What you should include in a perfect CV
From the right structure to visual design: Here you'll learn how to showcase your experience and skills perfectly for your application.
First of all, it’s important that your resume is easy to read, and you can achieve this with a good structure. The person reading your resume should be able to get an overview of your skills in just a few seconds. Therefore, you should not write more than two pages, otherwise, it will be difficult.
In the following, we list everything that should not be missing from your resume and explain the individual components in detail.
The most important components
- Personal details
- Photo
- Education
- Professional experience
- Language skills
- IT skills
- Hobbies and interests
Personal details
This is the most prominent part of the CV. Here you write your first name, your last name and your contact details. Make sure you add an e-mail address you regularly use and a phone number where recruiters can reach you.
For applications in Switzerland, you should definitely indicate your nationality. If you’re not Swiss make sure to also add your residence title.
The date and place of birth are also typically mentioned in the personal details section. We recommend adding them, however where and when you were born can also be omitted.
The perfect application photo
For an application in the DACH region, it is not mandatory to have a photo on your resume. However, it might be specifically asked. Of course, it is your choice to supply one or not but to make it more personal it is highly recommended to add one.
Even if you may love this one picture of yourself that was taken on vacation or a party – if not all of the following points apply, resist and don't take that one! The prices for a professional job application photo shoot are usually not that high and are worth it.
With a few tricks, you can even take a professional-looking application photo at home. Make sure your photo meets these criteria:
- Recent photo: Your photo should not be older than two years. An older photo would not be honest and you want a perfect application.
- No selfies: Ask someone to take your picture or use a tripod. A selfie is not suitable as an application photo.
- Portrait: The perfect CV photo is limited to the head and shoulders. You should never provide full-body photos.
- High quality: Whether in color or black and white, it’s essential to provide a photo with high resolution.
- Friendly look: Make a relaxed and friendly impression, smiling is permitted. So better don’t use your passport photo – that may have the opposite effect.
- Quiet Background: Your photo must have a natural and quiet background. Pictures in a park are okay, as long as they are tasteful. Under no circumstances should other people be visible in a job application photo, not even in the background or cropped out.
- Clothes that match the industry: A natural look with nice clothes that would also be appropriate for a job interview is always good. So you can't go far wrong with a shirt or blouse. How formal it should actually be depends a lot on the industry you're applying to. In the IT industry, for example, a suit and tie would look overdone, while in the financial industry, it would be perceived as competent.
Education
Here you provide all the information about your studies, academic background, and achievements, listed in reverse chronological order from the most recent to the oldest. Depending on your experience, you will have to describe your education in more or less in-depth.
Every piece of information listed must contain:
- Name and place of the institution
- Major/Study program or qualification achieved
- Time frame of the (expected) completion
Optionally, you can also highlight special projects or additional subjects if they are of interest to the position in question. If you have achieved a good grade point average, you can also mention this.
Professional experience
Any kind of work counts as work experience, it does not always have to be a permanent position. Part-time jobs and internships are also listed here. The latter are especially relevant for young professionals. Experienced seniors do not necessarily have to include every internship if it makes the resume longer than two pages.
In terms of the order, the same as to education applies: The most recent work experience at the top, the part-time job from ten years ago either at the bottom or omitted altogether, depending on its relevance.
The information listed must contain:
- Name and place of company
- Job title/function/department
- Duties and responsibilities of this position
- The period of your employment
For each work experience listed, you should write 3-5 sentences so that HR professionals can better visualize what exactly you did at that job and why that experience is valuable to the job you are now applying for.
Language skills
List the languages you speak, specifying your written and spoken levels using the CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference) scale from A1 to C2, developed by the Council of Europe. These standardized levels make it easier for recruiters to assess your language skills.
Moreover, if you have learned a language and obtained a certificate, you should include it in this section and add the certificate's name, date, and school's name.
IT skills
If you are proficient in specific IT programs, you can highlight them as a separate item on your resume. This depends very much on the industry and the job you are applying for. If you don't have any special IT skills or it's not relevant to the job, you can skip the whole section.
Hobbies and interests
This section seems less important at first glance, but it is often underestimated. Your hobbies and interests reflect your attitude and aspects of your character, so you should choose them wisely for your resume.
Although information about your free time is optional, we clearly recommend that you include it in your CV. However, you should only mention hobbies and interests that matter. This can be out of two reasons:
- Related to the job you are applying for
Are you the treasurer at your local booster club and applying for a job in accounting? Absolutely add that hobby to your CV! - Unique/interesting
You are guiding tourists through abandoned places that nobody else knows? You are performing tricks in the circus in your free time? Recruiters will very likely remember you by that.
If your hobby is drinking coffee and enjoying spending time at the beach that’s also good. However, these activities are not very extraordinary, so you don’t need to mention these in your CV. Unless you’re applying for a barista position at a beach bar, of course.
Tips for writing the perfect CV
Do you want your CV to stand out from the competition? Follow the following tips:
- Be relevant: You need to present yourself well in your CV. This means you should be precise and accurate in what you communicate; your experience should be relevant to the job.
- Suitable language: Describe your skills in a language that fits the advertised position. Make it clear who you are and why you're right for the job. Avoid generic terms like "team player" that mean nothing without a concrete description.
- Select details carefully: You only have two pages to show your best side. So choose carefully which aspects you describe in more detail and which you don't.
- Get feedback: Have someone else proofread your resume. The best people to ask are people you have worked with before, such as (former) colleagues or classmates.
- Keep it short: Be concise, and don’t be afraid to delete irrelevant experiences for your application role. There is no need to list everything. Keep only what is relevant.
- Be accurate: Be careful with grammar, spelling and punctuation. Recruiters will judge your mistakes, and of course, this has also an impact on the outcome of your application. Use auto-corrector tools but also let a human check your CV for errors.
- Be honest: Overemphasizing your skills could lead to tricky questions during the interview and thus jeopardize your application. Save yourself the stress and be honest from the start. Highlight your most relevant skills, but don't go overboard in describing them.
Depending on the industry, the above tips can vary greatly. In the field of medicine, for example, it is necessary to create a more detailed resume with all experience and several pages are perfectly acceptable. Find out exactly what is common in your industry. No spelling mistakes, feedback from others, and honesty are probably industry-independent tips, though.
As for details, resume tools like Cubra can help you. Cubra's Artificial Intelligence knows exactly what is well received in which industries and automatically adjusts your resume accordingly.
Can there be a perfect resume?
It depends.
There is definitely no such thing as a universal perfect resume that fits every job. The differences between different industries are huge and each individual job has different requirements.
But tailored to the job you are applying for, you can create a perfectly structured resume that highlights exactly the relevant skills.
In short, the best resume is the one that best matches the job description. Cubra offers you the perfect solution by using AI to help you create and improve your resume based on the job description.
When developing Cubra, we took into account what recruiters look for in a resume and what problems job seekers often encounter when writing their resumes. Our intelligent resume software makes the application process easier on both sides, and you can use it to create as many resumes as you send out.
Besides structure, Cubra also helps you with industry-specific design templates.
Curious now? Give Cubra a try!