How to write a CV, step by step

A CV has one job: to get you an interview for a specific role. It does that by letting a busy reader see, quickly, that you have done similar work and done it well. Everything below serves that aim, and anything on the page that does not serve it can go.

This guide takes a CV from a blank page to a finished, tailored document. It works for the UK, the UAE, India and most of Europe. If you are applying in the US, the same method gives you a strong resume, usually kept a little shorter.

Before you start: gather your raw material

Writing is much faster when the facts are in front of you. Spend twenty minutes collecting:

• Two or three job ads for the role you want. They show which skills and words matter.
• Exact job titles, employers and start and end months for every role.
• Numbers from each job: targets, budgets, team size, volumes, results. Old appraisals, reports and emails are good sources.
• Qualifications, certifications and licences, with the year you earned them.
• Your old CV, if you have one, even if it is out of date.

The sections of a CV, in order

For most people a reverse chronological CV works best, with your most recent experience first. The usual order is:

1. Contact details and headline
2. Profile summary
3. Work experience
4. Education
5. Skills
6. Optional sections: certifications, languages, projects, volunteering, interests

Students and recent graduates can put education above experience. Career changers can add a short “Relevant projects” section above experience when it shows the new skills better than their last job does.

Step 1: Contact details and headline

Put your name at the top, followed by a headline that matches the job you want, such as “Financial Analyst” or “Registered Nurse, Critical Care”. Then add your phone number, a professional email address, your city and country, and a LinkedIn or portfolio link if it is up to date.

You do not need a full postal address, and you do not need the words “Curriculum Vitae” at the top. Personal details such as nationality, visa status, date of birth and a photo depend on the country: they are expected in the UAE and the Gulf and usually left off in the UK and the US.

Step 2: Write a short profile summary

The summary is three or four lines under your header saying who you are, what you are best at and what you are looking for. Write it last, once the rest of the CV is done, because it is a condensed version of the strongest points in it.

A useful test: if you could paste your summary into a colleague's CV without changing a word, it is too generic. Add your specialism, a number and the kind of role you want.

Step 3: Work experience

List each role with job title, employer, city and dates in month and year. Under each, write three to six bullets for recent roles and one or two for older ones. The bullets are where most CVs are won or lost.

How to write achievement bullets

A duty describes the job. An achievement describes what happened because you were in it. Recruiters already know roughly what an accountant or a teacher does; they want to know how well you did it. A reliable pattern is action verb, what you did, then the result, with a number where you can.

• Duty: “Responsible for customer complaints.” Achievement: “Resolved around 40 customer complaints a week and cut repeat complaints by a third by rewriting the returns guide.”
• Duty: “Managed social media accounts.” Achievement: “Grew Instagram following from 8,000 to 31,000 in 14 months with a weekly short-video series, now the top source of website traffic.”
• Duty: “Handled month-end close.” Achievement: “Shortened month-end close from eight working days to five by automating bank reconciliations in Excel.”

Start bullets with a strong verb such as led, built, cut, launched, negotiated or trained. Avoid “responsible for”, “helped with” and “involved in”, which hide what you actually did.

Where to find numbers when you think you have none

Almost every job has something countable. If you are stuck, ask yourself:

• How many: customers served, tickets closed, students taught, shipments handled, people trained?
• How much: budget managed, revenue generated, costs saved, stock value controlled?
• How fast: turnaround, time to hire, delivery or response time, before and after your change?
• How well: error rates, audit results, satisfaction scores, targets hit, your rank in the team?

Honest estimates are fine, as long as you can explain them in an interview. “Around 60 calls a day” is better than no number at all.

Step 4: Education

List your highest qualification first: degree, institution, country and year. Include grades if they are strong and recent, such as a first or a 2:1 in the UK, or a high percentage or CGPA in India. Once you have a few years of experience, school results can usually go.

Step 5: Skills

Keep the skills section short and specific: the tools, methods and technical skills the job ad asks for that you genuinely have. “SQL, Power BI, financial modelling, IFRS” is useful. “Communication, teamwork, hard-working” is not, because every candidate claims them and none can be checked. Show those qualities through your bullets instead.

Leave out skill bars, stars and percentages. A bar showing “80% Excel” means nothing to a reader, and screening software cannot read it.

Step 6: Optional sections

Add these only where they strengthen the application:

• Certifications: professional qualifications with the issuing body and year, such as CIPD, PMP or ACCA.
• Languages: each language with an honest level. Valuable in the UAE, in Europe and in any client-facing role.
• Projects: for students, career changers and technical roles, a line on what you built and what it achieved.
• Volunteering: when it shows leadership or skills the job needs.
• Interests: one line at most, and only if they say something real about you.

“References available on request” can go. Employers assume it, and the line takes space you can use better.

Step 7: Tailor your CV to each job ad

A tailored CV beats a generic one because recruiters and applicant tracking systems both compare your CV with the ad. Tailoring does not mean rewriting everything. Keep a complete master CV, then for each application:

1. Read the ad and mark the job title, the must-have skills and the three or four responsibilities listed first.
2. Change your headline to match the job title where it honestly fits.
3. Rewrite the first line of your summary so it speaks to this role.
4. Reorder the bullets in your recent roles so the most relevant come first, and use the ad's wording where it is accurate, such as “stakeholder management” rather than “working with other teams”.
5. Check that every must-have skill you genuinely have appears somewhere on the page.
6. Cut bullets that do not help this application, to stay within length.

How long should a CV be?

Length depends on experience and country. As a working rule:

• Students and graduates: one page.
• Most professionals in the UK, the UAE and India: up to two pages.
• US resumes: one page early in your career, two for experienced candidates.
• Academic and research CVs: as long as your publications and teaching record require.

If you run over, cut older roles to one line, remove duties that repeat across jobs and drop interests before you shrink the font. Body text much below 10 point gets hard to read, on paper and on a phone.

Formatting that helps the reader

Good formatting is mostly invisible. Use one clear font, one date format, one bullet style and enough white space for the eye to rest. Standard headings such as “Work experience” and “Education” help both people and software find things. Bold your job titles, not random phrases in the middle of bullets.

Send a PDF unless the employer asks for Word, and check that you can select and copy the text in it. If you cannot, the file is an image, and screening software will see a blank page.

Common CV mistakes

• A list of duties with no results or numbers.
• The same generic CV sent to every job.
• Typos, especially in the employer's name or your own email address.
• Unexplained gaps. A one-line note such as “Career break: caring for a family member” is enough.
• Clichés like “results-driven team player” with nothing to back them up.
• A photo, date of birth or marital status on a UK or US application.
• An old or jokey email address.
• Dense paragraphs where bullets would be easier to scan.

A final check before you send it

1. Read it aloud once. You will hear errors your eyes skip.
2. Check that dates line up, with no unexplained overlaps or gaps.
3. Open the PDF on your phone and make sure it reads well at a small size.
4. Ask someone who works in the field to spend two minutes on it, then tell you what they remember.