24 Feb What’s the best layout for your CV
A good CV layout highlights a candidate’s background and assets. And your ability to successfully shape it could determine whether the Recruiter will read it or not. Therefore it is very important to have the best layout.
Let’s start from the basics: always choose clear colors, and organize your sections. A white background and an airy and legible page are essential. But this is not enough.
- Be sure that your CV is easily readable and pleasing to the eye
- Choose a font that is not too specific and difficult to read (Helvetica, Helvetica Neue, Arial, Verdana, Georgia, Century Gothic or Garamond will do)
- Use different styles (bold, italic or underlined) for titles, subtitles and body text, but always in a reasonable way
- And very important: pay attention to typos!
Further, depending on what you achieved so far, you could change the order of certain paragraphs. For example, a student who has no professional experience will put his studies first, while an expert will put his professional experiences first.
The structure of a good CV
What are the elements that can not be missing in the structure of a good CV?
Here’s what our Career experts say.
- Header with your job title (or the job position you’re applying to), contact information (phone and email address) and any useful link (your LinkedIn profile is a very good asset, as a portfolio or website). No photo (this tip applies to the UK, USA and Canada job markets)
- A brief personal statement about your most important skills and experiences, and your motivation to the position
- Your professional experiences from the most recent to the oldest ones: job titles, company name and location, dates of employment, achievements
- Studies and training (include your two most recent degrees, dates, specialties and educational institutions)
- Professional, hard and soft skills, including languages
- Other useful information (such as volunteering experiences, certifications, for example)
The upper part of your CV will be the one motivating the Recruiter to continue reading, so be effective and short at the same time. No need to tell any single detail of your internships, experiences or studies if they have nothing to do with the position you’re applying to.
Our tips on the best layout for a cv
- Choose the right font
- Use margins, line spacing, columns to leave some blank spaces
- Align your text to the left
- Use bullet points for your experiences and studies
- Use visual CV icons (level bars, point system etc) for language levels and skills
- Try to keep the text only on one page. Two pages can be ok is well-written, but one is what better
Last but not least: export and send your resume in PDF format. It will keep your layout and be easy to read from any device!
If our tips have been useful to you, but you need help writing your CV better,