I've been screening a huge number of CVs recently, and through this process my thoughts on 'what makes a good CV' have cemented enough that I wanted to write them down.

Before we begin, it's important to to understand who and how the content of your CV will be consumed, and with that understanding ensure that your CV is well structured and clearly communicates to the reader what they need to know about you.

There can be a lot of competition for roles. As an example, when we open a new position we advertise our roles on various public job boards, the result of which can be a lot of direct applications. Thanks to tools like LindedIn's 'Easy Apply', we'd typically get 100 applicants a day if not more depending on the role and requirements.

As such, hiring teams aren't going to be spending more than 20-30 seconds reviewing your CV to decide if you should make the shortlist or not. The goal of that initial screening process is to find the 'signal in the noise' in as short a time as possible, and make sure that that hiring team only move forwards with the, on paper at least, most suitable candidates for the role.

In addition, it's important to understand that those screening the CV might not even be part of the hiring team or same department. Often, we'd have administrators from the HR function pre-screen CV's, and as such we'd brief them on a few keywords to scan for to help them shortlist.

As such, a good CV summarises and surfaces the relevant information in a fashion that makes it easy for the screener to find everything that they're looking for in as short a time as possible.

Once through screening, your CV will likely play little part beyond helping the interviewers prepare and structure a conversation.

Screening

As above, I'd spend no more than 30 seconds completing an intial CV screen During this quick skim, I screen for the very basics...

1. Eligibility: As we're open to remote/hybrid working, we'd get a lot of applications from all over the world. Legally though, we could only hire in certain geograhical locations and weren't able to support/sponsor visas hence it's easy to filter out candidates who just aren't eligible.
2. Length: 2 pages is the sweet spot, anything more than that lacks audience awareness, and I already know that it's unlikely to effectively communicate what I want need to know.
3. Skills: Has the candidate clearly listed the skills, tech and/or tools that they're proficient in and does this marry up with the core requirements for the role. I don't want to spelunk through paragraphs of text to find specifics, so what I want to see is a nice list where I can quickly check off what I'm looking for.
4. Experience: How much industry experience has the candidate got, and is that experience relevant. Here I'm looking at dates and job titles, and wanting a quick indicator that they've roughly the right number of years experience. I'll caveat, that I don't believe 'time' in the industry is what qualifies your skill level, but for initial screening purposes it is indicative enough.
5. ChatGPT: Sadly, I do see a lot of repeat statements, covering letters or supporting text that's obviously come from ChatGPT or a similar tool. Some would argue it's clever use of a tool, but it's a put off for me.

For those that make the shortlist, I'd then do a second and, depending on numbers, sometimes a 3rd pass recovering the above points in more detail, but also looking at...

1. Impact: What specifically have they been working on in their most recent roles, and what were the outcomes/impact of that work. How and what candidates choose to write here can really say a lot about the environments that they've worked in and how they measure/quantify success.
2. Why: Opening statements say a lot about a candidate, and what I want to read is a statement that comunicates what's driving you to do what you do, and where ultimately you're trying to get to. I see 100's of generic and bland statements that overall say so little, but a solid opening statement that really say's something about person behind the paper are always a strong positive indicator for me.
3. Tenure: How long did they work at specific companies. The world has changed, and people do move jobs more than in the past. I find the 2-3 year mark the average these days, but lots of short tenues of a year or less I find a negative signal, contract roles being the exception.
4. LinkedIn: If there is a link or profile name, I will go and quickly look at it and quickly compare the information there with what's written on the CV. More often than not, there are contradictions with what's being said that can uncover embelishment or 'bending of the truth'.
5. Portfolio: Candidates often include links to work GitHub account of perhaps a blog or dedicated portfolio. If I see these, I'll always go and take a look. What I want to see are solid, showcase quality examples of the candidates work, but sadly often these links lead to long abandoned blogs or barren GitHubs. It signals poor judgement to include links to items or materials that don't add weight to your application.
6. Presentation: Your CV is an advert of you, it needs to stand out and deliver all the important information to the user. Despite best efforts, people do 'judge books by their covers', and there can be a lot of competition for roles so apperance goes a long way in making you stand out amongst the crowd.
7. Spelling and Grammar: As above. these 2 pages are your sales pitch. I expect attention to detail, and as such can't stand spelling or grammar errors on CVs. Note, that I cut some slack for non-native speakers, although typically I find non-natives write better english than natives.

Lastly, sometimes you get a decent number of suitable candidates but bandwidth in the team means you need to shortlist further. In those instances, I'll look for other signals that I find indicative of top performers.

1. Promotions: Any evidence of promotion at specific companies, where I find signs of rapid promotion generally a positive indicator.
2. Education: What was there educational journey like, and where were they educated. Graduates from top insitutuions are good signals that a candidate has 'grit and grind'.

Guidelines

As such here is my (not exhaustive) of , guidelines are...

• 2 pages max, it's a 'sales pitch' not a life story.
• Structure as...
  • Heading
  • Vision/Mission Statement
  • Core Skills
  • Professional Experience
  • Education
  • Meta
• Make sure your opening statement conveys why you do what you do. Keep it short, but keep it punchy. Consider 'Experienced software engineer with 10 years industry experience in web development with a passion for writing high quality, maintainable code' vs 'Passionate technologist and product engineer driven by the desire to make the world better by working on products that solve real problems for end users' and make your own judgment on which says more about the author.
• List your Core Skills as keywords, and only list the skills that you're really adept in and are immediately transferable. Don't be afraid to remove items that you no longer practice or have lost proficency in.
• List skills, tech stack and tools as keywords per role, the goal is to make it really clear what you used where and when. You can also list past skills here where perhaps your proficiency isn't quite what it was.
• Focus on detailling your most recent roles, and get lower resolution the further you go back in time. Specifics from a decade ago are seldom relevant, so shed the details the further back in time you go.
• For each company you worked at, include a single sentence about that the company actually does, e.g. Online SAAS platform for ESG data collection. A well worded sentence can add essential context to the specifics of what you did there.
• Detailing your accomplishments per role is important, but keep the list short and pay attention to your wording. Well structured sentences can add colour about specifics such as approach, culture and environment without needing to be explicit.
• Keep your Education section light, exhaustively listing modules and scores isn't particularly useful information and just takes space. Simply list the course title, institution, dates and your grades.
• Only include a link to your LinkedIn profile if the info on your profile is up-to-date, and aligns with the information in your CV. If you don't want to put the energy into maintaining data in both locations, then simply don't include a link to LinkedIn on your CV.
• Only include a link to your GitHub if there is actually substantial projects/content there that's worth while sharing with a prospective company. And make use of the Pinning feature to highlight your best work.
• Proof Read: Get your family, friends, collegues, etc, to proof read and cleanup spelling and grammar mistakes. At 2 pages, the word count is low and there is no excuses for letting mistakes slip through.
• Presentation is important, and will help you stand out from others. Engineers often put as much effort into their CVs as they do their documentation, but the reality is that its a competitive landscape and standing out from the crowd is important.

I might amend this list in the future, but for now it covers the important parts.