Your CV Is How You Tell Your Professional Story

Aug 17
9 min read

A few weeks ago, I published a LinkedIn post about CVs. It was prompted by a junior role I was working on, which attracted around 150 applications in less than two days.

It wasn’t the first time I had reviewed that many CVs, but it reinforced something I’ve noticed again and again: people often apply without putting enough thought or effort into how they present themselves. Their potential doesn’t come through, even though in many cases, it is clearly there.

After that post, I received quite a few messages and promised to bring together the most common things I see as a recruiter. I’ll spend a little more time on junior candidates, because that’s where I currently see the greatest need, but I’ll also look at several other career stages and situations. After all, the CV of someone taking their first steps into the job market cannot follow the same logic as that of a professional with 15 years of experience.

Your CV should evolve as your career does.

“It’s not a candidate’s job to write a good CV, just as it’s not an HR professional’s job to write code.”

This was one of the comments under my original post, and it made me think. I understand the logic. After all, you’re applying for an engineering, finance or marketing role, not for a job as a graphic designer or copywriter.

And yet, I disagree. :)

Being able to present your professional experience clearly and coherently is one of the most fundamental career skills. It’s no different from writing a good email, putting together a meaningful presentation or having a professional conversation. It doesn’t require specialised HR knowledge. It requires thought, basic digital skills and the willingness to present yourself properly.

Your CV doesn’t only show what you’ve done. To some extent, it also shows how you think. Can you prioritise information? Do you pay attention to detail? Can you explain your professional journey in a way that another person can quickly understand?

And the effort you put into it almost always shows.

“But AI is going to read it anyway…”

This is another argument I hear increasingly often: “What’s the point of putting so much effort into my CV if it might never even reach a human?”

I understand why that can feel discouraging. More companies are using systems to manage and process applications, and AI is gradually becoming part of different stages of recruitment.

But that doesn’t make the effort irrelevant. Quite the opposite. If we look at it practically, your CV has one simple job: to get you to the next step.

It doesn’t have to get you the job. It doesn’t have to tell your entire professional life story.

It needs to open the door to a conversation. So don’t think of your CV as a document you send “somewhere”. Think of it as your first step towards a potential employer. If those one or two pages don’t make it clear who you are, what you can do and why you are applying, your chances of reaching the interview, where you can show everything else, become much smaller.

How is a CV actually read?

There is a myth worth addressing here: most recruiters don’t begin by reading every CV carefully from top to bottom. They scan first.

They look for a handful of signals: relevant experience, skills, recent roles, education and evidence that connects your background to the position.

The first review is quick. That’s why clarity matters. You’ll often see claims that an initial CV review takes only a few seconds. Whether it’s eight, ten or slightly more isn’t really the point. When someone is looking at dozens, sometimes hundreds, of applications, that first assessment is inevitably fast. That doesn’t mean the recruiter doesn’t respect the effort you’ve put in. It simply means that clarity matters enormously.

Your CV doesn’t need to impress.

It needs to be easy to understand.

The deeper reading comes afterwards.

What makes a CV easy to read?

Over the years, I’ve seen just about every kind of template: colourful infographics, two- and three-column layouts, charts, percentages, stars, progress bars and all sorts of attempts to make a CV look “different”.

Most of them don’t help.

Sometimes they do the opposite. The more design you add, the harder it can become to find the information that actually matters.

That’s why, in most cases, I would recommend:

a clean design;
a single-column layout;
enough white space;
clear headings and a logical structure;
a font that is comfortably large and easy to read;
consistent formatting throughout;
PDF format, unless another format is specifically requested.

The photo, spelling and the small details

I’m often asked whether a photo is necessary. It isn’t. In some countries and companies, photos are actively discouraged, so there is no universal rule here.

If you do choose to include one, make sure it is recent, clear and appropriate for a professional context. It doesn’t need to be a studio portrait.

There are also situations where I think a photo can be useful. If you work in a field where you are already a recognisable face, speak at conferences, meet many people at professional events, or are sending your CV after meeting someone in person, a photo can help them immediately connect the document with you.

But it is an addition, not a substitute for good content.

Spelling and grammar are another area that is often underestimated. One typo is unlikely to cost you an interview. A CV full of spelling or grammatical mistakes, however, can create an impression of carelessness, particularly for roles where written communication is part of the job.

Your CV should tell your story

This may be the most important piece of advice in this entire article. Yes, AI can help. Templates can help. Other people’s examples can help.

But no tool knows your professional journey as well as you do.

Only you know why you moved from one role to another, what you learned along the way, which projects stretched you the most, which challenges you overcame and where you want to go next. If you want AI to help you tell that story well, you first have to give it the story.

I would use AI as an editor, a partner for structuring information and a critical second pair of eyes. I wouldn’t ask it to decide who I am as a professional.

A CV filled with phrases such as “results-driven professional”, “proven track record” and “dynamic team player” can sound polished while telling us almost nothing about the actual person behind it.

