CV structure advice

NotAGolf

NotAGolf

NotAGolf

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It's been a few years since I last updated my CV and I think it's due a refresh. I was wondering if anyone is able to provide a bit of feedback on what I've got .

My own thoughts:
  • Ditch the voluntary work experience and second bullet-point in the additional info. I previously had these in as a bit of a conversation starter, but no one has ever mentioned it so feels unnecessary.
  • Not sure how to handle the older jobs. It's so long ago I barely remember what I did, certainly nothing I'd like to shout about!
  • I don't like the list of skills towards the top of the page. It's just a messy dump of tech. I've left this in though as: a) if I don't list it somewhere, people/AI doing keyword scanning would pass me by, and b) listing the tech in the job history section feels like it interrupts the point I'm trying to get across.
  • The abilities section at the top doesn't really sell me very well. Most of that is 'fluff'. I think some of the points in the job history are a better, but are buried further down the CV. Yet I feel like I need some kind of overview of skills that span multiple jobs.
  • I'm not sure if I've got the balance right between someone that understands what being a QA involves, and someone who knows nothing about the role and is just keyword scanner.

Would appreciate any feedback or suggestions on things to change.


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I dunno, I like seeing a bit of non-work stuff on a CV but I get that it isn't the same for everyone. Maybe merge the 'outside of work' sections into one?
Are you managing anyone?
Any specific savings/big wins you can add?
You've got 6 previous experiences, I'm guesing that spans quite a few years?
I'm a grumpy old man so that frisbee line makes me shudder! :D
 
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I would ditch the voluntary work and additional info sections. I think any time spent talking about that in an interview is time not spent talking about things that actually get you the job.

Older roles should be listed, but it's fine to reduce the content based on age and relevance, and to keep the cv length down. As your cv fits on 2 pages it's not a pressing concern.

I find the skills dump useful. It indicates what sort of job you're suitable for to those who only spent 30 seconds per CV filtering out the trash. Check the casing though, spelling a skill wrong triggers some people.

I think your qualifications in the intro section belong with education. This section is too long. Aim for 1 or 2 sentences. The other info can be covered under roles.

Overall your CV is well laid out and your experience is solid. A candidate worth interviewing imo.
 
Give the details of the app you built. Explain what you learnt doing it.

Explain the second app you are developing and its functionality / challenges.

Have you tried applying for any jobs recently? Software testing seems ultra competitive in terms of applicant to vacancy ratios.
 
2 pages max:

* contact details - name, email, phone number (I don't have age, nationality, or location)
* small paragraph (5 lines max) exec summary which are skills and capabilities selling yourself as a match to the job spec. List of skills (if contract) engineering - specifically highlight examples such as git hub projects involved with that use them.
* Professional Experience - max 7 years of jobs (keep to max 2 pages total for the entire CV), I have three positions - Role - company - date / short summary / achievements /responsibilities. I walk through the achievements so it should be simple to show the reader I've actually done the role with the responsibilities.
* Education - I have three - BSc software engineering degree, AI Said Business School course and a marketing/product course.
* Certifications - professional certifications with verifiable credentials (ie Said Business school proof), I have the degree and product paper certificates.
* Papers - I have a research paper I was involved with, so I have a reference for the paper.

That's it.

If you have hackathon competitions and placings - then I'd list those. If you have a coding gig with happy customers - I'd list those if they're happy with it.
 
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radderfire said:
Have you tried applying for any jobs recently? Software testing seems ultra competitive in terms of applicant to vacancy ratios.
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It's better to get into the circuit for hackathons etc and get your "brand" known.

You'll find quality and testing being pushed by AI - so a key thing here is to demonstrate excellence and working with AI along with a team. An interviewer may ask good experience and 'tell me about a failed AI experience with your coding.'

As an example - I did a little project of AI coding Homomorphic neural networks. I can give a clear examples of where it works and the where it fails (specifically the error accumulation of the homomorphic encryption when the neural network is made up of a long chain, or the effect it can have on bias when attempting to distill a model into a HE model).
 
