How to Write a CV That Actually Gets Read

Most CVs get somewhere between six and fifteen seconds of real attention before a decision gets made. Increasingly, the first read isn't even human — it's a screening tool scanning for keywords and structure. Here's how to write one that survives both passes and still reads well when a person finally opens it.

Start with a summary that says what you do, not who you are

Skip the "hardworking, detail-oriented professional seeking opportunities" line — it says nothing a reader can act on. Replace it with two or three lines that state your actual function: the kind of work you do, the tools or domain you do it in, and the scale or context you've done it at. "QA engineer with 3 years testing web and mobile apps, focused on automated regression testing in Python and Selenium" tells a screener exactly where to place you in under five seconds.

Use numbers, not adjectives

"Improved customer response times" is a claim. "Cut average response time from 6 hours to 45 minutes across a 4-person support team" is evidence. Every bullet point under a role should answer: what did you do, and what changed because of it? If you genuinely don't have a number, describe the scope instead — how many people, how much volume, how often — rather than reaching for an adjective like "significant" or "extensive," which every CV uses and which screening tools and humans both learn to ignore.

Match the language of the job post

Applicant tracking systems and AI resume screeners are, at their core, keyword matchers wrapped in a nicer interface. If the job post says "stakeholder management" and your CV says "worked with clients," you may not get matched even though you did the same thing. This isn't about stuffing keywords dishonestly — it's about using the same vocabulary the employer already used to describe the skill, when it's accurate to your experience. Read the listing, circle the recurring terms, and make sure those exact terms appear somewhere in your CV if they apply to you.

Quick check: paste the job description and your CV side by side. If a skill appears three or more times in the posting and zero times in your CV, that's very likely the reason an application gets filtered out before a person ever sees it.

Keep the formatting boring, on purpose

Multi-column layouts, text boxes, tables, and icons look sleek to a human eye but frequently get mangled or skipped entirely by parsing software — your neatly organized "Skills" column can come out as a jumbled string of text, or vanish completely. A single column, standard section headers (Experience, Education, Skills), and a common font parse cleanly everywhere. Save the visual design for a portfolio site or LinkedIn banner, not the document that has to survive being machine-read first.

Cut what isn't pulling weight

Every line on a CV is competing for a few seconds of attention, so it has to earn its place. Job history older than 10–15 years, an "Objective" section, a References line ("available upon request" is assumed), and skills everyone in the field already has (e.g., listing "Microsoft Word" for an office role) can usually go. If you're early in your career and light on experience, this frees up room to expand on projects, coursework, or freelance work that actually shows what you can do.

Length: one page if you can, two if you must

For under ~8 years of experience, one page is almost always achievable once the filler above is cut. Beyond that, two pages is fine — but a third page rarely adds anything a reader will actually use. If you're struggling to fit, that's usually a sign of not cutting hard enough rather than needing more space.

Tailor it — a generic CV competes with tailored ones

You don't need a completely different CV for every application, but the summary line, the order of your bullet points, and which past projects you lead with should shift depending on what the role actually asks for. A CV that's obviously the same document sent to fifty different jobs reads as generic, both to a person and, increasingly, to matching software that compares your document's relevance to the specific posting.

This is general job-search guidance based on common hiring practices; it isn't professional legal, financial, or career-counseling advice, and your own situation may vary.