Applying for your first job at a tech company as non-tech? Here are 5 tips that can help.

Even without having an official title, going over CVs and interviewing people have been part of my responsibilities for each step in my career. From recruiting students for an innovation program to selecting women for an excellent group and, now, these days as part of my current job is to go over CVs of doctors and developers.

To understand my background, I graduated with a BA in Political Science and Management from Ben Gurion University. While working at an NGO, I devoted myself to promoting innovation in the south of Israel, where I was exposed to the world of technology. After two years, I moved to work at one of the biggest global corporations in the world and today I work at a great young startup.

My unofficial experience in recruiting helped me a lot when I wanted to get into the tech world without having a traditional tech background. I, also, have used this knowledge to help some of my friends that were considering working at high tech companies and so I have put together five tips that I used the most when helping with writing a CV:

1. Short and simple - No more than one page in English. This may be obvious to some people but after reading CVs that never seem to stop, I feel that this is necessary to say. The main reason we don’t want to get more than one page is, not that we want to challenge you to see how much you can tell about yourself over just one page, it is because we actually need (and want) to read it. Think about the HR person who goes over a few tenths, if not more, CVs for every job they publish… and with this in mind, use a well visible font, normal text size, use good, normal language, and if your English is not good enough give it to someone who has and can help you.
2. Make me want to ask more questions - The good thing about having only one page is that you don’t have to write every small detail of your previous responsibilities. The idea is to give a good sense of your experience but to leave places for me to ask questions, or even more -make me want to ask more questions. For every section in your professional experience write the title of the main responsibilities that you had, no need for examples, and no need for each bullet to be more than 1-2 lines.
3. Leave the buzz words out - As I’ve mentioned before, write in a simple way that will give the reader a good understanding of your background. Use buzz words only if it is truly related and relevant to your job description. Don’t try to impress too much, just be yourself.
4. Extra activities! This is THE place where I can learn who you really are. Almost in every CV, there is the “who I am” section where you write how motivated, friendly and good person you are, and to be honest it’s not like you will write that you are lazy and just want a great title and a great salary. When I want to see where your passion is or what are your social skills, the extra activities section is the first place I go to. Even if your extra activities are not very much related to the job you are looking for, that is okay! This is an opportunity to show more of who you are.
5. Be modest but aware of your capabilities - This is a bit of a tricky one. How can you convince someone that you are a great candidate but without sounding cocky? It is great and more than welcome to include in your CV all the great and wonderful things that you have done in the past but be careful when writing too much about excellence award or university grades. usually, it will not tell me a lot about your actual ability to do the job and maybe tell me too much about your personality.

Looking for a job is always a full-time job in itself and sending your CV is just one of the steps you need to take to get into a tech company as nontech. More than it is important to get accepted to a job, it’s also important to choose the right job, go with your heart and guts, do a job that you love with people that you love working with.