CVs age too

A CV isn’t a document you create once and keep forever. It is a living document that should evolve alongside your career.

Five years ago, you may have been proud of your first student job or the first professional course you completed. Today, the strongest part of your story is probably somewhere else.

As your experience grows, your more recent years should carry more weight. Newer projects, broader responsibilities and stronger achievements gradually take the place of older details. Some things simply fall away over time. Not because they weren’t important, but because they no longer tell the story of the professional you are today.

This is where many people make a mistake. They find the CV that successfully got them a job five years ago, add their latest position at the top and assume they’re done. They’re not. :) Over those five years, it isn’t only your latest job title that has changed.

You have changed. Your CV should show it.

What should you NEVER make the recruiter guess?

No matter how much we talk about recruiters, systems and algorithms, managing our own careers remains our responsibility. And a good CV should reduce question marks, not create new ones.

The person reading it shouldn’t have to wonder:

What kind of role are you actually looking for?
Where are you working now, and what do you actually do?
What was your real role in a particular project or team?
What are your core skills, and which ones do you actually use?

Let’s bring more of the story above the surface.

Your CV doesn’t need to explain every life circumstance or career decision. But if there is something in your professional history that will obviously raise a question, it is usually better to provide enough context than to hope the person reading it will make the right assumption.

Leaving too much room for interpretation rarely works in a candidate’s favour.

If you’re a junior candidate

Sometimes I see CVs where someone has devoted more space to listing their language proficiency levels than to a university project they spent six months building. Or they describe a summer job from four years ago in detail but leave out a course that is directly relevant to the role they are applying for.

The truth is that nobody expects a junior candidate to have ten years of professional experience, despite the running joke about job ads that seem to suggest otherwise. But we do expect to see signs that you have already started developing.

If you’re at the beginning of your career, don’t underestimate:

university projects;
personal projects;
GitHub or a portfolio;
internships;
volunteering;
relevant courses and certifications.

These are all evidence that you have already started building professional skills. And there’s something else I notice often. Many junior CVs fail to answer one very simple question: What kind of job are you actually looking for?

If you send exactly the same CV for a QA role, a Business Analyst position and a Project Coordinator role, the person reading it may struggle to understand where you actually want to go.

If you’re a mid-level professional

We talk a lot about junior and senior candidates, but a large proportion of applicants sit somewhere in between, with roughly two to five years of professional experience. Their CVs often show where they have worked without showing how they have developed.

Responsibilities are copied from job descriptions, and one role looks almost identical to the next.

A few questions worth asking yourself:

What am I better at today than I was three or five years ago?
What more complex projects have I taken on?
What decisions have I been responsible for?
What tangible contribution have I made?

Your progression should be visible not only in your job titles, but in the substance of what you have done.

If you’re a senior professional

The more experience you accumulate, the more important it becomes to know what not to include. You don’t need to tell the reader everything. Don’t list dozens of projects and technologies simply because you happened to work with them at some point in your career.

Sometimes the most important skill is knowing what to leave out.

The paradox is that the more information we add, the harder it becomes to see what really matters. A strong senior CV doesn’t show everything. It shows what is most relevant.

If you’re applying for a more junior role

This is something we’re seeing increasingly often, and there are many possible reasons behind it. What matters here is context. When someone with ten years of management experience applies for an individual contributor role, questions will inevitably arise in the recruiter’s mind. And the “overqualified” label rarely works in your favour.

Two or three clear sentences in your summary can prevent many of those questions.

Help the person reading your CV understand the story and the motivation behind your decision.

If you work as a freelancer

Freelancer | 2020 – Present

And that’s it?!

“Freelancer” isn’t a job title. It describes a way of working. What matters is what you actually did: the clients or types of clients you worked with, the industries you worked in, your role, the problems you solved and the specific projects you delivered.

That is your professional experience.

If you’re changing career direction

This is one of the most difficult situations, in my opinion. The person reading your CV sees your past, while you want to talk about your future. So build a clear bridge between the two. What from your previous experience will help you succeed in the new role?

Be clear and intentional. Don’t rely on the employer to make all the connections for you.

Instead of a conclusion

Before you send your CV, run through this short checklist:

Is it clear what kind of role I’m looking for?
Is the most important information visible early enough?
Does my CV show who I am today, rather than who I was five years ago?
Am I describing results and contribution, rather than just responsibilities?
Is it easy to read?
Is there anything that no longer needs to be there?
Have I checked the spelling and grammar?
Does my summary say something specific?
Have I selected the right skills?
If I used AI, does this still sound like my professional story?

And one last thing.

Before you hit Send, do something very simple.

Leave your CV alone for a few hours. Then open it again and read it as though you were seeing it for the first time.

If you still like it, and more importantly, if you can quickly understand who you are, what you can do and where you want to go next, then you have probably told your story well.

Good luck!

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