Make your CV 10X more effective with these 5 golden steps to get you to a job interview

I have been working with jobseekers for over 14 years and through time I have seen what works and the common mistakes most people make in their CV or career in general. But it was not until recently that I have really cracked the code and found the recipe that makes CV 10x more effective for pretty much for any profession.??

"The only goal of your CV is to get you to a job interview"

Myself, I initially learned how to make a CV in university, but with what I know now that was the complete wrong approach. One very big and important thing you should keep in mind, is that It does not get you a job offer. They will get to know you better in the interviews, assessments and perhaps reference checks afterwards. And that will lead to a job offer. If you need help with that part then check out our newsletter on how to turn your job interview into a job offer.

So, let us get started with the 5 steps to building a killer CV.

Step 1: What type of job are you applying for??

It might not seem like a logical first step, because most people approach a CV from their own perspective. They try to make it as complete as possible, while keeping it short. However, you are not writing it for you. YOU already know YOU. You are writing it for a recruiter or manager that does not know you. It is a common misconception that your CV needs to be complete. It is far more important that it is relevant.??

Shortening parts of your CV and enlarging other parts does not make you a liar. It is about creating the right focus.?

You are never just one thing in your work. You analyse, you network, you learn, you teach, you develop, you plan, you present, you test, you get coffee, you eat lunch, you go to the toilet... well I guess you get the picture. It is impossible to literally add everything you did to your CV. So, you need to cut things out that are less relevant.??

In order to know how you will reach you destination, you first need to know what your destination is. And therefore, I ask you what is the job you are applying to? Is it a Data Analyst or a Data Engineer or a Data Scientist? It cannot be all 3.?

Step 2: Find a job profile for your ideal job.?

You need to know what it is exactly companies are asking for. How do they select the person they will invite to a job interview.??

1. What is the job title???
2. What is the job demands???
3. Which tools and skills they need you to have experience with???

What is the job title?

Are you using this job title consistently in your CV or are you using slightly different titles everywhere? I see a lot of people use the exact title they had in their company. They are afraid of changing it, it feels like the equivalent of lying. It is not. For a reader it is just confusing. Keep consistency throughout the job titles in your CV as much as possible and use the exact title you are applying to for your jobs.??

For example, for the same type of work a lot of different titles can be used: Big Data developer, Data engineer, BI consultant, BI engineer, ETL Engineer or even Cloud Engineer, DBA, Analytics Engineer or Data Scientist. It all depends on the company and what you were doing. Job titles are being used differently in the industry.?

What are the job demands???

Do they require a certain number of years of experience, a diploma, or specific certifications? It is hard to get around these. A diploma is a diploma, no way getting around that. If a certain certification is asked for in your desired job, make sure to work hard and get it. If you know the subject, it is usually a small time and money investment, achievable in a few weeks.??

With experience you might be able to get a bit creative, by adding an internship or a project you have been working on in your free time to your work experience. In a job interview you can elaborate on this, but the first goal is to get through the Knockout filters in the portal most companies use, so that you at least get a chance to present how great you are.??

Which tools and skills they need you to have experience with???

First question, do you have experience with all these skills and tools???

• Yes, great, did you write them several times in your CV? It is better to write it down in each work experience separately then just once in a column skills. Writing it multiple times will give your CV a higher score in job databases or an ATS (Applicant Tracking System) that companies use. Even if they just use Ctrl F, it will light up your CV much more this way and give a overwhelming feeling of you being an expert with the specific tool.?
• If not, can you do an online course or start playing around with it in a personal project and mention this in your CV?

Step 3: Personal perspective VS organisation perspective?

So now you know what job you want to apply to its important to know which parts of your career need to be written down. Is there anything missing that should be there??

In order to choose relevance, you need to step inside the shoes of the recruiter or manager that will look at your CV. It often helps to involve people close to you in the decision on what is relevant. You can make a list of the things you want to mention in your CV and rank them from most relevant to least relevant. For example: 1. My job with Shell, 2: my job with Amazon 3: my experience with Azure & Databricks 4: my university diploma.??

Remember that recruiters are lazy by nature, they want to work efficiently. They will not stop to click links in your CV, other than your LinkedIn. If you want to add information from for example your GitHub I suggest you copy paste it into your CV. They also will not read everything. They first scan your CV for the relevant job title or search for a specific skill with ctrl + F and then only read that part. So, make sure the parts you deem most relevant are written out in detail and are very visible.?

In the defence of the recruiter, if you have 2 days to fill a position and you receive 50 CVs, how would you work through them? Probably you try to get the list of 50 down to 5, based on some knock out criteria. You will only really read the 5 best CVs thoroughly.?

So, ask yourself, should the least relevant parts really be there? Did you write enough about the really relevant parts? Ask yourself with each part: What message do I want to get across to the reader? Then objectively look if it does.??

If you like some help to get a better understanding of how recruiters look at your CV you can read this article: https://www.spruit.ai/post/how-recruiters-look-at-your-cv??

Step 4: How to structure your CV.?

Usually, a CV can contain your personal information, languages, profile, education, certifications / courses, skills / tools, work experience, internships / side jobs / projects, references, hobbies.?

Are all of these necessary? The simple answer is NO. It depends on the relevance. For example, freelancers that apply to temporary jobs usually do not add hobbies, because the culture fit is less important. For permanent jobs and junior jobs they can be relevant. Seniors don't add internships and side jobs, but for a junior these are very relevant.?

