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What is a CV?

CV is a short for Curriculum Vitae, which means in Latin "life story". In some countries it is also called a resume.
In a few words, a CV is a brief summary of your education, experience, and skills.

The purpose of a CV : to get you a job interview

The CV, always accompanied by a motivation letter, constitutes the first step in a recruitment process.

A CV informs a recruiter about yourself (education, experience, skills), so that he can judge if your profile corresponds to the position you are applying for. Its goal is to convince the recruiter to give you an interview for the job applied.

Reruiters may have to read through 100 CVs in half an hour. They will sort the CVs into two piles : "possible" and "waste-bin". Therefore, in order to increase the chances that your CV is selected, your CV must be synthetic and well built.

How to write a good CV

1. Presentation

Employers do not like to see CVs which are all written exactly the same way. Therefore, do not copy CV models you can find in books or on the Internet ! Your CV should be personal.

To write a CV you need a computer, a text editor and a printer. A CV should be easy to read and well presented :

• Use a good quality paper to print your CV (white paper exclusively).
• Use bold and/or underlines for headers.
• No spelling mistakes.
• Use a nice font.
• Use line breaks.
• A CV should not exceed one A4 page. If you are a scientific with lots of publications or a very experienced manager, it can reach two A4 pages.

2. Content

Here are the major informations a CV has to contain. The order given is the most commonly used. You can invert the parts "education" and "professional experience".

• Write your CV according to your professional project.
• Be short and synthetic.
• Supress all that is useless for the job applied.
• Include everything that shows your skills for this position.
• Most of the time a photograph is not necessary.

PERSONAL DETAILS
Full name, home address, college address if you are a student, phone number, email address, age (recruiters generally prefer to have your age rather than your date of birth because it makes them spare the calculation), nationality, family status (married, single, children), driver's licence, military obligations.

EDUCATION
List your courses and degrees since the end of secondary education (17 or 18 years old). Specify the years. If you obtained honours, include them.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
It includes full-time paid jobs, academic research projects, internships or co-op positions, part-time jobs, or volunteer work. List the month/years you worked, position, name and location of employer or place, and responsibilities you had.

SKILLS
List your computer skills, foreign languages indicating the grade of fluency.

OTHERS
You can list your main hobbies and activities. These are particularily interesting if they prove some qualities (ability to take responsabilities, initiatives, to manage a team etc).

For scientifics : researchers usually add a list of their publications and conferences.

For the parts "Education" and "Professional experience", the best is to present the different elements counter-chronologically (from the newest to the oldest).

Example

Here is an example of a good CV. Do not copy it ! A CV is personal.

Vesna PETROVIC
Beogradska xx
11000 Belgrade, Serbia
tel : +338 xx xxx xxx
e-mail : name@eunet.yu
26, single, Serbian

Master Ecole Centrale Paris in Industrial Engineering

Education

Professional experience

Languages

Computer skills

Miscellanous

Litterature, cinema and theatre
Sports : athletics during 3 years in the club "Red star " of Belgrade, tennis, volley-ball, basket-ball
Driver's licence B
Member of the Serbian Chemical Society
Scholarship of the Norwegian Royal Society for the best Serbian students