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tags: Module 10
---
# CV

Since the world is becoming more and more digital, many companies are embracing LinkedIn as the new “online CV”.

🤔 So, what's the difference between our LinkedIn profile and our CV?
🤔 Why do we need one?

LinkedIn is our general public professional profile. It is not tailored towards a specific vacancy, includes a lot more information about us, and generally has a broader focus.

**In comparison, our CV has to be adapted to every single vacancy.** I'm sure we all have a lot to show for, however, our CV is the place where we limit ourselves to the most relevant points. This means that we want to take a good look at the requirements of the vacancy and highlight our corresponding skills and experience each time wee send it.

We have already done most of the work for our CV by building our LinkedIn profile. The content is there. It's now a matter of transferring that content onto our CV.

Let's do this in some simple steps. We don't want you to spend a crazy amount of time crafting a CV so let's be very practical about it 👇

## 1. Choosing a design and a structure
Before you do that, have a look at this stat:


You know what this means? **You only put the most relevant information that's strictly necessary in your cv!**

### Step one: choose your CV design.

- If we want to use a template, [Canva](https://www.canva.com/resumes/templates/) or [Novoresume](https://novoresume.com/es?noRedirect=true) or [Ceev LinkedIn Resume Creator](https://) are great options.
- Some [more templates](https://www.themuse.com/advice/top-google-docs-resume-templates-how-to-use-them)
- Otherwise, feel free to google "resume/cv templates" for yourself and find something that works - we don't want to do all the work for you 😉.
- Don't go too crazy finding the ideal design - choose something that's simple and legible.

### Step two: Choose a structure

Some recommendations:
- **One page.** We know it's a struggle. Trust us. One page maximum. - It's okay to start big. If you need to, write everything down first and then slowly start trimming. Ask yourself - is this crucial? Remember, you only have 6 seconds!
- **Everything that appears up top and on the left side of your CV is being seen first** and thus considered most important.
- **Include a skills section** that comprises all important skills keywords at the top. This can be done in a sidebar or as a main section.
- **If you don't have previous experience in sales, showcase your experience at Hyrise early on**. Consider adding it under the "Experience" section and listing it as the most recent experience. Also consider including it in the "Education" section and listing that section first.
- **We want to make sure that there's white space.** No one likes looking at a big block of text! Font 9 or higher - we don't want people having to squint! We use bold or italics to highlight.
- **Finally, we ask a friend or a colleague to proof-read** it. They might pick up on something we have missed!

Now let's take a look at each section one by one:

## 2. Sections breakdown

Before we begin with the breakdown, a word of warning - what we are giving you here are recommendations. You're ultimately responsible for crafting a CV that you're comfortable with.

Having said this, here's an example of what we consider a great CV.


Now let's look step by step at each of the sections!

### 1. Contact Information & Summary
- Photo: Same as LinkedIn - a picture of our upper body where we look straight into the camera. No sunglasses, no group photos, and no frowning, please. It's Linkedin, not Tinder!
- Contact details: Our phone number, email address, and profiles on LinkedIn, and any other platform that adds value to our professional profile (for examplee, your website if you have one). To enhance the user experience, we should make all those links clickable!
- Summary or bio: We can work with the same extract you have developed for your LinkedIn profile. However, in this case, we want to condense it to a maximum of three sentences, ideally two.

### 2. Relevant Work Experience
All the information that appears here will follow in reverse chronological order, from the most recent (appears first) to the oldest.

Every experience should have a consistent format.

- Job Title
- Company
- Dates in the format of month/year-month/year
- Possibly a one-sentence description of the company
- A short (3 or 4 max) bullet point list with our key responsibilities

It’s very important to differentiate between professional (relevant work experience) and irrelevant work experience.

- Professional or relevant work experience. Any experience that adds value, enables us to advance or is directly related to the area where we’re looking to focus our career on.
- Irrelevant work experience. That time you worked selling ice cream when you were 14. Irrelevant work experience is anything that does not add value to our current area of focus or doesn't help us achieve our long-term objectives.

Every time we're not sure about whether to include a certain experience we have to ask ourselves: could I explain how this experience makes me a better salesperson in an interview?

### 3. Education
The education section follows the same structure as the experience section.

If we decide to include our Hyrise experience in the education section, we have to make sure we add a precise description and all the relevant keywords.

### 4. Skills
This section is extremely important. It should be clearly visible and stand out in our CV. We should differentiate between soft skills and hard skills, as we have done with LinkedIn.

Add 2-5 soft skills from the 'Top Skills' exercise.

IMPORTANT: We. don't. grade. our. skills.

Why?

Our skill level is highly subjective. A 4/5 for you might be a 2/5 for someone else. Therefore, we're leaving the exact skill evaluation to the companies and let them determine what skill level they perceive as sufficient.

### 5. Languages

On the other hand, we should definitely grade our languages, as there's a universal and objective way of measuring your level!

The matrix below should help you add the languages that you know.


Example:

- English: C2 Spanish: B1 Arabic: A2 German: A2

Alternative Language Grading Systems

You can also use simpler ways to grade your language skills. Either use a scaling system of 1-5 or describe your level in one word (native, fluent, intermediate, or beginner).

### 6. Others
This section will contain additional points of interest. Again, we only include those that add value to your profile:

- Hobbies
- Awards/ Certificates
- Geographic Mobility
- Project Collaborations

Need some more info? [Here's a video from Google](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYUy1yvjHxE) in which their tech recruiters give us some resume advice!
 
## 🤔 What next?

- Upload your CV or share a link to the doc for our review below
- Onto the last profiles exercise - let's build your Hyrise profile!

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