Henry BuiIf you are pursuing a career in tech, you may need to create a CV for catching and impress the employers. A CV allows you to detail your career accomplishments and educational history to show you’re qualified for the role. Understanding how to format a CV will help you create a compelling document that leaves a positive impression on the hiring committee. In this article, I will describe tell you how to write a good one.
Tech industry is not the same when compare to others, it mainly focus on technical(trending technology, programming,...).
Competition in the labor market these days is enormous, especially for tech jobs. To write a good CV, you need to understand what employers are looking for. Despite of multiple CV be sent to them everyday, most of employers won't read the full CV one by one, they only have a quick look or even using scan tools and catch the keywords that matching their job posting.
So how to write a tech CV that makes employers easy to read and choose you. Here is some basic steps:
1. Make a header clear and simple enough
The header should be simple and clear enough. It should only listing some basic information like full name, date of birth, phone, email, avatar(if possible).
- Full Name: you should write it in the CamelCase. Eg. Henry Bui
- Date of Birth: companies care about candidate's age in some special roles so please also attach it to your CV.
- Phone: many international companies open their office abroad, you should write your phone number with country's dial code so they easy to read and contact you. Your country's dial code can be easy search on internet, this is example for Vietnam.
- Email: must have, this is the main way the employer will contact to you.
- Avatar: even if it is optional but I would recommend you add it to your CV. It helps employer have a first look at you and increase the chance to get their attraction. Please make sure that use the formal avatar. Keep your face looking straight, bright and radiant and don't laugh too much or make your face looks really silly.
2. Write a short summary to tell who you are
Your professional summary is like a short biography that introduces you to the employer. It should highlights your top qualifications and describes your desired career path.
Tips: don't use too much buzzwords, should included the number and percentage of anything you want to highlight.
Eg: "I am Senior Software Engineer with 8+ years of experience in developing reliable and highly scalable software applications. Mentored and led teams of 10 junior developers to create successful project designs, software testing and quality assurance plans. Implemented cost saving strategies, clear UI/UX design standards and software validation testing, leading to improved customer satisfaction and increased efficiencies."
3. Your Experiences
This is the most important section you should focus on in your whole CV. You should provide as much as work experiences to the employers so they can see your full career path.
Some info you can’t miss in this part:
- Your companies, roles and time period.
- What you’ve archived while working at those companies?
- Research/volunteer jobs you did to contribute to the company/community.
- Your skills, technologies were used to finish the job, try to include skills that relate to the job description to make yourself a more desirable candidate.
Most of employer prefer to see your recently company and work so I would suggest order the experiences to show the latest company first.
4 . Education and Certificates(if available)
Most of company now doesn’t care too much about your university but not all. Some still care and ask for the proven.
The most attractive things are the related certificates you have to prove that you’ve got enough skills to work for them.
And also those certificates help the company get more contract from clients so of course you will be more attractive in the employer eyes.
If you have any award or honors, you should also mention it in this section. Please make sure remove the expired certificates due to it’s not necessary and sometimes make your CV too long.
5. Additional Information
This is the last section in your CV, you can add more information about yourself to let employer know more about you. It can be one of these:
- A blog you usually use to share your knowledges.
- A StackOverflow profile to show that you contribute to the DEV community.
- A Github profile with active contributions to the OSS projects.
- List of your personal projects.
In summary, just add whatever you want to show to the employer that you have experiences enough to fit with the opening position, and also willing to help other people grow in this tech industry.
By following these tips, including highlighting your relevant skills and experiences, tailoring your CV to each application, and showcasing your projects and achievements, you'll increase your chances of getting noticed by potential employers. Remember, your CV is your first impression to the employers, so make it count!
Source: vietnamdevs
