We’re going to build your master CV together and tailor it for your target job. First, grab our free CV template here – it’s already formatted perfectly for hiring systems, and I’ll walk you through exactly how to fill it in.

To use this template:

• Edit in Google Docs: Click File > Make a copy.

• Edit in Word: Click File > Download > Microsoft Word.

1. Contact information

First, fill in your contact information using the placeholders in the CV template.

Here are some guidelines to keep in mind:

• Email: Avoid including your birth year in your email address – and check your spam daily.

• Phone: Include the country code if you’re applying for international roles. Set up and test your voicemail.

• Location/address: Living close to a workplace gives you an advantage. If your commute to the workplace is an hour or less, include your town and city. For longer commutes, just include city and country.

• LinkedIn: Include a link to your profile – and hyperlink the word “LinkedIn”.

• Portfolio/website (if applicable): Add your website or portfolio link – and hyperlink the label.

• Reduce bias: Do not include your age, marital status, religion, salary expectations, place of birth or sexual orientation.

2. Find a job description for the role you want

Next, you need to figure out what employers are looking for so you can position yourself as the right fit. 

Applying with a generic CV is a waste of time. Your CV is not a summary of everything you've ever done. It’s a summary of how you can do the specific job you’re applying for. You have to spell that out for the recruiter – they won’t assume what you've done.

To do this, find a well-written job spec for your target position. Take note of the role overview, the responsibilities, and anything labelled “required”, “requirements”, “must have” or “qualifications”. Your CV needs to clearly show that your experience covers these areas.

If you see a lot of variation across different job specs, merge the common requirements into one ‘mega’ job description and save it in a doc. This is what you’ll use to position yourself as the solution for the hiring company.

3. Writing your professional experience

Now that you’ve a good understanding of what employers are looking for, it’s time to tailor your CV for the job. We’re going to start by writing the professional experience section of your CV.

Under the ‘Professional Experience’ heading in the CV template, start with your most recent job and work backwards. Fill in your job title, company name, location and employment dates.

If you worked at a smaller or lesser-known company, add a brief company description to help the recruiter connect your experience to the job.

4. Writing your bullet points

Now it’s time to add your relevant work experience.

Your goal is to prove you can do the job – so start from the top of the job description and go through each requirement one by one.

Take the first requirement and write a bullet point that shows you’ve done that exact thing – either by listing a task you were responsible for or a result you achieved. Rinse and repeat this process for each requirement in the job spec.

For the structure of your bullet points, explain what you did, how you did it and what good came out of your work – think about what your work achieved or what your work enabled/facilitated/allowed to happen. 

When possible, quantify your experience. Adding numbers demonstrates the scale of your work and validates your impact.

Each bullet point should highlight a different aspect of your job rather than repeating the same skill or responsibility.

How many bullet points should you include? As many as needed to show you meet the key job requirements.

5. Match the order of the job spec 

Arrange your duties and achievements in the same order as they appear in the job description. For example, if the job description lists a forklift licence first, get your forklift licence front and centre on your CV. 

This ensures that you only include relevant experience – experience that the hiring manager actually cares about. This gives you the best chance of landing interviews.

6. Gaps in experience

If you spot gaps between your background and the job description, bridge them by mentioning your similar experience and achievements, along with transferable skills. Focus on examples that prove you can handle those tasks, even if your experience doesn’t match the job description word-for-word.

For example:

• If you’ve no experience with specific software, mention a similar one you’ve mastered and describe how you used it to improve things.

• If you haven’t led a team, highlight times you trained, coached or took ownership of tasks or projects.

• If you lack experience in a specific process, show where you’ve applied the same underlying skill and back it up with evidence of a positive result.

The goal is to connect the dots for the recruiter. Show that while your experience may look different on paper, you already use the same skills in practice.

If you’re currently employed, think about how you can start filling gaps where you are. Review the job spec for your target role and see if you can take on any duties that you don't currently do. Other ways you can fill experience gaps are by joining/volunteering for projects, introducing new processes/ideas, shadowing a colleague in another department or moving internally. 

7. Professional summary

Now let’s write your professional summary. This is the short paragraph that sits at the top of your CV. It should qualify you in for the role at a glance.

Use it to tick off the must-haves from the job description. Try to mirror the job overview/summary.

To help with writing your professional summary, use this template as a guide:

[Job Title] with [number]+ years of experience in [key skill / requirement 1 from the job description], [key skill / requirement 2 from the job description], and [key skill / requirement 3 from the job description] across the [industries/sectors you've worked in].

What to keep in mind:

• Include your job title and years of experience only if they closely match the job requirements. If your current title doesn’t align with the target role, use a broader term like “[Industry] professional” (e.g., “Sales professional”). 

