Discover the 5 essential sections to include in your CV. Name & Contact, Personal Profile, Skills, Experience, and Education.
Name & Contact
Let’s start with the basics first, you need to put a name on that lovely application. Include your first and last name, along with an email and phone number so the hiring manager can contact you. Bonus points if you include a LinkedIn account here.
Personal Profile
Time to show off what you’re all about. This section should be brief, about 4-5 lines so the hiring manager can get to the good bits quickly. Include a description of yourself that covers:
– Where you are in your career journey (new grad, experienced, etc)
– Your qualifications
– Key skills
– Career goals
Skills
Expanding on the skills you briefly outlined in your personal profile, highlight what you’re good at! This should be a combo of ‘soft’ skills and ‘hard’ skills. What’s the difference? Soft skills cover things that are personal attributes, such as good communication or teamwork. Hard skills are related to more technical knowledge that you learn, such as Excel or Photoshop. It’s best to keep your CV short and sweet, so if you have heaps of skills, try to limit them to those that are specifically relevant to the role you’re applying for.
Experience
Once you’ve outlined your skills, it’s important to demonstrate where you picked these up from. Put down the company, your role, responsibilities, and the experience you gained from it. Don’t feel like you’re limited to jobs either, experience such as working on yourown side gig, or volunteer work still counts towards experience!
Education
If you’re a student or recent graduate, this is a super important way to make up for limited work experience. Mention where you studied/are going to study and the qualifications you received/are working towards. You be starting to notice a common theme… be concise! The person reading your CV doesn’t need to know about your primary & intermediate school, so stick to secondary and tertiary education only.