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The CV Writing Guide

Most CVs are not rejected because the person was not good enough. They are rejected because the document did not show it. This is the whole picture, section by section, the way a recruiter would build it.

Most CVs are not rejected because the person was not good enough. They are rejected because the document did not show it. After more than twenty-five years on the hiring side of the table, reading hundreds of thousands of CVs, the same pattern repeats: strong, capable people losing out to weaker candidates simply because their CV did not position them properly. This CV writing guide is the whole picture, section by section, the way a recruiter would build it from scratch.

It is long, because a CV done properly has a lot of moving parts. Work through it in order and you will have a CV that gets past the software, holds a recruiter’s attention, and makes the case that you are worth interviewing.

What this CV writing guide is built on

A CV is not a record of everything you have ever done. It is a sales document with one job: to convince a recruiter, in seconds, that you are worth a conversation. Everything that serves that goal stays. Everything that does not, goes. Hold that idea in mind through every section below, because it is the single principle that separates a CV that works from one that simply lists.

The essential sections every CV writing guide starts with

A strong CV is built from a predictable set of sections, each doing a specific job. Get the structure right and the content has somewhere to live.

• Personal details: name, location, email and phone. Get these basics wrong and the interview is gone before it starts. A LinkedIn URL or portfolio link is a useful optional addition.
• Headline: the exact job title you are targeting, so both the software and the reader instantly understand what you are.
• Professional summary: the most valuable few lines on the page, a sharp synopsis of what you offer.
• Key skills: the right mix of hard and soft skills, matched to the role.
• Career history: your experience, framed around achievements rather than duties.
• Education and qualifications: in reverse-chronological order, with anything that adds value.

The detail of which sections to include, and which to drop, is covered in our guide to what to include in your CV.

Your headline and professional summary

The top half of the first page is the most valuable real estate on your CV. It is wasted by a vague objective or, worse, left blank. Your headline should state the exact job title you are targeting. Beneath it, your summary should open with a clear statement of who you are and what you do, follow with two or three sentences on your most relevant strengths, and close with what you are looking for, tailored to the role in front of you.

Keep it to your professional background. This is not the place to explain gaps, career changes or personal circumstances. The full method, with examples, is in our CV personal statement guide.

The skills section, and why it matters more than you think

Recruiters and hiring managers treat the skills section as one of the most important parts of a CV. It lets them see, at a glance, whether you have what the role needs, and it is central to how the software ranks you. The key is the right mix of two kinds of skill.

Hard skills are the specific, teachable competencies of your field: the technical abilities, tools, certifications and qualifications. Soft skills, often the same thing as transferable skills, are how you work and interact: communication, problem-solving, leadership, adaptability. A common mistake is assuming the technical skills matter more. In practice, people with strong transferable skills tend to lift the performance of everyone around them, and employers know it.

Do not simply list skills as a wall of bullet points. Research the role, cross-reference your genuine experience, and present a focused mix. And do not stuff in keywords: the software scans your CV, but humans read it too, so every term needs to sit naturally and be backed by evidence. The detail is in our guide to the CV skills section.

Achievements, not just duties

This is where most CVs fall down. They describe what the person was responsible for, when employers want to know what they actually achieved, the value they brought to each role. A list of duties tells a recruiter what your job was. A list of achievements tells them how well you did it.

Look for the revenue you grew, the money or time you saved, the problems you solved, the systems you improved, the projects you delivered, the awards and promotions you earned. Wherever you can, attach a number. A quantified achievement is the single most persuasive thing on a CV.

Structuring your career history

List each role with your job title first, then the company and location, then the dates. Add a one-line introduction to set the scene, what the company does and the level you reported to, then bullet your responsibilities, kept relevant to the roles you are now targeting. Finish each role with its standout achievements.

Keep it relevant. A recruiter does not need the duties of your first Saturday job when you are applying for a senior post. Choose the history that supports the application in front of you, and let older or less relevant roles shrink or drop away. The principles of length and what to cut are covered in our CV length guide, and the structural choices in the CV format guide.

Why a CV writing guide cannot be one size: your stage changes the focus

Everything above is the foundation, and it holds true at every level. But the single biggest mistake people make is treating a CV as a fixed template that only needs the names and dates swapped out. It is not. What a recruiter wants to see, and the order they want to see it in, shifts at every stage of a career. A graduate CV that leads with education is right for a graduate and wrong for a director. A senior CV that opens with a decade of strategic achievements is right at that level and would sink a school leaver. The structure bends to where you are. Get that wrong and even a well-written CV reads as if it is aimed at the wrong job.

Here is how the emphasis changes as you move through your career, and where to go for the detail at your own level.

Graduate and first CV

Writing your first CV after school or university is hard precisely because you have little or no work history to lean on. So you do not lead with it. Your education section does the heavy lifting here: list it in reverse order with your most recent qualification first, include classifications and the modules relevant to the roles you want, and let it sit near the top. Summer jobs, internships, placements and voluntary work all count, framed for the transferable skills they gave you. Keep it to a single page. Our graduate CV writing service is built around exactly this.

