A CV cannot get you a job. It can only get you to the next step, and most never do — usually for formatting reasons rather than experience. Here is how to write one that clears the filters and the first glance.
One or two pages. Most recent role first. Achievements with numbers rather than duties. A simple layout with real headings and no tables, columns or text boxes. Sent as a PDF unless they ask otherwise.
And a piece of honesty most guides skip: a good CV will not get you a job today. It gets you past a filter and into a pile. Referrals, approaching people directly, and being visible in your field do the heavy lifting. A CV is the paperwork that lets those things proceed.
Which is not a reason to write a bad one. It is a reason to spend two hours on it rather than two weeks, and put the rest of the effort where the results are.
Two filters, in order.
Many employers run applications through software that reads the file and extracts your details. It handles ordinary text well. It handles tables, multi-column layouts, text boxes, headers and footers, images and unusual fonts badly — sometimes by scrambling them, sometimes by dropping them entirely.
This is why elaborate CV designs from template sites often perform worse than a plain document. The layout that impresses a human is invisible to the software that decides whether a human ever sees it. Keep your work history in normal paragraphs and lists, under normal headings, and this problem disappears.
Then the human, who spends roughly seven seconds on the first pass. They are looking for the most recent role, how long you were there, whether the level roughly matches, and whether anything obviously disqualifies you. That is all. Everything you want them to notice has to be in the top third of the first page.
Achievements, not duties. "Responsible for stock management" tells them what your job title already said. "Cut stock losses by a third over eighteen months by changing the ordering cycle" tells them what happened because you were there. Use numbers wherever you honestly can — amounts, percentages, team sizes, timescales.
Recent roles get the space. The last three to five years is what matters. A job from fifteen years ago is a line, not a paragraph.
Match their words, without lying. If the advert says "scheduling" and you call it "planning", use their word where it is genuinely the same thing. Both the software and the reader are matching against the advert.
Explain gaps in one line rather than hiding them. An unexplained gap invites the worst guess available; a stated one closes the question.
Cut the opening paragraph of adjectives. "Dynamic, results-driven professional" appears on a very large share of CVs and carries no information. If you want a summary at the top, make it three lines of facts: what you do, at what level, and the one thing you are best at.
And leave off what nobody needs: date of birth, marital status, a photograph in countries where it is not standard, referee details before they are asked for, and the phrase "references available on request", which everybody knows.
Same person, two documents.
The first is a two-column design from a template site, with a skills sidebar of rated bars, an icon for each contact detail, and a photograph. It looks considered. Parsed by application software, the sidebar is discarded, the columns interleave into nonsense, and the work history arrives with dates attached to the wrong employers.
The second is plain. Name, contact, three-line summary, roles in reverse order with achievements underneath, education, skills. Nothing decorative at all.
The second gets read. Not because it is better designed — because it survived being processed.
One page or two?
Two is fine and normal after a few years of work. Three is fine for long or technical careers. What matters is that nothing is padding.
Should I tailor it for every application?
Adjust the summary and the emphasis of your recent roles to the advert. Rewriting the whole thing every time is effort better spent on approaching people directly.
PDF or Word?
PDF unless the application specifically asks for Word, because it preserves the layout. Both are readable by application software when the document itself is plainly built.
Does a cover letter matter?
When it is specific to that role and that organisation, sometimes a great deal. A generic one adds nothing and costs you time.
Are CVs really that unimportant?
They are necessary and not sufficient. Most roles are filled through people who already know somebody. The CV is what allows that conversation to become an application — which is worth doing well, and not worth agonising over.
The KISS CV Template is a Word document with a clean hierarchy and a layout that application software can actually read — no tables, no columns, nothing that breaks in transit. You add your experience and it stays out of the way. Five euro, one file.
See the templates →