
Under your name, write the role you're after and your years of experience. That single line decides whether they keep reading: “Front-of-house waiter with 5 years in high-volume dining” says far more than “Hard-working and reliable”.
02
The order recruiters expect
Contact details, headline, summary, experience, education, skills and languages. Experience always in reverse order — most recent first. If you've just graduated, move education above experience.
03
One page under 10 years' experience
Two pages only for long careers or technical profiles with projects. Cut roles from more than 15 years ago and one-day courses that add nothing to this application.
04
Every role needs achievements and numbers
Three to five lines per role, each starting with a verb and backed by a figure. “Cut till closing from 40 minutes to 15” convinces; “Responsible for closing the till” doesn't.
05
Check it before you send it
Verify your phone and email, run a spellcheck, export to PDF with your name in the filename, and run it through the checker to see your ATS score first.
06
What a recruiter looks for in the first seven seconds
The first read of a CV isn't a read: it's a scan. The recruiter opens the PDF, sweeps the top third of the page, looks for three facts (current role, employers, years) and decides whether to spend the next two minutes on you. Anything below the middle of page one is only seen by someone already interested — so the order of the information matters as much as the information.
That scan is why CVs opening with a long personal-details block perform worse: the most valuable space in the document is spent saying where you live. Put the headline, three quantified achievements and recognisable employer names at the top, and push courses, hobbies and admin detail down.
- Name and professional headline: the role you're after, not your personality.
- One contact line: phone, professional email, city, LinkedIn.
- A 40-60 word statement written for this specific advert.
- Experience in reverse order, three to five achievements per role.
- Education, technical skills and languages with written levels.
07
How to write each block, line by line
The headline is a formula: role + specialism + years or context. “Accounts Administrator · Invoicing and bank reconciliation · 6 years” works because it carries three keywords the screening software hunts for and one magnitude a human understands. Avoid identity headlines (“dynamic professional”), which help neither the robot nor the reader.
Every role needs a header and a body. The header carries role, employer, city and dates in month/year format; the body runs three to five lines that open with a past-tense verb and close on a fact. If a job has no fact to offer, cut it to a single line and give the space to one that does.
Education uses the full official qualification title, the institution, the city and the year completed. If you studied more than ten years ago and already have a track record, drop the grade and the module list: past a certain point your work carries the CV, not your transcript.
- Past-tense verb + what you did + measurable result, every line.
- Month/year dates with no unexplained gaps between roles.
- Languages with CEFR levels, never progress bars.
- Tools by their exact names: SAP, advanced Excel, Sage, Xero.
08
Tailoring one CV to each advert in three minutes
Sending the same file to twenty adverts is the most common cause of silence. You don't need to rewrite the CV: keep one master version and make three edits per application. Match the headline to the advert's job title, rewrite the statement using two or three literal terms from the description, and reorder achievements so the closest one to their requirement sits on the first line.
Save each version with the role in the filename and log which employer received it. When they call three weeks later you'll need to know exactly what they read — that traceability is the difference between a prepared interview and an improvised one.
Check this before you send it
- The headline repeats the job title exactly as the advert words it.
- At least three quantified achievements sit on page one.
- No block of information lives inside an image, header or footer.
- Phone number and email checked character by character.
- The file is named CV-First-Last-Role.pdf.
- The PDF text can be selected and copied without scrambling.
Mistakes that cost you the interview
Opening with long personal details
Full address, ID number, marital status and date of birth spend the most valuable space in the document, and in several markets trigger a non-discrimination screen-out.
Describing the contract instead of the performance
“Responsible for customer service” is your job description; “served 90 customers a shift at a 4.8 average rating” is your application.
One statement for every advert
It's the first paragraph read and the easiest to tailor: leaving it generic wastes the only part of the CV written in prose.
A half-filled second page
Four lines on page two reads as an unfinished document. Either fill it with useful content or cut back to one page.
Frequently asked
Questions we get asked most
- How long should a CV be in 2026?
- One page under ten years of experience, two at most for a long or technical career. What decides the length isn't your years but whether everything on the page serves the advert you're answering.
- What comes first, experience or education?
- Experience — unless you've just graduated or you're changing sector, where education leads because it's your strongest argument. The rest of the order stays: contact, headline, statement, experience, education, skills, languages.
- Should I include my full address and ID number?
- No. City and country are enough. Street address, ID number, marital status and date of birth take up space and in many markets get the CV screened out under non-discrimination policy.