

Ask HN: What should my CV/Resumé look like? - waltercfilho

I&#x27;m on my penultimate semester studying CS, currently applying for graduate schemes. Had 2 rejections straight away. I thought my cv was good, but those &quot;straight off the bat&quot; rejections have made me very conscious about it.<p>What is expected out of CS Graduates these days and what should I put on my CV&#x2F;Resumé?<p>Thanks in advance for your help.
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twp
Things that I've found have worked well for me:

* Respect the time of the person reading your CV. Make it trivially easy for them to find the information they want, quickly. Use a clean structure, clear sections and sub-sections, and consistent formatting. Two pages absolute maximum.

* Tailor your CV to the specific job that you're applying for. For example, if you're applying for a web development job then put your web development experience at the top.

* Pay attention to detail. Be consistent in your use of punctuation and capitalisation. Ensure that there are no spelling errors.

* Use LaTeX (there are some great CV templates available) and send your CV in PDF. Microsoft Word documents invariably look messy when you open them in Word. It's much better to send the "final" output.

* Emphasise specific skill areas (e.g. software development, system administration, domain-specific knowledge) and list my skills in each area. This makes it easy for the reader to immediately identify what I can do, they don't have to read through descriptions of my previous jobs.

* Be concise and straight to the point. Don't use personal pronouns. Keep descriptions compact.

* In the cover letter list three specific ways in which you can contribute specifically to the company to the company you are applying to. Show, exactly, how your profile matches key points in the job description. Don't talk about how great you are or what you want from them.

The goal of the cover letter/email is to get people to read your CV. The goal
of the CV is to get an interview. The goal of the interview is to check you're
a good fit for the job and get the job if you are. Therefore, your CV should
encourage the reader to want to interview you. Don't bore them with exhaustive
descriptions of what you have done. Less is more. Instead, focus on the
highlights and entice them to invite you to interview to find out more.

Finally, if you do get rejected, always politely ask why. You won't always get
an answer, but the answers you do get are often enlightening, often not what
you expect, and will help you immensely with future applications.

~~~
michaelstewart
If you want to use a LaTeX template, this might be helpful:
[http://www.sharelatex.com/](http://www.sharelatex.com/)

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ig1
Generally at the CS graduate level most rejections are because your CV doesn't
stand out from the pile.

What makes your CV good ?

~~~
waltercfilho
I think that I have a fairly good amount of diversified experience, for an
undergraduate. I don't want to make this about me in particular, I'd like a
more general answer. But I get what you mean I definitely need to make it
stand out. Thanks.

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6d0debc071
Okay, how I'd do it.

The biggest thing, IME, that people sending in CVs get wrong is that they have
a misconception of how long someone's going to spend looking at it. A
recruiter or manager is going to get hundreds of the damn things, they're only
going to look at your CV for 10-15 seconds. You've got to make it easy for
them to pick out the right things as fast as possible. People aren't going to
fight through something that's hard to read or that uses a lot of marketing.

The way I think of it is that your resume is for concisely listing your
accomplishments in a structured format. One page. Only. Chances are no-one's
gonna read more than that.

Top of the page - centred, bold: Your name.

Address, mobile, email - one line, centred, not bold - may need to put it in a
smaller font size, don't go beneath 10. (Make sure you've got a professional
voicemail message.)

Underneath that, what you've done. Stick things in reverse chronological
order. Give each role the title of the job, the date it started with, a prose
paragraph of responsibilities, bullet-pointed accomplishments. Keep your
bullet points on one line. Treat your education like a job. If it's the most
recent thing you've done, list your university stuff first.

Company I'd do it like this: Oct 2007 - Present, Job Role, Company Name.

Uni I'd do it like this: BSC Computer Science, University of Whatever, Oct
2007 - Present

Underline and bold the roles so that people can see just from casting their
eye over it what you've done. Only underline and bold the roles like this -
gives people something consistent. If you've got unpaid work, list it the same
as any other role.

For the responsibilities paragraph, for example for uni, you'd be saying what
you studied, that sort of thing.

(If you've been working for a couple of years, then your university should
just be a line at the base of the CV. Remember to track your metrics as move
on out into the working world by the way - if you can hang a number off of
something that's often good. If you worked in a bar how many customers did you
do a night? Numbers make things more concrete.)

For achievement bullet-points you want what you achieved (numbers again -
preferably) and how you did it. Concisely. Don't worry if your accomplishments
or achievements are small - list them anyway. You're not being compared to
people who are working for five years. Don't be afraid to say something like
you've worked in a bar, some work is better than no work at all. If you've
been given more responsibilities, mention them! No matter how small. It shows
good character.

Try to stay away from just listing responsibilities here - just don't, please
don't, put them as bullet-points - that makes you look like you've just done
what you had to. If you've done a job poorly, you won't have achievements to
list and that's what it looks like - like you're trying to pass off
responsibilities as achievements because you've not done anything.

Don't include your interests. The odds of connecting with a recruiter are low,
or it's something that everyone's done and thus doesn't yield an advantage.
Space is limited, just don't do it.

#

I wouldn't worry too much about just losing one or two of your first
applications, by the way. The nature of this game is that you can get a lot of
rejections before someone bites.

~~~
waltercfilho
Very good points made. I agree with most of them, one thing I find too is that
everyone has different opinions about each section and how the points should
be laid out, which is absolutely fine. But it does sort of makes me insecure
about which way is truly "right" (guess there's no right or wrong).

Thanks for your answer and effort, really appreciate that you'd take your time
to do something like that. :)