Entry level and early career

With one to three years behind you, the balance tips. Education moves down, and the first signs of professional progression move up. Recruiters now expect to see what you have done in the working world, not just what you studied, so early achievements, growing responsibility and the skills you have started to build take the lead. This is the moment to stop writing like a student and start writing like a professional. We cover it on the early career CV service.

Mid career

By mid career, with four to ten years of experience, hiring managers are most interested in the work you have done and how it qualifies you for the role in front of them. This is where a dedicated key achievements section earns its place, with notable accomplishments set out under each role: the projects, budgets and teams you have taken on, the title upgrades you have earned. Two pages is the right length. The emphasis is firmly on demonstrated impact, which is the focus of the mid career CV service.

Senior

At senior level, with ten years or more, you have established expertise and a track record of influence. The CV needs to present you as a subject matter expert or a leader, condensing many years into a focused two pages where, often, less is more. Give your recent roles the most space and prove you can do the job, then let older roles compress to a line or two: title, company, dates. Achievements carry more context now, the circumstances behind the result and the quantified outcome. This is the territory of the senior CV service.

Manager and team leader

Moving into management changes what the CV has to prove. It is no longer enough to show you are good at the work; you have to show you can get results through other people. The evidence shifts to the size of the teams you have led, the performance you have improved, the budgets you have held and the decisions you have owned. The manager CV service positions exactly this transition.

Executive and director

At executive and director level the audience changes again, and so must the CV. The reader is now assessing strategic vision, commercial impact, organisational scale and the ability to lead at the top. The CV that proved you could deliver will not, on its own, prove you can run the function. Two to three well-structured pages, led by strategic achievements and quantified business outcomes, are the norm. This repositioning is the whole point of the executive and director CV service.

Board and non-executive director

Board and non-executive roles are different again. Here the emphasis is on governance, oversight, independence and the breadth of judgement you bring to a board, rather than day-to-day operational delivery. It is a distinct CV with its own conventions, which is why we treat it separately on the board and NED CV service.

Career change, freelance and qualification-led CVs

Some situations cut across the stages above. A career change CV leads with transferable skills and uses the summary to make the connection a reader might not make on their own, since the relevance is in the abilities, not the job titles; the detail is in our career change guide. A freelance or project-based CV groups work by project and skill rather than a single unbroken timeline, foregrounding what was delivered. A qualification-led CV, common in fields where a certification is the gateway to the role, brings those credentials high up the page where they cannot be missed. The principle is the same throughout: the structure serves the story you need to tell, not the other way round.

Education and qualifications

Start with your highest and most recent qualification and work backwards. Include your field of study, the institution, and the dates. There is no need to go back beyond secondary school. Recent graduates should give more detail, modules, dissertations, strong grades, while experienced professionals can keep this section short and let their career history lead.

Additional courses, certifications and training are worth including where they add value. They demonstrate commitment and can be the detail that tips a decision in your favour, even when they are not strictly essential to the role.

Making your CV pass the ATS

In the modern market, a large share of CVs are rejected by applicant tracking software before a human ever sees them, often because they are badly formatted or not keyword-optimised, not because the candidate was unqualified. If the software cannot read your CV, your chances of an interview are close to zero regardless of how good you are.

The essentials: use a clean, single-column layout, avoid text boxes, tables, columns, logos and unusual fonts that confuse the parser, and mirror the genuine language of the job advert so the keywords match. This is a deep topic on its own, covered fully in our ATS CV optimisation guide and our explainer on what an ATS actually is.

PDF or Word? And how to name the file

The safest choice for most applications is a Word document. Every applicant tracking system can read and parse a Word file cleanly, and recruiters often need to make small edits before sending a CV to their client. PDFs preserve your formatting perfectly and stop others changing the document, but some systems struggle to read them, which can mean automatic rejection. Send a PDF only when the job posting specifically asks for one, and never use any other file format. Name the file with your name, the job title and "CV" so it looks professional and is easy to find.

What to leave off

Adding the wrong things distracts from the right ones. Leave off your date of birth, which invites assumptions about age and adds nothing about your ability. The same goes for marital status, a photo (unless the sector specifically expects one), full home address, and the tired line "references available on request". Every line on your CV should earn its place. If it does not help a recruiter say yes, it is taking up space. Our guide to the most common CV mistakes covers the rest.

Tailoring for every application

A single generic CV sent to every role is the most common reason good candidates get nowhere. The strongest applications tailor the headline, summary, skills and emphasis to each specific job, mirroring the language of the advert and foregrounding the most relevant experience. It takes longer, but it is the difference between a CV that is technically fine and one that lands. When it is time to refresh an existing CV, our guide to updating your CV walks through it.

When to bring in a recruiter

You can do all of this yourself, and this guide gives you everything you need to. But there is a reason people come to us: it is genuinely hard to see your own experience clearly, to know what a hiring manager in your sector is really looking for, and to position yourself objectively on the page. That is what our recruiters do. Not copywriters, not an AI tool, but people who have spent their careers shortlisting candidates and making hiring decisions, matched to your career stage and your industry. If you would rather have it done properly the first time, that is what the CV writing service is for.

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