Guidelines for writing a good CV

A good CV is the highlight of your achievements in your professional life. Companies receive each month hundreds of resumes and will only look to each one of them for only 20 seconds. For that reason it is important that your cv stands out, structured AND tells something about you as a person.

Making a good structured curriculum vitae in 5 steps:

Most employers don’t read your cv but want to scan your cv to determine if you are qualified.

1. Structured

Use recognizable headers (Experience, Study) and job titles.

2. Formal but standing out

Make use of a nice lay-out but don’t exaggerate. It has to remain a formal communication tool.

3. Keep it short

Try to keep it within 2 pages if you have a long career. For juniors 1 page should be enough.

4. The most important things should be on the 1^st page

Start with your latest experience. Don’t use too much space for your personal information. Experience is more important.

5. Profile description

Put a description of your strong points on the 1^st page. A maximum of three points and avoid clichés.

SomaliCareers.com makes it easy to write your CV. In just a few simple steps you can create a professional CV that you can use directly. With one click you can put it online.

General information

Mention only details that are relevant to the job. You might think that everything that you have done is relevant. However ask yourself whether it is relevant for this particular job.

Think about the best way to highlight your strongest points and experience. If you don’t have much experience but you have for example done some voluntary work, than name this! If you have experience in another field but no certificate. Tell that you have the experience in this field.

Information per Subject

Profile

* With the profile you show what the Employer can expect from you.

* Stay close to keywords that are used for the job description. Pick the three most important keywords from the job description that apply to you. Mention these in your profile.

* Avoid cliché words like flexible, team player and others.

* Show who you are as a person.

* Do your friends/family see you when they read your profile? What are they missing?

Work Experience

* Don’t just tell where you have been working (name and address), but describe your job title.

* Tell what you have achieved besides your tasks and responsibilities.

* Show that you have grown in your career. For example the new things that you have learned.

Education

* Structure your education in a chronical way with the most recent one on top.

* If you have a certificate or diploma mention it. Use the official names.

Languages

* Only make a language section if you speak more than one foreign language.

* For each language mention the level of speaking and writing.

Competences

* In different industries it is common to write down your competences.

* Use bullet points to mention your strong points and skills.

* Once again avoid cliché words like team player, multitask and flexible.

Others

* In the section others you can name other things that you would like to mention.

* Examples are: computer skills, voluntary work and hobby’s.

* Name only things that are relevant and are positive for your application.

Check everything

* Use a grammar and spelling checker tool.

* Don’t just trust on these grammar tools but read it out loud.

* Let other people read your CV.

Digital CV

* Save your digital CV as a pdf file on your computer. In this way the lay-out will remain good. Also save it as a Word-file so you can adjust it easily and use it for uploading it on SomaliCareers.com.

* Give your CV a file name that says something about you. Companies screen files this way and our database looks also to the title of your CV for matching jobs. For example Account manager looking for commercial job.

Upload your CV on SomaliCareers.com to be found by companies and recruiters.

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