Applying successfully with your CV

How do you make a good CV? What things do you need to take into account? All kinds of questions that come to mind when you start building your CV. ErasmusTalent would like to share some tips & tricks with you.

Creating a CV

When you start creating your CV, it is important to ask yourself what the purpose of your CV is. Is your CV applying for a specific vacancy or do you want to give a general overview of your current situation? It makes a big difference whether you need to focus your CV on the specific vacancy or whether you can be more general in your CV.

It is important to design your CV in the best possible way, often the reader should be able to grasp who you are, what you have done and what your ambitions are within one minute. You have to trigger them to want to know more about you. ErasmusTalent would like to share some tips to help you on your way.

Building your CV

Let’s start at the beginning, the structure of your CV. How do you make sure that your CV is easy to read and understand? It is important that you use recognisable headings, such as education, work experience and competences. Read more about building your CV here.

Keep it concise and relevant
Naturally, you want to share as much of your knowledge and experience as possible with the readers of your CV, but it is important to stay concise. To keep your CV readable and manageable, we recommend that you do not exceed two pages.

A personal profile
Adding a personal profile, or a short introduction about yourself, to your CV will make it stand out to potential employers. It is important to keep your story true to yourself, use your own words, make it relevant to the vacancy and keep it relevant.

The most important information first
List all the most important information first, i.e. work in a-chronological order, so your latest experiences are at the top and work your way down.

The layout of your CV

A well thought out design of your CV is important, of course it is mainly about the content, but don’t neglect the layout. A neat and professionally laid out CV makes a good first impression and invites reading, which increases your chances of being invited for a job interview. Make sure that fonts, margins, colours and images on your CV are correct. Preferably do not use Comic Sans MS or Times New Roman, but choose a font such as Arial, Calibiri, Helvitica or Verdana. Colours can be used, but make sure they are calm and do not detract from your CV.

Checking your CV

When writing a CV, it is important that everything is correct; unnecessary mistakes look sloppy and give the impression that you have not been careful. To avoid unnecessary spelling, language and typing mistakes, here are a few tips:

• Use the spell checker;
• Read your CV out loud, from beginning to end, and you will spot mistakes that the spell checker may have missed;
• Let others read your CV so they can add to it or improve it.

To conclude

After spending some time creating your CV, you have finally finished it – and now?

A PDF file
To avoid unnecessary changes to the file, it is important to save it as a PDF file, so that the layout always remains the same.

Uploading the CV
The best way to upload a CV into a digital data bank is to use a Word file. This way you make sure that all the necessary data is included, at a later stage you can often add extra files like photos, diplomas or a CV in PDF file.

The file name of the CV
Don’t forget to change the name of the file to for example, “CV of first and last name”.

Contact

If you have any questions after reading these tips and tricks, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Ps. If you are still not successful, you can create a professional and convincing CV in a few steps. This is a paid service.