Your CV¶
Your CV is a key document in your search for employment.
You need to pay attention to what your CV says, but also how it says it.
Many job applicants pay much more attention to the first of these, and fail to appreciate how much the latter matters. They put a lot of care into making sure it includes the things they think matter, but don’t always manage to make a good impression with it.
Both those things matter, and arguably, what a busy reviewer will often take away from your CV is an impression.
Another thing that many don’t realise is that what an employer expects in a CV can be very different, depending which part of the world they’re in. A CV that works for Germany might be much less successful for Canada or India. We’ll highlight some points where that might matter below.
But let’s start with the content, which is more straightforward.
What your CV should contain¶
Personal details¶
The basics: your full name, email address, telephone number.
Your name¶
Your name might not be as simple as you think it is.
Someone from a European background could be named “James Williams” from the day of his birth, all through school and life, in every context and on every document, until the day he dies. As far as his name is concerned, he has one simple and unchanging identity.
It’s much more complex for many Africans, whose identities can be multi-dimensional. Many Africans use different given names and even family names depending on the context and whom they are talking to.
This can be a complete puzzle for non-Africans: why does this candidate put the name Miriam Ofili on the application form, use something different on her CV and she sign her email messages with something else again?
For the purpose of presenting yourself in the world of international business, it’s recommended to choose a version of your name and stick to it everywhere, as far as possible - in person, in your email address, on LinkedIn.
Prejudice and discrimination¶
No doubt you have heard depressing stories of non-western candidates who suddenly find better success when they use westernised versions of their names, or hide their cultural identity by adopting a western name.
In one sense perhaps it’s a lucky escape, but it’s still wrong and unfair.
Without doubt it happens, but it’s hard to know how much, or what to advise.
Your email address¶
It helps if your email address appears to match your name - if Miriam Ofili uses the email address afua.appiah@example.com, that’s confusing - even if there is a perfectly good reason for it that would be obvious to a Ghanaian. And whatever address you use, let it look professional. Maybe coolzimboy98 was how you wanted the world to see you in high school, but perhaps it’s time to use something else for professional purposes.
Phone number¶
Format your phone number, for example +233 23 123456, in such a way that an international caller can enter it directly.
Many in Africa will use multiple phone numbers by default. List two if you really have to, but better to keep it simple with one for an international CV. (It’s quite unlikely that anyone will actually call you from abroad anyway.)
Other personal information¶
In general, a western CV reviewer will not expect to see your full home address, but it’s recommended to include e.g. Accra, Ghana (that provides useful information, such as time zone).
Few will have any need to see your photograph. Some (especially in North America) will be rather surprised. Don’t include a photograph unless the company is based somewhere that photographs are expected, such as South Africa. Do your research and find out what is expected.
There is almost never a good reason to mention your religion, age, health or marital status.
A personal statement¶
This is optional. It can give a neat snapshot of you as person, but it shouldn’t be more than few words - perhaps one or two sentences - that says who you are, where you want to be going, and why.
I am a recent computer science graduate. In my studies I saw directly how low-literacy mobile health applications can bring tangible benefits to marginalised rural communities. I want a career where I can contribute to that too.
or:
An experienced Python developer and software coach with a passion for standards and education. I especially enjoy working with and contributing back to the open-source software projects and communities that gave me my first opportunities.
Don’t make it longer. Don’t repeat things that you’re going to say elsewhere in the CV. Don’t waste the space with disconnected and fluffy words - even if it is a picture of you from a bit of distance, it needs to be solid and real.
Work history¶
Always in reverse order, most recent at the top. Include dates and places, and name the role.
This space is precious, so use it well. Don’t waste it stating the obvious. If you were working as a backend engineer, it’s completely useless to note that you “wrote backend code” (what else would you expect a backend engineer to do?).
What you need to do here is show the value you brought - what you contributed. Notice how the examples below also name particular products and tools:
Created automated test cases (Pytest, Playwright) to address several long-standing fragilities, that helped resolve them once and for all
Rewrote all the tutorials for the product; we saw a 20% drop in common new-user support requests as result
They keep showing what you did, and what value you brought in your work.
You can also mention one-off things; even if they weren’t part of the main story, they show what kind of person you are:
Awarded “Developer of the Month” for completing a complex refactor of our Postgres database code
or:
Spoke at <some conference> about some interesting scaling challenges as we migrated MySQL from the cloud to bare metal
Weave your skills into this. Seeing a skill mentioned in the context of an achievement gives it a reality that listing it on its own never will.
Contracting, freelance, part-time roles¶
A problem for many African candidates in particular is that they have a patchy work history, that’s simply a consequence of the limited and unstable nature of the opportunities available in their economy.
It can look bad on a CV - messy and hard to understand, and suggesting that the candidate has neither focus-power nor commitment, with overlapping jobs in different fields, with no sense of progression or direction.
It might not be possible for you to avoid this, but ensure that you describe them in a way that makes them look more coherent, and clearly shows that they all belong under a heading of contracting or freelance work. For example:
Contracting roles 2021-2025
Technical documentation (Sphinx, RST), SEO, website maintenance (<client one>)
White papers, website content, technical articles (<client two>)
Data analysis (Pandas, NumPy, Jupyter) and presentation (Matplotlib, Seaborn) (<client three>)
Technical support, customer outreach, lead generation (<client four>)
In this case, you could make it look even more intentional: Samuel Oni Technical Communication (contracting roles 2021-2025). And why not? Entire companies have a business model like this, such as agencies.
Education and qualifications¶
Once again, most recent at the top, including dates. Should you include grades? If they’re excellent (first class honours degree, for example) then that is a good idea.
There’s probably no need to include high school qualifications, unless you are very early in your career (or you have some spectacular results to share).