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CV looked familiar, OP had a prior thread on this here: https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/threads/cv-format.18980976

Previously it was suggested to expand the Education section - what A-level grades do you have? If they are good, I would include them. Do you have GCSE Maths & English?
I would also include certifications under here, you mention ISTQB at the start but that could get lost in the text so I would explicitly highlight any certs you have.

The final two bullets in the abilities & skills section read like fluff, they aren't really abilities and skills, more just generic approaches that you take. Clarifying requirements and discussing plans with the team are taken for granted.

The "messy dump of tech" is fine. Having it placed succinctly all together is helpful rather than having to piece together what tools you have experience in from individual jobs.

If "Frisbee Fridays" is something impressive maybe signpost this e.g. if you have any stats about number of participants etc. I've never heard of it so it doesn't really mean anything to me and if I've got a mountain of CVs to review, I'm not going to look it up.=

In the opening statement maybe indicate what you are looking for career wise, obviously tailor this a bit for specific job applications.

Overall the CV is not bad IMO. I used to work in Test & QA a long time ago and have hired since and it gets across enough to warrant an interview I think.
If you will be applying for Test Manager roles I would maybe try to beef up the management experience you have a bit, although you haven't had that job title it sounds like you have the certifications and experience that would be considered TM level in some orgs.
 
I struggle to get my CV down to 2 pages... but it's a must.

What I have is a 6 page CV with everything on it, then I cut out the stuff that is not applicable for the role that I'm going for.

* Personal Info - name, address, contact details, linkedin page, personal blog page etc.
* Personal Profile - quick 2-3 lines about yourself, you might want to taylor this to the role.
* Career History - your role, who employers and dates, in date order. Hightlighing key tasks and skills.

There's a massive difference for example being a CSO for a FSTE 100 company to being a CSO for a small company.
Anything older than 10 years, I would just state the role. employer and date... no one cares that you programmed in C over 20 years ago, when you're programming in C# now.
Listing your abilities aligned with your role will give people a better idea of your actual skill level, web designer for a small company vs a company with a massive online presence.

But companies do need to see your full employment history including career breaks.

This is the place to put in charity and voluntary work.. if you where helping out at the local hostle while working at xyz company, people get a clear idea of who you are.

* Qualifications and Certs - in the order of what you demeed the most important of this role, with dates of achievement. It's cool to put in expired ones if you think they are relevant to the role.

This is the reason why so many companys have an application form and don't accept CVs now a days, So that they can get the info that they want. I can mainly copy and paste the info from my CV to the forms, and if there's a question on the form that I can't answer by copy and paste; I make sure that I've put that in my CV, so I can copy and paste it next time it appears.
 
Azure DevOps, TypeScript, JavaScript. The AI would have fired you long ago for these grievous errors!

Jokes aside we had to hire for some roles in our team sort of recently and it definitely helps you understand how to structure your CV and what is practical. We get the CVs redacted to reduce biases so things like name, age, location and contact info are hidden by HR. I would say remove the additional info (or Hobbies and Interests section as I used to have in mine) at the end if it isn't relevant to the role. From Rob_B's reaction to the frisbee line, it could work against you or also for you if the hiring manager/s were frisbee enthusiasts.

Things we also did was to quick score the CVs to filter those who had relevant experience or exposure to the technologies in the job advert, so places like the cover letter would be best to highlight that otherwise I'd have to trawl the CV and see if it's mentioned. Then we were adjusting scoring based on how recent the relevant experience was, so your suggestion of ditching the old roles from the CV is a good one.

I omit the education section from mine now since my experience is more relevant, but if you need fillers or the qualifications are relevant/required for the role then including it can't hurt.
 
Thanks for the advice everyone. I've had another stab at it based on some of the feedback above and feel much better about it now. Any further feedback would still be appreciated!

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To answer a few questions/comments made previously:

> Are you managing anyone?
Yes, but I don't want to dwell too much on it as it's not something I'm particularly keen on. I'm aiming for a more technical career path over managerial. I'm still mentioning it though to show I'm capable.

> Any specific savings/big wins you can add?
I've tried to reference these where possible. Struggling to think of any others!

