Pimp my CV

You and CVs

• When did you last update your CV? What prompted it?

• Have you ever lied — or "stretched the truth" — on a CV?

• Is there anything on your current CV you'd be embarrassed for a colleague to read?

• If you had to cut your CV down to three lines, what would survive?

cvS IN GENERAL

• Should a CV include a photo? A date of birth? Marital status? Why do some countries expect these and others forbid them?

• Why do so many CVs say "hard-working team player with excellent communication skills"? Does anyone believe it?

• A recruiter reportedly spends six to eight seconds on a first scan of a CV. If that's true, what should those seconds be spent on?

• Which is worse: a CV that's too long or a CV that's too short?

Before reading: in pairs, agree on the five most important qualities of a good CV. Rank them.

your list

DOs and DON'Ts for CVs

The CV is one of the few documents almost everybody has to write and almost nobody is taught to write. It has to do two contradictory jobs at once: survive an automated filter that reads for keywords, and then persuade a tired human who is reading forty others that afternoon. Most CVs fail at one of those jobs. Plenty fail at both.

Do keep it short. Two pages is the ceiling for most people, and one is enough for anyone with under five years' experience. Length does not signal seriousness; it signals that the writer couldn't decide what mattered. Recruiters do not read a CV so much as scan it, and a scan of a dense three-page document finds nothing.

Don't include personal data that isn't relevant. Date of birth, marital status, number of children, nationality, religion, a photograph; in the UK, the US, Canada, Australia and much of northern Europe these are not expected, and including them can make an employer uncomfortable, because they raise the possibility of discrimination claims. Some employers will discard a CV with a photo unread for exactly that reason. In Germany, France, Spain and much of Asia, by contrast, a photo is still common. Know the market you're applying to.

Do lead with a profile, not an objective. The old-fashioned "Objective: to secure a challenging position in a dynamic company" tells the reader nothing they can use. A three-line profile — who you are professionally, what you've done, what you're strongest at — does the work the objective pretends to do.

Don't list responsibilities. Describe achievements. "Responsible for client accounts" is a job description; anyone in that role had that responsibility. "Grew a portfolio of 40 client accounts to 65 in eighteen months, with churn under 5%" is evidence. The pattern is simple: verb, what you did, measurable result. Numbers, percentages and timeframes are what turn a claim into a fact.

Do put the most recent things first. Reverse chronological order for both employment and education. Nobody needs to work forward from your school-leaving certificate to find out what you did last year.

Don't use the word "I". CVs are written in a clipped, subject-less style: "Managed a team of six," not "I managed a team of six." It reads faster and it avoids the sense that the writer is boasting.

Do tailor it. A single CV sent to fifty employers will be a poor fit for forty-nine of them. Read the job advertisement, identify the words it uses for the skills it wants, and make sure those words appear naturally in your document. This is partly about the human reader and partly about applicant-tracking systems.

Don't describe your personality. "Communicative, stress-resistant, responsible, punctual" — every applicant claims these, so they carry no information. If a quality matters, prove it with an achievement. If you can't prove it, leave it out.

Do cut the hobbies unless they earn their place. "Reading, travel, sport" tells an employer you are a human being, which they had assumed. A hobby stays if it demonstrates something relevant — captaining a team, running a club, a serious commitment that shows discipline or leadership — or if it's unusual enough to start a conversation at interview.

Don't leave "References available on request." It's assumed, and the line wastes space that could hold something useful.

Finally, a caution about the rules above: they describe the Anglophone, private-sector norm. Academic CVs run to many pages by design. Civil service applications often have their own forms. And every rule here has been broken by somebody who got the job anyway. The rules exist so that, when you break one, it's a decision rather than an accident.

Discussion

• The text says a CV has to serve a machine and a human at once. Which of the dos and don'ts serve the machine, which serve the human, and do any of them conflict?

• "Don't describe your personality." Is this fair? In your field, is there any personal quality that genuinely can't be shown through an achievement?

• The text gives different photo rules for different countries. Which other conventions are cultural rather than universal? Which do you think would be the hardest for an applicant from your country to accept?

• "Numbers turn a claim into a fact." Think about your own most recent role. What could you actually quantify? What can't be quantified but still matters?

• Which "don't" do you think you're most likely to have broken on your own CV?

A CV to examine

Dmitry has asked a colleague to check his CV before he applies for a logistics coordinator role at a Dutch company's Saint Petersburg office.

The job advert asks for:

• experience with international freight

• negotiation with suppliers

• strong Excel skills

• "the ability to work in a fast-paced, cross-functional environment."

Over to you

Go through the C.V. with a partner.

First, evaluate the CV according to the DOs and DON'Ts text we read earlier.

Second, can you find any language / cultural problems (grammar, direct translations, potentially confusing references)?

Finally, is this CV going to get Dmitry an interview for the job in the advert? What are the key changes that would most improve his chances?

Task (20 mins)

Work in pairs and re-write two jobs in the work experience section.

Suggested time-management:

• 3 minutes - go back over what's wrong

• 5 minutes - talk about what improvements should be made for each job

• 1 minute - decide who is going to re-write each section

• 5 minutes - do the re-writing

• 6 minutes - show your partner your work, make any edits and send to your teacher

Now check out your groupmates' rewrites.

Are they all an improvement?

Are there any you find partcularly impressive?

And finally, isn't the best approach in 2026 simply to get AI to do all of this stuff?