Career
THE ‘PERFECT’ CV Tips from the TU/e career academy A Curriculum Vitae or CV is a document that everyone will have to make at some point in their life. Your CV is essentially a logbook of all your experiences. Most people will actually continue updating it over and over again. As you develop, the things that once seemed relevant may become trivial. In this article, the way should approach your CV will be discussed and some practical pointers and tips will be given.
The elements of a CV For such a compact document, a CV has an abundance of information. Creating a structure that works is therefore important. Some recruiters make a call on a CV in a matter of seconds. A clear subdivision of information will therefore help highlight the information they are looking for. Let’s go over the common elements. • Heading: A CV starts with you, the most highlighted element is thus your name. Sometimes the abbreviation CV or a full ‘Curriculum Vitae’ is added, this is optional though. You could see this as the title of your document. • Picture: Adding a picture is becoming more common but is fully optional. Check the pictures on the employee page of a company website if you want to check how you are dressed. • Personal information: Aside a name, add a list of contact and general information. Always include an email or postal address as a means to send you a response, you can add a phone number as well. If you added your e-mail, you can simplify your address to your town of residence. Do not remove it, it is used as a travel time indication. Aside this, a date of birth and nationality are commonly added as well. Finally, a customized LinkedIn link is smart to add. If you sent your CV digitally, put in the effort to have a working link. • Profile text: Some people add a text to introduce
74
themselves in a more personal manner. If you decide to write something, try to answer these questions: Who are you, what are you good at and what do you want? • Education: As a fresh graduate, your diploma is your most relevant experience. Other than for your high school education, try adding some text or bullet points giving more details. Some add the average grade, or the name and grade of their graduation projects (a 7.5 or more is advised for this). Others describe which specialization was actually studied and others highlight some relevant courses. • Work experience: After your first full-time job in your field, this section becomes more relevant than education. However, as a fresh graduate it is smarter to list education first and adjust this order later on in life. With jobs you want to describe tasks and responsibilities in a telegram style matter. It is also nice to highlight measurable achievements, such as a sales increase of 10% due to something you did. • Extracurricular activities: This section is exclusive to students and contains things like committees, board years, student teams or voluntary work. Approach this like work and describe tasks and responsibilities. Add the hours per week activities took, this shows how much time you were able to spend aside your studies. It might actually be smart to add jobs under this section as well, leaving out ‘work experience’ entirely for now.
