CV — The Good, The Bad, The Weird
The one and only purpose of a CV is to make the prospective recruiter feels interested enough to invite you to the interview instead of other applicants.
Googling “how to write a good CV” will show ton of helpful resources for you to start with. In this article, I think I have read enough CVs — in 5 years of hiring — to give some personal opinions that might also help you updating yours.
The Good
Personality
It’s not easy to express personality in a CV, but it worth trying. We hire people, not machines. We want people who share our values to join and grow with us. As soon as I see the spark of personality in your CV, I can’t help myself put it into the interview list and look forward talking to you. It is various depend on the team, the personalities or values that most of us appreciate are: straight forward, precise, humble, honest, open-minded, creative, self-aware, geeky so on and so forth.
You can take advantage of the Career Objective, Summary, Profile section… or better in a Cover Letter to express them. But please don’t just list all those keywords and hope that the recruiter will believe you, it’s not only boring to read but also make you sound like a hypocrite. Take a look at this summary — from one of the brightest engineers that I have hired — as a good reference:
My name is Đinh Quang Trung, I love technology and programming, I use code to express my ideas to the world.
I started writing code since I was 15, my very first lines of code were written in Visual Basic 6 making Windows applications. I decided to learn programming professionally at FPT University with Java and .Net. I taught myself Photoshop, Android, PHP and Web development in the past 4 years in college. I have a big interest in mobile development with Android, web development and open source community.
Proud of your work
Cannot deny that it’s better if you have name of big companies listed in CV. But impressed me the most when I find the working history proudly written. People who proud of their work — no matter what it is or where it is done — are the energy that push our civilization forward. Without them doing better job everyday, breaking the limits, striving for something bigger than themself, we could have been apes.
Let do some reflections by asking yourself: do you see values in your work? Do you know what does your organization stand for? Instead of just copying company’s description from their website to your CV, try expressing it in your own words. In the Working History section let favor result (goals & achievements) over effort (your day to day task), role (what you do) over title (what people call you). You can find a very good resource here: My Personal Formula for a Winning Resume — Laszlo Bock.
Remember the story “I’m building a temple”?
A traveler passed a quarry saw three men working and asked them:
“What are you doing?”
“I am carring stones”, said the first one.
“I’m earning a living”, responded the second one.
The third one smilingly replied:
“I am building a temple”.
More than just a sheet of paper
By that I mean it’s 2019 now — when everything is connected — no matter how well it is written, a CV within a sheet of paper is not enough. Let admit it, anything written on a CV can be fake, but your digital profile cannot be (not as easy, at least). I would love digging into your Github, personal blog, pet projects, or Linkedin… to learn more about the person I’m about to hire, also they are good materials for the interview.
What if you don’t have anything to enclosed in your CV? Well, you better start leaving your foot prints on digital world. And make sure they are good ones, you don’t know when your recruiter looking for you on internet for reference. I suggest to start with a Linkedin profile where you can share your professional opinions. Or simpler, write a user manual — working with me which — I guaranty — will impress not only recruiter but also co-worker about your self awareness (This is a useful tool for the purpose: http://manualofme.co/).
A condense CV is always recommended, but if you have a lot to write, make sure the layout is optimum for grabbing recruiter’s attention at first place (let start with Above the fold principal). Look at this foreword of a very long resume:
FOREWORD
I (luckily) don’t (have to) update this frequently, neither my Linkedin profile. This is my old school resume and it’s way too long, so I suggest to save your time by scheduling for a chat instead of reading on.
In short, there’s only 3 things that I’m good at:
— Coordinate a team, building and shipping the right products.
— Software engineering.
— Figure out how to do two things above better.If you’re still interested, following are my: Objective, Profile, Programming skills, Professional experience, Pet projects and Education.
The Bad
Superficial
The CV is not tailored for the position: copy & paste from someone else’s template, sometime even forgot to correct the place-holder texts, listing unselective previous experiences regardless the job description that you’re applying for. The only thing that I can get from those CVs is the applicant doesn’t know what it take to achieve their goal — in this case, landing the interview.
Information overloaded
Long CV without good reason. All-you-can-read is for buffet restaurant not for CV. Information about your high school — even it’s the best school in town — or your daily tasks from a 5 year-old-job, are not impress at all. Keep all information that can distract recruiter by linking it to external resource, or you can bring along the hard copy of your long version CV, it could be potentially good discussion material for the interview.
Also be careful with personal or freelance projects, avoid listing project that irrelevant to the position you’re applying, and you might want to skip the projects that currently on going. Who want to offer new employee who could be distracted from day job?
Over visualization and decoration
Unless you are designer, it’s no point decoring the CV. We — normal people — can tell if something looks good, but creating one is a different story. Not to mention, it heavily depends on personal taste. Additionally, the CV usually be printed out to pass hand over hand, is the decoration still nice in gray scale or with poor printed quality? It doesn’t help you get more score while potentially cause bad impression, that’s why decoring is a risky strategy.
Visualization is good only if it makes the information easier to get, not harder. Take a look at visualizations below, I’m not quite sure how to read it at first glance. And because the applicant is able to evaluate his/her skill using a bar scale (which I see in many CVs), I would love to hear the answer in the interview (if any): what is a full bar mean? Isn’t there anything beyond that?
The Weird
Well, not literally weird but those CVs cannot fall into any category, it somehow hacks recruiter’s emotion. In the title of this article, I refer to the Korean movie The Good, the Bad, the Weird which is inspired by the famous The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly. In the movie, the Weird — an anti hero character — any tricks he would do just to get out alive with the treasure. Because the ultimate purpose of a CV is to get you land the interview, basically you can do anything to make the recruiter curious enough about you. Using this approach do not guaranty success but worth trying, especially if you are either extremely creative (or desperate). Take some of examples below:
