What Sections Should My CV Have?

Sections in a CV are very important because they determine whether or not someone will read your CV. Having the right ones leads to success. But, how can you know what’s true and what’s not? What sections should your CV have? If you feel lost and confused, know that you’re not alone!

In this article, we will go through the anatomy of a CV and explain what’s needed and what’s not. So, here we go…

The first part of a CV

Well, the first part of your CV is not actually a section. First, you need to have your contact information. We’re talking full name, active phone number, and an email address that you frequently use. There is no need for you to enter your home address in a CV – it is not mandatory.

Once you got this down, we can move on to your opening section of a CV.

What sections should my CV have?

The opener

Once you got the contact information sorted, we’d always recommend having a good “overview” section. That’s the approach we use when it comes to CV openers. This section needs to be written in accordance with your desired position. To put it simply, this is where you start optimizing your CV so the screening software recognizes you as a good candidate.

Depending on your situation, you will emphasize skills, experience or qualifications. Or maybe you’ll have all 3 – it doesn’t matter. What matters is that your opening section shows you as a good fit.

If your opening section is good, the person will keep on reading your CV.

The following sections

The next section in your CV will be either your relevant work experience or your educational background.

Truth be told, it depends on your situation – maybe you just completed a course needed to boost your career. Or maybe you’ve got 8 years of experience in the field. Whatever it may be, make sure it comes right after the opener. Why? Because that’s the foundation of your application.

PRO TIP: If you have relevant experience, we’d recommend going with that because it’s always a huge plus if you’ve worked in a similar position.

However, if you recently graduated or you’re changing careers and your strongest weapon is your education – you should include that section in your CV next.

Why is the order of sections of a CV important?

The most important things should always come first because you need to present yourself as a good candidate. You need to show (with the sections of your CV) that you are the right person for the job. If you don’t start out strong, chances are, no one will finish reading your CV. So, if you want to be considered for the job, you need to know your strong points and you need to show them in your CV – the sooner, the better.

How does a professional CV look like?

Linking Lines writes professional, customized CVs which means there are no two CVs alike. This is simply because people have different backgrounds and skills and there’s no template in which we could fit it all. That is why we do not have the usual sections in a CV, we individualize it.

For example, with all the templates out there, people are used to a certain structure of a CV. They expect to have a profile/personal statement, skills section, education section, work history section, interests/hobbies section, and references. Usually, our CVs are way simpler because we remove things that bring no value. We only show to the reader the best of the client and we make sure CVs are optimized and therefore successful.

Sections in our CVs are usually:

• Overview section: “the best of” that corresponds to the position the client’s going to apply for. The title varies depending on the situation. Sometimes, it’s a Career Overview while sometimes, it’s Summary of Skills. It really depends on the client’s situation.
• Work experience: presented in order of importance/relevance. What does this mean? We present the most relevant experiences first, and sometimes it’s the only experience we present (depending on the client’s situation). The title also depends on the content, but it’s always reflective of the situation: “Relevant Work Experience”, “Related Work Experience”, “Selected Work Experience”, etc.
• Education: as the name of the section suggests, it’s all about education. This includes online courses, university degrees, and sometimes workshops and internal training sessions. Again, depends on the client’s situation. The title of the section also varies – it can be simply “Education” or “Education & Professional Training” or something along those lines.

Isn’t something missing?

If you have certain expectations about your CV structure that are based on templates, you’re probably surprised by our simplicity.

You noticed that we do not talk about hobbies, there’s no profile overview and there are no references. This is by design, we want it that way. We write professional CVs and we understand that less is more, and you need to give readers what they want to see and you need to do it as fast as possible.

Why is that so? Well, truthfully, it’s because recruiters don’t have time to deep-dive into your personality and they surely won’t need references in this very first stage of the recruitment. We’d be wasting page space with these sections in a CV.

How do others work?

We can’t really talk about other services, but from what we’ve seen, most of them use templates. We do have quite a few clients coming to us after they’ve been unsuccessful with others.

For us, using templates is not an option because we think of each client as an individual. Sections in a CV need to reflect who you are, and there’s no template for that. So, with us, your CV will only have the sections that are good for you. Hence our high success rate.

If you feel like you could benefit from our service, feel free to get in touch by using the form below.

However, if you’d like to give CV writing a chance, you can order our step-by-step professional CV writing guide here. Apply the principles outlined here and get more replies to job applications.

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