1. Personal Information

So, let us start with the “personal information”. This should minimally contain your name, city of residence, email, phone number and job title. If you are not native, it is important to also add your level in the languages asked here and whether you are eligible to work here without visa. I personally like it if you can add a photo, it makes a CV more personal and stick out more.?

2. Profile

The “profile” should be concise and no more than 2 alineas. This is a part that is often skipped in reading by many recruiters, because the content is very vague. The best way to use it is to give a brief summary of relevant jobs you worked for, which companies and how much experience you have with the tools they ask for.

For example:

“I have 8 years of experience in Data Engineering in organisations like Heineken (2016-2018), Google (2018-2021) and Samsung (2021-present). I have over 5 years of experience with (job demand 1) Microsoft Azure, including Synapse, (job demand 2) 3 years of Data Bricks and (job demand 3) 8 years with Python development.”

As you noticed I did not write anything about the soft skills or the character. These are not skills recruiters and managers look for in CVs. We check these with the interview, assessments or by reaching out to the references. The reason for this is that usually people throw in very generic, positive, and commonly accepted words that in the end do not tell you much about how truthful they are.

3. Work experience

After this point, you should want to present the most relevant part of your CV, which usually is the “work experience”. Always start with the latest experience and work your way back (anti-chronological).

As a general rule, specifically in tech jobs, you can consider that everything longer than 7 years ago is not very relevant today and can be summarised in 1 sentence per job (period, organisation and job title). The technology changes fast and with it the job and environment you work in.

In contrary, the last seven years should be written out in detail. I am always amazed to see that people write their last 7 years in about 5 lines. Basically, the recruiter will only judge you on those 5 lines since those are the most relevant experiences. So now you are really underselling yourself.

It's therefore up to you to split the last seven years up in different chunks to give them more body. Even if you worked for only 1 organisation during that whole time in 1 specific job, it is good to split it up. You can do this in certain periods, the different projects you worked on, different departments or different clients you worked for.

The work experience should be structured as follows:

a. Period –?include month and year.

b. Organisation –?include some information about the organisation. What do they do and how big are they? This can be one sentence and allows the reader to have an understanding of even the lesser-known organisations you have worked for.

c. Job title?– tailor it to the job you are applying for.

For example:

"Project / client 1 (period to period) – Job title"

d. Description –?Describe what you have worked on and make it as specific as you are allowed. Explain what you worked on and what was the solution you provided. Also mention the different steps you took and which technology you used for it.

For example:

“As part of company’s digital transformation, I was responsible for developing the datahub, a new platform designed to support the organization's current and future data needs. In my role as a Data Engineer, I leveraged tools such as PySpark and Python to integrate all historical file deliveries, transforming raw data into trusted objects via ETL pipelines that were orchestrated with Airflow and fed into our data lake.?To ensure the success of the data hub, we implemented cloud-native principles such as?Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and code reusability. These efforts were essential to creating a platform that was scalable, efficient, and effective in meeting the data needs.?Additionally, I facilitated various projects related to setting up, configuring, and organizing Azure DevOps projects, working in alignment with agile methodology to ensure that our efforts were both timely and impactful.”

Sidenote: Be detailed, but do not write a complete book. Use about 5 to 10 lines per work year. In this example the candidate worked here for 2,5 years.

e. Skills

For example:

“Skills: PySpark, Databricks, YAML, python, data modelling, terraform, Azure, Azure DevOps, agile methodology.”

d. Any certifications you got during this period

For example:

“Certifications: DP-203 (data engineering on Azure)”?

4. Education

Write your degree and year you got the diploma. Also mention if it is a Bachelor or Master title. Do not just use an abbreviation like BsC or BA and assume the reader knows what they mean.?

5. Certifications & Courses

For each course and certification mention the year you got it. For each mention if it is a certification or course.

For example:

"2023: Certified Azure Data Engineer Associate DP-203

2023: Course Data engineering with Databricks"

6. Skills?

You can mention all skills you have and include years of experience with it. This will help recruiters out tremendously when they have to go through the checklists of demands in portals.?

Hobbies & references do not add extra value to your CV. If an organization would like to check a reference, they should reach out to you for it first. At least then you have some control over when they will approach them and inform them. For hobbies in some cases, it can make for an icebreaker in the job interview, but I have never seen it influence the decision to invite somebody for a job interview.?

Step 5: Design VS practicality??

Now you should have all information written out. The last step is to get it into a nice design. There is a common misconception that a CV should be 1 page. This is not a rule, its taste. Although a good design is important, it is more important that the right information is there. A person cannot read what you did not write down. In my experience a good CV for someone with 5 or more years of experience should always be between 2 and 3 pages. Obviously, design plays a bigger part in roles where you work in visualisation or design, but there should always be a trade-off.??

Furthermore, please make your own life easy and use an online CV builder. You can use Word to write an initial version, but do not design your CV there. There are thousands of standardized and beautiful templates available online. By simply uploading your CV it will transfer it into one the templates. You just have to check it and make small adjustments. Good tools to use are Resume.io or visual.com.??

As a next step, I suggest you check out our free template and video about “How recruiters look at your CV” -> https://www.spruit.ai/post/how-recruiters-look-at-your-cv??

In case you feel a bit overwhelmed and would like my help and tips tailor made for you then please book a 1 on 1 coaching session with me and we will build your CV into a job interview magnet together: https://vincent.spruit.ai/data-engineer-career-coach.