A strong CV follows a clean, single-column layout with clearly labeled sections, starting with your contact information at the top and working down through your professional summary, experience, education, and supporting sections like skills or publications. The specifics depend on whether you’re writing an academic CV or a professional resume (the terms are used interchangeably in the UK and much of the world, while the US draws a distinction), but the core principles of readability, logical structure, and relevance to the role apply everywhere.
Contact Information Comes First
Your full name should be the most prominent text on the page, followed by your phone number, email address, and city or general location. Include a LinkedIn URL or professional website if you have one. That’s it for personal details. In both the US and UK, you should not include your date of birth, marital status, nationality, or a photo. Discrimination laws in both countries make this information irrelevant to hiring, and many employers will discard applications that include a headshot.
Write a Short Professional Summary
Directly below your contact details, include two to four sentences summarizing who you are professionally. This is your pitch: what you do, what level you’re at, and what you bring to the table. A marketing manager might write something like “Marketing manager with eight years of experience in B2B SaaS, specializing in demand generation and content strategy. Led campaigns that contributed to 40% year-over-year pipeline growth.” Keep it specific and skip vague phrases like “results-driven professional” that could describe anyone.
How to List Your Experience
Your work history is the section most hiring managers spend the most time on. List each role in reverse chronological order, starting with your current or most recent position. For each entry, include your job title, the company name, and the dates you worked there (month and year). Below that, use bullet points to describe what you did and, more importantly, what resulted from it.
Each bullet should start with a strong action verb and include a measurable outcome when possible. “Managed a team of six analysts and reduced monthly reporting time by 30%” tells a hiring manager far more than “Responsible for managing a team.” Aim for three to six bullets per role, with more detail for recent and relevant positions and less for older ones.
If you’re writing an academic CV rather than a professional resume, break your experience into separate categories: research experience, teaching experience, clinical work, and so on. An academic CV can run to multiple pages because it serves as a comprehensive record of your scholarly output. A professional resume, by contrast, should generally stay at one page for early-career candidates and two pages for those with more than ten years of experience.
Education and Credentials
List your degrees in reverse chronological order. Include the degree type, your major or field of study, the institution’s name, and your graduation date. If you graduated within the last few years, you can add your GPA if it’s strong, relevant coursework, or academic honors. For more experienced professionals, education takes up less space and moves further down the page.
Professional certifications, licenses, and relevant training belong either in this section or in a separate “Professional Training” section just below it. If a certification is central to the role you’re applying for (a CPA for an accounting position, for example), make sure it’s easy to spot.
Supporting Sections Worth Including
After your core sections, add the categories that best represent your qualifications for the type of work you’re pursuing. Not every CV needs every section. Choose the ones that strengthen your candidacy.
- Skills: List technical skills, software proficiency, and hard skills relevant to your target role. Avoid listing soft skills like “teamwork” or “communication,” which carry more weight when demonstrated through your experience bullets.
- Publications and presentations: Essential for academic CVs. Use a consistent citation format (APA or MLA) and include the full list of co-authors, titles, and publication or conference details.
- Awards and honors: Academic distinctions, scholarships, professional recognition, and grants all belong here.
- Professional affiliations: Industry organizations, board memberships, or leadership roles in professional groups.
- Languages: Include your proficiency level for each language (conversational, professional working proficiency, fluent, native).
A hobbies or interests section is optional and works best when it adds dimension. “Competitive marathon runner” or “volunteer youth soccer coach” can be conversation starters. A generic list like “reading, travel, music” rarely adds value.
Layout and Design That Actually Works
Simplicity wins. Use a single-column layout with clear section headings, consistent formatting, and plenty of white space. A clean design lets recruiters skim quickly and find what they need, which is exactly how most CVs are read: in a quick scan before a closer look at the candidates who make the shortlist.
Stick to professional, widely available fonts like Calibri, Arial, Garamond, or Cambria, in 10 to 12 point size. Use bold or slightly larger text for section headings and job titles, but avoid elaborate formatting. One accent color (a dark blue or gray for headings, for example) can look polished without distracting from the content. Anything more than that starts working against you.
Margins of roughly half an inch to one inch on all sides give you enough room to include substantive content without the page looking cramped. Consistent spacing between sections helps the eye move naturally down the page.
Making Your CV Readable by Software
Most mid-size and large employers use an Applicant Tracking System (ATS), software that parses your CV before a human ever sees it. If your formatting confuses the parser, your qualifications may not register correctly, and your application could be filtered out before it reaches a recruiter.
To keep your CV ATS-compatible, avoid placing any text inside tables, text boxes, or multi-column layouts. These elements cause the software to scramble the reading order or skip content entirely. Graphics, icons, charts, and images are similarly risky. If you built your CV in Canva, LaTeX, or an online resume builder, test it carefully, as these tools sometimes embed formatting that an ATS can’t interpret.
Spell out important keywords in full rather than relying on abbreviations. If the job posting says “Search Engine Optimization,” write it out at least once rather than using only “SEO,” since some systems may not recognize the abbreviation as a match. That said, don’t stuff your CV with hidden keywords or repeat terms unnaturally. ATS software has gotten better at detecting keyword spam, and the recruiter who eventually reads your CV will notice it too.
Save your file as a .docx or .pdf unless the job posting specifies a different format. If the application portal asks for a particular file type, use that exact type even if the system lets you upload something else.
Tailoring for Each Application
A single generic CV sent to every job opening will underperform a version tailored to each role. This doesn’t mean rewriting from scratch every time. It means adjusting your professional summary to reflect the specific position, reordering your skills to lead with the most relevant ones, and tweaking your experience bullets to emphasize the accomplishments that align with what this employer is looking for.
Read the job description closely and mirror its language where your experience genuinely matches. If the posting emphasizes “cross-functional collaboration” and you’ve done exactly that, use that phrase in your CV rather than a synonym the ATS might not connect. Keep a master version of your CV with all your experience and accomplishments, then create targeted versions by selecting the most relevant details for each application.