Title.
I have a lot of skills I use in my hobbies and helping others out, I study tech shit, physical\digital art and other languages, but my current employment is so basic it doesn’t need any of these things. And I have no in-paper proof I know them.
While writing my CV, I feel pretty lost. My position doesn’t say anything at all, and I don’t know how to show I have experience editing photoes, sound and video in Adobe, coding shit in different languages when it’s needed.
Do you have some guides to write a good CV? Or how to write in your occasional works in unrelated fields?
upd: One fucking doctor in my field asked me why I’m still there with all things I did they know about. I didn’t know what to answer.
upd2: Thank you Lemmers, you rock.
You want a functional resume, which focuses more on skills rather than work history. I know a CV isn’t the exact same thing as a resume, but it’s similar enough that if you searched “functional resume examples” you would have a good starting point. You can always include skills that you obtained through education/hobbies/volunteer activities too.
Hobbies and skills sections are good for the other bits. You can call them freelancing. :)
This is really cool, but I think they need better screenshots. The centered resume feels… wrong
It’s just a stylistic choice; there’s other templates. Check their docs for more: https://docs.rxresu.me/
This one is paid (about 5£), but I like the colourful templates a bit more and used it: https://www.cvmaker.uk/ The other one is FOSS. They both have a ton of styles that are really sleek.
Thank you. I’d look into it :)
PS: https://www.jobscan.co/blog/top-resume-keywords-boost-resume/
A lot of these resumes are fed through an ATS algorithm to weed out candidates. Use the keywords here and whatever ones they are using in the advert to pass through it. :)
Gotta love how you pretty much need SEO for your resume to get past their resume scanners and get yours seen.
I never use cover letters, but I would in your case.
I’ve recently gone through something like 80 CVs for three positions and only one had a cover letter. In it they explained their situation and eagerness to have their career be more involved in the advertised position. In this letter, they explained a lot of what they know and can do which their current experience did not really indicate.
Their understanding of the role and clear eagerness to build into this pathway has scored them an interview. I see in them the potential to mentor and quickly train a very interested mind. If they’re as impressive in the interview, I’ll prefer them over people that are experienced and specialised, simply because they’re an eager clean slate that can hit the ground running somewhat, and that’s quite a breath of fresh air.
Another manager chiming in to say this all day over people who are entrenched in their ways.
I passed on interviewing a guy of 30 years experience because almost all of the new hires with little to no experience were outpacing their experienced counterparts.
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They get 30-40 on average. It takes me the better half of the day to review them all. People have work to do; you don’t. Customise your resumes for the application and sometimes that means a letter in certain situations goes a long way.
If you’re sending out the same resume you spent a few hours doing, week after week, you’ve done five hours of work in several weeks. You can’t expect people working 40 hr work weeks, where reviewing resumes is an addition task, to then start writing personalised responses to every person.
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Write in accomplishment statements. There are plenty of guides online about how to do that. I straight up have a categorised list of skills at the top of my resume and then below they have an accompanying accomplishment statement that explains how I have used that skill. This gives an easy way for the interviewer to ask you about something you can talk to.
Attach a portfolio of work when appropriate, visual examples are great to show what you know.
I agree with this but really appreciate when people say if they did it with a team and what their role is.
I see resumes from people a year out “school” saying they did stuff in three months that takes a team of senior devs that long. I’m looking for honest team members. That experience is valuable and it’s ok to be the person who played a supporting role.
Yeah, don’t lie about it, just make it clear what you can do. At least when I interview people I will ask questions about your work experience that will show how well you know your stuff. I also appreciate when they show that they are good team players, both as someone working as a member, and if they are more experienced, both leading others and under others.
My technique is an initial conversation, then a soft skills interview, then a technical interview where I get a senior Dev to sit in. Long process but has excellent outcomes.
Applications the easy part. Its the behavioral interview questions that are challenging. Holy heck.
“Tell me about a time . . .”
Gives me the shakes
I usually write it in “other experience”. Personally I like to include the languages that I know with some description of how well I read/write/speak/understand them and my experience with working with those countries. I also include various hobbies in the more personal data section, even if they’re not related to the current position. It’s also perfectly fine to add an entire section just for IT-skills if you think it makes sense. All jobs involve IT somehow, so it’s usually a good idea to mention something about it. Even if the job doesn’t require you to know C++ or Adobe it still shows that you understand IT better than on MS Office user level
Write down in simple words without much thought what all your skills are. Throw those into chatgpt with the question to write a cover letter and make a CV. Tell it to ask you extra questions to complete the cv for you.
Et Voila!
