Structure: what belongs on every CV
The standard CV lists your roles in clearly separated blocks, each with the dates on one side and the content on the other. Long flowing paragraphs are unusual and make the reader's job unnecessarily hard – nobody reads a CV, they scan it.
Practically every employer expects these sections:
- Personal details – name, location, phone number, email address
- Work experience – most recent role first
- Education – degrees, training, school qualifications
- Skills – languages, software, technical knowledge
Optional, depending on the role and your background:
- Courses and certifications
- Volunteering
- Publications or projects
- Interests – only if they genuinely relate to the job
Religion, marital status, health, date of birth or your parents' occupations do not belong on a modern CV. In many countries employers are not allowed to ask for them at all. Use the space for something that qualifies you for the job instead.
Choosing the right format
Reverse chronological is the default and the right choice for more than nine out of ten applications: the most recent role at the top, then working backwards. The advantage is that your most relevant experience catches the eye immediately – which is exactly what people are looking for.
Skills-based puts abilities in front of roles. That can work when you are changing career or returning after a longer break. Be aware, though, that many recruiters read it as an attempt to cover something up. If you go for it, still add a short chronological overview.
Combined means a short skills block at the top with the classic chronological history below it. In technical jobs, where specific technologies should be visible straight away, this is often the most practical solution.
- Reverse chronological, unless there is a reason not to
- Give month and year (03/2021 – 08/2024)
- Use one consistent date format throughout
- Years only – it looks like you are hiding gaps
- Mixing formats (“March 2021” here, “03/21” there)
- Listing roles in no recognisable order
The sections in detail
For a compact overview of every possible section – from personal details to references, each with what goes in and whether it is essential or optional – see our overview of CV sections. Here we go into the most important ones in more depth.
Personal details
Name, location, phone number, email address – that is all you need. Use a professional email address; if in doubt, set up a new one along the lines of firstname.lastname. A link to your LinkedIn profile is worth adding if the profile is actually maintained. A full postal address is no longer expected – city and country is enough.
Work experience
This is the heart of the CV. For each role give the dates, the job title, the employer and the location – and beneath that two to five bullet points on what you actually did there. The difference between a duty and a result matters: “Responsible for the newsletter” describes a responsibility. “Raised newsletter open rate from 18% to 31%” describes a result.
You do not have to list every job you have ever had. With fifteen years of experience it is enough to spell out the last three or four roles and mention earlier ones briefly.
Education
Reverse chronology applies here too. As a career starter this section can be detailed and sit above your work experience – including your specialisms, your grade and your thesis topic, if it fits the role. With several years of experience behind you it shrinks to a few lines and moves further down. School qualifications can then be cut to a single line.
Skills
Give language skills with a level someone can interpret – the CEFR scale (B2, C1) works well, as do plain descriptions such as “native” or “professional working proficiency”. For software, name the actual tools instead of writing “good IT skills”.
Keep a private file where you record projects, numbers and wins as they happen. When you come to write your CV you will have concrete evidence at hand, instead of trying to remember the scale of something years later.
Wording: concrete beats generic
Most CVs fail on language rather than layout. Phrases like “team player”, “resilient” or “highly motivated” appear in virtually every application and therefore say nothing at all. They cost space without setting you apart from anyone else.
The way out is almost always the same: replace the trait with the action that proves it. Instead of “team player”, write that you coordinated a project across three departments. Instead of “resilient”, name the migration you delivered alongside your day-to-day work.
“Supported the rollout of a new inventory management system and trained 40 colleagues on it.”
“Responsible for various digitalisation projects and point of contact for a range of topics.”
Numbers help wherever they exist: team sizes, budgets, volumes, timelines, percentages. If your field does not lend itself to numbers, a before-and-after works instead – what was the situation, and what changed because of your work?
ATS: why structure matters more than design
Many larger employers have applications pre-sorted by an applicant tracking system. These systems parse your document and map its contents onto the fields they know. Anything they cannot map gets lost – and in the worst case your application ends up on the pile nobody ever looks at.
That is no reason to panic, but it does give you a few solid rules. Important details belong in the normal text flow, not in headers or footers. Use conventional headings such as “Work experience” rather than creative variants like “My journey”. And send a PDF with real text, not a scanned page or one exported as an image.
The second point is keywords. Read the job advert closely and pick up the terms it uses for duties and requirements – as long as they genuinely apply to you. If it says “project control” and that is what you did, the phrase should appear on your CV too. What you should not do is collect terms you cannot back up. That falls apart at the interview at the latest.
The most common mistakes
- One CV for every job. The order of your skills and the emphasis in your bullet points should match the advert in front of you. That is usually fifteen minutes of work and the single most effective thing you can do.
- Typos. Have someone else proofread it. After the third pass you no longer see your own mistakes.
- Unexplained gaps. A factual one-liner reads better than a jump the reader has to interpret for themselves.
- Word files with a broken layout. On another machine the font is missing and your carefully set page suddenly looks different. Always send a PDF.
- Too much across too many pages. Completeness is not a value in itself. Relevance is.
Frequently asked questions
-
One to two pages is the norm. Graduates and career starters almost always fit on a single page; with several years of experience two pages are normal. Three pages or more only make sense in special cases, such as an academic CV with a publication list.
-
In the UK, Ireland, the US, Canada and Australia, no – employers there usually prefer CVs without a photo, partly to avoid discrimination claims, and some systems strip images out anyway. In much of continental Europe a professional photo is still common. Check what is usual in the country you are applying to, and if you do include one, use a professional shot rather than a private snapshot.
-
For the vast majority of applications: the reverse-chronological CV, with your most recent role first. If you are changing career or coming back after a longer break, a more skills-based structure can work better.
-
In English-speaking countries, no – a signature is not expected and adds nothing. In some European countries a signature with place and date at the end is still customary, so check local convention if you are applying abroad.
-
Name gaps openly instead of hiding them. Short breaks of a few months need no explanation. For longer periods give a factual line – parental leave, caring for a relative, study, or a deliberate change of direction. Unexplained jumps stand out immediately when someone reads your CV.
-
An applicant tracking system is software that pre-sorts applications. Larger employers use one routinely. For you it mainly means: a clear structure, conventional section headings, no important details in headers or footers, and a proper PDF rather than an image.
Once you have understood the structure, the rest is routine. Writing a CV then comes down to choosing the right content and putting it briefly. Spacing, font sizes and page breaks are not your problem if you start from a finished template – take a look at our CV templates.