> You've got 6 previous experiences, I'm guessing that spans quite a few years?
Just over 15 years, hence me stripping detail from the older two as I don't feel they're that relevant. Plus, I'd struggle to add anything that isn't already mentioned under other roles.

> Previously it was suggested to expand the Education section - what A-level grades do you have? If they are good, I would include them. Do you have GCSE Maths & English?
Average results. A, B, D at A-level. Mix of A* to C in GCSE's. I don't feel like they're good enough to shout about, and were over 20 years ago, so don't seem relevant. I feel like a decent degree trumps the rest of my education.

> In the opening statement maybe indicate what you are looking for career wise, obviously tailor this a bit for specific job applications.
I don't have a specific job advert in mind currently, I just want to make sure I've got a solid basis if something comes up. I would potentially tailor the CV slightly if the job spec/role was calling for something specific.
 
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My thoughts ...

Possibly move the Android app bit into the first Key Abilities section. In general, I would like to hear anything that demonstrates programming expertise and enthusiasm. I think maybe anything more you can think of to go here would be good, e.g. how good you are at C# or Java. Have you built anything in them for instance?

I get that just listing out tools and programming languages is common, but it gives me no idea of your level of expertise. Anything you can do to prove expertise is beneficial. I want to know I'm hiring someone with real skill and interest, like a next-level guy, as opposed to someone who is just average and has used the tools.

Personally, I am also interested in the tech and tools you used, e.g. where you say "Executed automated regression suite", I'm thinking, using what? If you say the tool, then I get a better idea of experience.

Anything you can add to show you are a team player and get on well with people would also help.
 
I think personally the first one was still good and I don't mind the personal additional info bits. That immediately tells me as a hirer the kind of person I might be dealing with (in a good way). i.e. Cycling means probably not morbidly obese, the frisbee thing shows you have skills enough to have actually written an app.

On a lot of CVs and especially linkedin profiles, a lot of people lead with an opening statement paragraph written in the 3rd person. For example, instead of "I am an enthusiastic Business Analyst with 15 years experience in...." it would read like "Enthusiastic Business Analyst with 15 years experience in....".
However, this is not mandatory.
I feel like the layout, grammar and spelling is all good and shows me you are good material. I can't tell you how many CVs I have seen with clear errors.

Just remember that some people - not saying this is right or wrong - literally do pick up a CV and read the first 3 or 4 lines in about 10 seconds and if it hasn't grabbed them, they move onto the next. So go for impact from the off which almost feels cringe (I hate talking about myself) but not overly cringe. So kind of celebrate that you're good in a factual way. :)
 
throwaway4372 said:
I want dates for education and qualifications. Without that I have no idea if it was 20 years ago or yesterday.
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Why does it matter? Not being arsey, genuinely interested.

I left them off as they're all from many years ago, which I could be seen as negative (e.g it was years ago, so he's probably forgotten it all).
 
It paints a picture of your career with equal importance as the dates on each role. The change from chronological to non chronological made it immediately stand out. My brain reacted to that by wondering why you would omit dates.
 
NotAGolf said:
Thanks for the advice everyone. I've had another stab at it based on some of the feedback above and feel much better about it now. Any further feedback would still be appreciated!

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I can't actually see the CV anymore. Seeing a blue Postimage box. Could you reupload or use something like imgbox instead? Postimage has a habit of doing this.
 
NotAGolf said:
Why does it matter? Not being arsey, genuinely interested.

I left them off as they're all from many years ago, which I could be seen as negative (e.g it was years ago, so he's probably forgotten it all).
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They don't want older people. Or they want people still engaging in learning. Could be either.
 
In my limited opinion I think most places aren't really interested in anything older than 2 - 3yrs. It's what you're active skills are. Not something you last did 5 yrs ago.

Only if you get past that first hurdle, they'll look to see if you have other prerequisites.

It's really what can be read in 5-10 sec scan that will get you an interview. The details can be discussed later.

I've been a lot more successful with a CV of one page of recent highlights than I have putting 20 yrs+ on two sheets. If I haven't done something in a few years it's unlikely to seen of value to anyone.
 
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