• If you have less experience than required (e.g., they seek 10+ years and you have 7), avoid specifying years. Instead, say “experienced in [field]” and focus on the relevant problems you solve.

Optional: adding career highlights & achievements

You can also add a second bullet in your professional summary that highlights an achievement that proves you can do the job. Use this template as a guide:

Track record of [summarise a key achievement, responsibility, or skill relevant to the job description], resulting in [mention a high-level outcome or impact, such as improvements, targets met or contributions to company goals].

8. Education, certifications & training

Complete these sections using the placeholders provided in the CV template.

Reorder this section as needed – e.g., for graduate roles, place Education above Professional Experience.

To reduce potential bias, omit dates for education or certifications older than 15 years.

9. Technical skills and key skills

These two sections help recruiters quickly see that you have the technical ability and core expertise needed for the role.

Technical skills: List all relevant tools, systems, technologies and software you’ve worked with that are specific to your target role. 

Key skills: List your main hard skills. Avoid soft skills like “communication” or “team player”. Instead, focus on skills that prove you can do the job – e.g., supply chain management, inventory checks, copywriting, budgeting, project planning. Aim for 5–10 relevant hard skills that match the key skills included in the job description.

10. Optional sections

Hobbies & interests, awards and volunteer work are all completely optional. If you choose to include them, keep each to one line at the end of your CV and use the placeholders provided in the CV template.

11. Final edits

Removing empty outcomes and AI slop

When using AI tools to write your CV, they tend to end bullet points with generic phrases that state the obvious, such as “ensuring [generic statement relevant to previous sentence].” While sometimes helpful, these phrases are often redundant. Aim to replace vague outcomes with specific results.

AI also has a habit of including empty bullet points, such as "Assisted in meetings as required" or "Fulfilled additional responsibilities as required."  These bullet points take up valuable space without saying anything. The recruiter already knows you do these things.

Avoid using cliché terms like “hard worker”, “results-driven”, etc. They don’t add any value to your CV.

Formatting 

Run through this checklist to make sure the information on your CV is formatted consistently throughout the document:

• Make sure spacing and paragraph breaks are consistent throughout your CV.

• Remove any extra spaces between words.

• Ensure the text size, font colour and font style are consistent throughout the document.

• Check each sentence for proper punctuation, particularly full stops at the end of each bullet point.

• Capitalise product names, client names and software tools. Google them to double-check you have spelt each correctly. For example, people commonly spell Salesforce as SalesForce.

• Keep verb tenses consistent throughout bullet points. It's best practice to go with past tense, e.g., managed, led, etc.

• Avoid long paragraphs. Use concise bullet points that are easy to read (2 sentences max).

• Include the months of employment at each job you held. If you don’t, it looks like you’re hiding something.

• Avoid unnecessary headings like ‘Personal Profile’ as they take up valuable real estate or ‘References available upon request’ – it can be assumed you have references ready to go.

• Unless it’s a cultural norm, don’t include a photo.

Spell checking

Proofreading: Take time to check for typos and grammatical errors – some recruiters will reject you over a minor mistake. Convert your CV to PDF and reread it carefully. Changing the format helps you spot mistakes you might otherwise miss. Also, try reading it backward to catch errors your eyes might skip.

Grammar checking tools: Copy your CV into a spell-checking website to identify potential grammar issues. QuillBot is a good one. Keep in mind that not every word that's highlighted will be an error. These spell-checking tools aren’t perfect, so use your own judgement.

Microsoft Word: After you have tidied up any grammatical mistakes, if possible, copy your CV into Microsoft Word. Word will pick up on minor mistakes that spell-checking sites tend to miss, like proper capitalisation for product names and software applications.

How many pages?

Aim for two pages. Doing so adds useful constraints that keep your CV tight and relevant. That said, use as many pages as you need to prove you’re qualified. If you have 15+ years’ experience, that might be 3 pages.

One thing to keep in mind: recruiters are quickly scanning your CV at the application stage, meaning most of their attention is going to go on page one – so make sure your most relevant experience appears there. To prevent key experience from being overlooked on pages 2 or 3, use your Professional Summary at the top of your CV as a ‘Career Highlights’ section to showcase your biggest wins upfront.

PDF or Word Doc?

When submitting your CV, use a PDF format unless the employer specifically requests a Word Doc. PDFs preserve formatting across all devices, while Word Docs can appear messy when opened on certain mobile devices.

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Next steps: How to write your cover letter

Now that your CV is ready, it’s time to do the same for your cover letter.

In the next guide, I’m going to show you how to write one base cover letter template that you can quickly tweak for every single application - so you never have to write from scratch again.

Access the cover letter guide here.