How to Optimise Your CV and Stand Out

The tech job market is competitive, so optimising your CV is more important than ever before. Here are some tips on how to perfect your CV.  You need to remember and understand the purpose of your CV. You should see your CV as a tool to get you an interview. It, therefore, needs to highlight your key achievements and the best CVs strike the balance between.

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Structuring your CV

The general structure of a CV should be:

• Name, contact info, relevant links (personal site, GitHub etc)
• Personal summary/career highlights
• Work experience in reverse chronological order
• Education

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Write a Compelling Personal Summary

This is the first thing someone will read, so it needs to be engaging and unique to you.

Include:

• A one/two sentence summary of your experience
• Up to three/four bullet points summarising key achievements/impact you’ve had - you can adapt these based on the role/company you’re applying to.
• Any relevant info that isn’t obviously discernable (e.g. you are looking to relocate to a new city/country, you are looking to move from/into a management role etc)

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Showcasing Your Work experience

This should summarise your overall work experience, with an emphasis on what you’ve done in the past 5 years (it’s this experience that will land you an interview more often than not)

• You should have company name and dates of employment (include the specific month you started and finished, not just the year)
• A one-liner on what the company does, rough size, funding and, particularly if it’s a big company, the focus of your team
• Up to eight bullet points summarising key achievements/impact. Impact being the optimal word, try not to just list responsibilities but how your work contributed to your team’s/wider company’s success. The more metrics you can include the better.
• Data around increased scale, improved user ratings, team growth, and improved performance are particularly useful
• Include a ‘tech used’ section as the final bullet point and list the stack you worked with in order of most exposure to least. Having this under each gives context on how recently you’ve worked with each piece of tech.
• You should still list roles from more than five years ago, but best to just include the company name, job title, dates and a one-liner on who the company is and what you did.

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Ideal CV Length

The ideal tech CV length is two pages, with a clear focus on recent achievements and metrics. Two pages is ideal, it shouldn’t be more than three. Hiring managers/talent partners tends to be time-short, so keeping it concise accommodates that and also demonstrates a focused communication style.

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Interview preparation tips

Most companies follow a similar interview structure, here is a quick guide on how to prep for each stage.

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Research is key

• Look up the person on LinkedIn and see if you have any common connections.
• Research the company, check recent news articles and have a clear idea of what their product does

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Introduction call

• Have an ‘elevator pitch’ ready that summarises your experience, why you’re looking for something new and why you have an initial interest in their role/company. This should be no more than 60-90 seconds.
• Make sure you’ve played about with the product itself and can clearly explain what it does
• Answer the questions that are being asked and don’t shoehorn achievements in. Companies value concise, to-the-point responses.
• Have at least 2-3 questions prepared at the end. Focus these on topics like: the mission of the role/company, key challenges the company is facing, company culture, growth plans etc  

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Live coding/system design interviews

• Ask if there are any specific tools you need to be set up on before the interview, so your environment is ready to go from the off. You don’t want to be scrambling to set something up during the interview - it reduces the amount of time you have to answer and makes a poor first impression.
• Take a few moments at the start to clarify the requirements and expectations of what they want you to achieve in the timeframe e.g. some companies will want to get to a working solution (even if not an optimal version), others will want you to approach it more methodically as you might do in the real world. Establish this at the start so you can tailor your approach accordingly! 
• Explain your approach in real-time so the interviewer understands why you’re doing it the way you are and the trade-offs you’re taking into consideration. They’re testing your communication and collaboration skills as well as your tech ability.
• If given the choice, use tools you’re familiar with.
• Listen to feedback - the interviewer will want this to be a smooth experience so will often drop hints and share real-time feedback - listen to what they’re saying and try to implement it.
• If you don’t know something, be honest, you’re not expected to know everything, the best approach is to acknowledge it’s not an area of strength but explain how you’d go about getting up to speed with it
• Likewise, it’s very tempting to focus on areas of the solution you’re more familiar with and ignore the areas you aren’t - try to talk through the problem holistically, even if it means addressing areas of weakness. It’s better to appear aware of what you don’t know, rather than ignorant.

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Soft skills

• The STAR interview technique is the best way to structure your answers
• Use real-world examples, not hypothetical scenarios
• Use ‘I’ when talking about your achievements and ‘we’ when it’s the teams
• Include metrics/data as evidence to strengthen your point
• Often companies will focus these questions around their values - see if you can find them on their careers page and think of examples of times you’ve demonstrated them

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By following these tips, you’ll create a standout CV and demonstrate the preparation and skills needed to land your dream tech role.

Good luck!