XobaWrite How to structure a CV that gets read
Most CVs are rejected on a first pass that lasts seconds. Structure is what buys you the second pass.
A CV is not a biography. It is an argument that you can do a particular job, made to someone who is deciding in seconds whether to keep reading. Structure is what carries that argument, and most of the work is deciding what to leave out.
The order of sections
Put the strongest evidence highest, because the top third of page one is what actually gets read. Which section that is depends on where you are:
| If you are… | Order |
|---|---|
| A student or recent graduate | Contact · Summary · Education · Experience · Skills · Extras |
| Two or more years into work | Contact · Summary · Experience · Skills · Education · Extras |
| Changing career | Contact · Summary · Skills · Experience · Education · Extras |
Education drops down the page as soon as you have real work to show. Holding a degree at the top three years after graduating signals that nothing better has happened since.
Contact details
Four lines at most, at the very top:
- Your name, larger than everything else on the page
- A phone number you answer
- A professional email address — firstname.surname, not a nickname from school
- City and country, and a LinkedIn or portfolio URL if it is worth looking at
Leave out your full postal address, your date of birth, your marital status, your nationality and your photograph. In the UK and much of Europe these invite discrimination claims, and some employers discard CVs carrying them for exactly that reason. Check local convention if you are applying outside Europe — in parts of Asia and Latin America a photo is still expected.
The summary
Two or three lines directly under your name. Not a mission statement, and not the word “passionate”. It should say what you are, how much experience you have, and what you are aiming at.
A hard-working and passionate graduate seeking a challenging role in a dynamic company where I can utilise my skills.
Computer science graduate with two internships building internal tools in Python and TypeScript. Looking for a junior backend role on a team that reviews code properly.
The second one says something the reader can act on. Rewrite this section for each application — it is the cheapest possible tailoring and the most visible.
Experience
Reverse chronological, most recent first. For each role give the job title, the employer, the location and the dates as month and year. Then three to five bullets.
Write the bullets as action, then result. A bullet that only describes a duty tells the reader what your job description said. A bullet with a result tells them what happened because you were the one doing it.
Responsible for managing the company's social media accounts.
Rebuilt the posting schedule around three weekly formats, growing Instagram followers from 1,200 to 4,500 in eight months.
Numbers do the heavy lifting: money saved, time reduced, volume handled, percentage moved, people trained. If you genuinely have no numbers, use scale instead — “across four departments”, “for a 30-seat restaurant”. Do not invent figures; you will be asked about them.
Start each bullet with a past-tense verb: built, led, rewrote, negotiated, reduced, introduced, trained. Use present tense only for your current role. Avoid “responsible for”, “helped with” and “assisted in” — all three hide what you actually did.
Education
Institution, qualification, and years. Add your grade if it is good, and a line of relevant modules or your dissertation title if you are early enough in your career that it matters. Once you have a degree, secondary school results can usually go.
Skills
Concrete and checkable only. “Python, SQL, Figma” is a skills section. “Excellent communicator, team player, hard working” is filler — every applicant writes it, so it distinguishes nobody. If a soft skill genuinely matters, prove it in an experience bullet instead.
Skip self-assessed rating bars. An employer has no way to calibrate your four-out-of-five, and it costs you space you could have used on evidence.
Length and layout
- One page as a student or in your first couple of jobs. Two once you have the experience to fill them. Beyond two, only for academic CVs, which follow different rules entirely.
- One clear font, 10–12 pt body text. Margins no tighter than 1.5 cm.
- Clear headings and real white space. A dense page reads as harder work and gets skimmed faster.
- Consistent date format throughout, and consistent punctuation in your bullets.
Getting through an applicant tracking system
Larger employers filter CVs with software before a person sees them. You do not need to play tricks, but you do need to avoid formatting the parser cannot read:
- Single column. Two-column layouts are where parsing most often fails, interleaving your sidebar into your job history.
- No text inside images, headers or footers. Contact details in a header are frequently dropped entirely.
- Standard section names. “Experience” parses; “Where I've Made My Mark” does not.
- Use the words in the advert. If it says “stakeholder management” and you have done it, write that phrase rather than a synonym.
- Send a PDF unless the advert asks for .docx, and make sure it is real text — if you cannot select the words in a PDF reader, neither can the parser.
A checklist before you send it
- Tailored summary, and bullets reordered to match this advert
- Every bullet starts with a verb and most end with a result
- No typos in your own name, job titles, or the company you are applying to
- Dates run in unbroken reverse order, with any gaps you are happy to explain
- File named sensibly, such as
Amara-Okafor-CV.pdf - Read once out loud, and once by somebody else