The curriculum vitae or what is known as CV is the first step towards the labor market. The CV becomes the passport and the main tool to apply for any job, so you must master preparing it to increase your chances of getting the job. In this video, we explain the details of writing a CV.
A CV aims to summarize, at most in two ideas, your career. The first section includes personal data such as name, date of birth, place of residence, phone number, e-mail, website, and photo, which remains optional.
The second section includes the academic qualifications and all the certificates and experiences you have obtained since graduation. It is very important to start by arranging the qualifications from newest to oldest as follows: date – school name – degree or date – company name – job. Introduce the nature of your work briefly, so that you can make room for an explanation during the job interview.
The third section includes interests and achievements. This part should be concise and written in form of bullet points. It is better not to include less important hobbies such as music and dancing, and to focus on skills that are useful in your field of work. It is recommended to mention unusual hobbies, such as sports that give you a serious and responsible impression. It is also important to highlight your leadership ability if you are the leader of a work team or a sports team, for example.
And make sure you are honest in all the information and hobbies you mentioned about yourself.
The fourth section includes skills. You must mention all your skills, such as language skills, including your mother tongue in addition to the other languages you know along with the degree of your mastery of each of them. Then, mention your computer skills, social networking platforms, and special programs, in addition to the programs you master and the courses you have taken.
The fifth section includes references, namely the testimony of some people you worked with in the past, such as your manager, which lends credibility and truth to what you mentioned in the CV. This shall be in the following form: the person’s name – the company in which they work – the location – phone number – an address to be able to communicate with them.
It is enough to include two persons as references.
The layout:
The appearance of the paper is very important and reflects how neat is the person. Hence, an A4 size clean white sheet should be used with harmonious borders, avoiding colors and unifying the design and font, while making sure that the presentation is brief and clear.
The employer needs 20 seconds to decide whether to call you or not, so you should avoid spelling and grammatical errors.
You must constantly update your CV with anything new, whether educational certificates or work experience. In general, there is no specific format for the CV or a specific sequence, but the most important thing is that it includes the required information that falls under the mentioned headings.