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The perfect CV for an IT specialist. NLT Recruiter recommendations

The purpose of each CVs is to encourage the employer to invite you to an interview. This article is a step-by-step guide of how to write a CV for a IT specialist. New Line Technologies Recruiter Anastasia helped us with the answers to the main questions about CV.

What would a perfect CV looks like?

A good CV is not a biography. What is the ideal CV in the opinion of the NLT recruiter? Here is what we asked Anastasia about: “The CV should contain all the experience and skills. A CV should be structured, and all information about you as a candidate should be readable, concise, and easy to understand. It is advised to keep your CV short, it should be at most 3 pages. Of course, everything is individual and depends on the position. It’s better to follow the structure, to indicate the information consistently.”

We highlighted the TOP 5 rules of the perfect CV:

  • content and conciseness, excluding “water”
  • real experience and skills
  • structure and consistency
  • working links to projects or portfolios
  • a description of successes and achievements

 TOP 5 of unnecessary things in the CV are:

  • irrelevant, fictional experience
  • non-current contacts (for example, a broken email address)
  • links to personal pages in social networks (it will be better to separate professional and personal)
  • obvious/general skills (ability to use browsers, Google services, Word, Excel, etc.)
  • broken links

CV passed: “We write only what is relevant to the case”, Anastasia agrees with that statement!

Before adding something to your CV, ask yourself: “Does this information describe you as a specialist, capable of dealing with the tasks of the vacancy?”. If the answer is «no» – feel free to delete it. The employer has certain goals and hires a specialist to achieve them. It is up to the candidate to demonstrate in the CV that they can perform specific duties. It is important to understand and address the needs of an employer as closely as possible. To do so, carefully review the vacant position’s text and refine your resume according to its requirements. Write a new resume for a specific vacancy, if it’s necessary. 

What is the preferred language to write a CV?

The answer is: “Use the language of the country of application”. But there are situations when the candidate is settled as a remote employee, in this case, it depends on the situation. Find out the language of the vacancy and respond. If you know that a specific language is corporate in the organization, you should take it into account when composing a CV.

How to write a good CV?

The structure of your perfect resume is:

  • full name
  • your photo
  • the position you’re applying for
  • contact information
  • education
  • courses and certificates
  • skills (technologies, methodologies used in a similar position)
  • work experience (companies in which you worked, what role you played in the team (position), brief description of the project)
  • references to projects or portfolios (if available)
  • achievements on the project or successes you have achieved while working as a team
  • languages you speak (including level)
  • notes «About yourself»

There is no «Hobby» on this list. In USA and England, for example, it is desirable to include this item in the CV, as the individual is often best advised by social position: clubs, communities, awards, etc. There is no such system in European Society.

Contact information in the resume: what to write?

What does the Contact Details contain? How to personalize your Contacts? We made a list of those contacts that might be helpful for the recruiter when reviewing your CV:

  • Full name. Do not use pseudonyms, abbreviations, or nicknames like in social media or games on your CV. In all official documents, it is usual to enter a full name.
  • Mobile Number. We write with «+» and country code. For example +38 (095) 454-54-44
  • E-mail address. We recommend you register a separate email with a simple pseudonym, composed of your first and last name, for example, «name.surname@gmail.com». This will simplify sorting, thereby reducing the waiting time. Do not send an email from your business address, for example, «name@company name.com». This is not ethical.
  • Messenger nickname. For example, your nickname in Telegram or Viber. Sometimes it’s faster to get a response from a recruiter in a messenger than to wait for your letter to be noticed in the mail.
  • Your LinkedIn account. This is a social network with a work-related impact. Recruiters use LinkedIn to post vacant positions and often look for candidates there. Another few advantages of this social network: specified skills can be confirmed by your colleague or previous employer, links to certificates and educational institutions can be made clickable, and you can see the scale of your progress in a particular position in the company.

We wrote earlier that in the CV, you should not mention links to personal social networks. But this is a general recommendation, there are exceptions, for example, vacancies, for which the quantity and quality of social networks are important. If you are a candidate for a vacancy such as Marketing Manager, SMM, Business Analyst, Brand Manager, and similar positions, the presence of well-structured social networks will be a plus! If your work is related to the design, development, and promotion of the brand on the market, then accounts in popular social networks will help you to present yourself as best. Just make sure you don’t have any compromising information on your account, and it doesn’t go against the company policy that you will respond to.

What to add to CV in “About me”?

This is an important point of your CV. Let’s analyze the «About me». «Communicative», «reliable», and «initiative»—these words in «About me» are the “white noise”. At best, they’ll be ignored, at worst, irritated. And it’s not mean that companies aren’t interested in a candidate’s personality. Pointing out such “standard” qualities does not give a full picture of you as a specialist. If you want to find out what are the soft skills, and what is the “white noise”, please read our article “Hard skills or Soft skills? Which developers are cost more?”. It will help you to understand, and you will be able to specify really important team skills 😉

We asked Anastasia if soft skills play an important role in the CV of the programmer or other IT technician. “In my opinion, it is not necessary to specify soft skills in the summary, but it is desirable! Basically, soft skills are viewed directly at the interview.”

Things you shouldn’t include on your resume

Do not include in CV:

  • Your political preferences, your party affiliation, and your religious community
  • Wrong tone—photos on a bright background, from parties or family archives
  • Your gender
  • Family status
  • Information about the presence of children will also be unnecessary in most cases. The exception is when this experience can be considered an advantage in the work.

CV format, fonts, and text sizes

Overall recommendations for the CV design:

  • Formats PDF, doc, docx
  • Standard, built-in, readable fonts such as Calibri, Times New Roman, Arial, Roboto
  • Font size 12-14
  • Single line spacing
  • Headings should be marked with «bold» or «underlining»

Recommendations from Recruiter Anastasia “The perfect format of the CV is PDF. Use font size from 12 to 14. CV should not be too long, 10 pages are too much”.

Online Resume

There are a lot of online resources with samples and CV templates available. But does it make sense to use such web resources? Wouldn’t it seem like you’re taking the task too light-headed? Usually, many applicants respond to vacancies, but there is a risk that using the standard online template resume, you “blend in with the crowd”. We asked Anastasia what she thinks about it, “Currently, there are a lot of designers for CV. One of which CV2you might be recommended. I believe that the template can be used when well-prepared and detailed relevant experience is described. The template will help to make the summary structured, especially relevant for people who are looking for their first job, and have never encountered writing a CV.”

Finally, we want to leave the advice from Anastasia, as a specialist with many years of experience in the search for and selection of candidates for vacancies: “Read the vacancy carefully. Do not respond to jobs that do not suit you because of experience. Don’t describe the unreal experience. Respond promptly to messages and calls from recruiters, if possible!”.

New Line Technologies is looking for an expert! Take a look at the open vacancies in our company.