And, if you won a maths olympiad or received a national prize or award in your studies, mention that.
Other qualifications and certifications can be useful, but be realistic about how much value they are. It might be worth mentioning small online courses, if only to show that you take professional development seriously - e.g. perhaps:
Online certification/courses: Cybersecurity Basic and Advanced; Python for HPC (Pluralsight), AWS Cloud level III
Volunteer and open-source work¶
Don’t underestimate the value of these - they show that you care enough about something to do something for it. If you have contributed to open-source, many companies will love that.
Don’t forget that being the president of a university society, the treasurer or chairperson of an association, the organiser of a big student event are all good examples of work, that demonstrate your skills and the ability to contribute value.
The biggest and most impressive ones should always go first.
Articles and research publications¶
If you have some, they can be worth mentioning. Don’t start listing every single thing you wrote on your weblog, that looks silly.
Skills¶
Be really careful with this. Usually, it’s a waste of space. Most of these should have already been woven into the descriptions of what you did in the work history section, where they will have more meaning. On the other hand, some experts recommend including it.
Consider:
Why bother mentioning Python as a skill if you already mentioned that you spent five years as a Python engineer?
“Problem solving” - no reviewer is going to see that and think: “Great! We really need a problem-solver!” The same goes for “Leadership”, “Collaboration”, and so on.
If you are fresh out of university, don’t list half a dozen programming languages.
“MS Office” is not a skill, and who cares, anyway?
The problem with these is that all you can do is say you have a certain skill, and anyone can say that. You need to find ways to show your skills, don’t just assert them, to make it credible.
Languages¶
One thing that African candidates often underestimate the value of is how many languages they speak - it can be very impressive. It can be worth mentioning those, for example:
Language fluency: English (professional), French (basic), Arabic (basic), Amharic (near-native), Tigrinya (native)
It’s valuable not because you might find yourself needing to speak Amharic or Tigrinya at work, but because it demonstrates ability. But don’t ever over-claim.
Personal interests and achievements¶
Are you a chess grandmaster? Are you a top gymnast, able to perform amazing feats? Did you win a national short-story competition? Mention it.
Be a little bit specific. “I enjoy reading” doesn’t tell anyone much, but “… and I am fascinated by the postcolonial literature of the Indian subcontinent” shows real interest and depth.
And, express what it means to you: “Playing football with my local team each weekend has been an important part of my life for several years” says something that “I like playing football” does not.
You never know when something that you like will trigger a spark of recognition in an interviewer.
Take your time setting all these things down, in a simple document. At first, be concerned only with the content, not how it will look, or how to format it. Put down as much as you like - you will have to edit it later to decide on the most important things to keep, but start with everything.
How to present your CV¶
Find a good template¶
Are you a trained graphic designer? No? Then right now stop imagining that you will do a good job of designing your CV: you will not. Instead, take advantage of the fact that there are hundreds of excellent CV templates out there that you can use.
Choose one you like. Simple is almost always better. Resist any urge to go for something fancy.
Use the design carefully. Don’t spoil it by clumsily pasting in new fonts and text sizes, or messing up the spacing. Learn to use styles in your word processor, so that you maintain the template’s consistency.
Decide on the length¶
Now, you must understand that the expected length of a CV is different in different parts of the world:
in Europe and most of the west: two pages
in the USA: a single page
on the Indian subcontinent: up to four pages
So what are you going to do about that that?
It’s exhausting to have to keep rewriting your CV. A sensible choice is to default to two pages. Even if it seems a bit long to an American or a bit short to an Indian, at least it’s not wildly at variance with what they expect.
Cut it to size¶
If you followed the advice above, you will have a lot of information to include. Now you’ll have to go through the painful process of deciding what not to include.
Go through each section, and decide what is the least important, least impressive, least memorable thing. Remove it. Find ways to express what’s left more succinctly. And then repeat that process.
You don’t need to mention everything. If you mention that you took responsibility for the CI testing pipeline, a reader will infer that you know - and did - a lot more besides, all related to testing. When you say something that implies something else, then you won’t need to mention that thing explicitly.
See Be personal, specific and concrete and Show the parts, not the whole. Find ways to show more while saying less.
Avoid the temptation to “cheat” by reducing margins, font sizes and spacing - you will start to make it look cramped.
Customising your CV¶
Consider customising your CV for an application, especially if you are applying to quite different kinds of roles. It’s reasonable to have different versions of your CV.
An example of customising your CV might be to describe yourself as a Documentation-focused developer advocate for one role and - perfectly fairly - as DevRel engineer/technical author for another. You might re-order or even redescribe skills and accomplishments, or omit some for others.
This does take time, and if you do it in a hurry you risk making things worse, not better. It won’t help if you add spelling mistakes.
Automation and AI¶
Many companies use applicant tracking systems (ATS) that automate CV review completely, and make the first decision to advance or reject a candidate. It is hard to know how well these systems handle all the complexities and ambiguities of natural language, and how many candidates fail to advance because the system failed to understand a CV properly.
In any case, many now advise to write CVs not for a human reader, but for a machine. They encourage stuffing the CV with keywords from the job description.
It’s not clear that this is good advice. Possibly it helps when the CV is read by a machine, but to a human being it certainly looks mechanical and wrong.
A similar kind of CV ugliness is produced by AI-powered CV builders. There are many of these, but they seem to produce identical kind of output. Many of them take the principle of showing value to a ludicrous extreme, so that for example every line conforms to a stereotype, complete with overblown language and unlikely-sounding metrics (“Spearheaded a re-organisation of the photocopier paper, achieving a 17.3% improvement in organisational efficiency”).
Don’t fall for that, and don’t fall for the dishonest self-description that some of these sites encourage.
Think for yourself, and think about yourself and your abilities like a human being. You need to be able to do that all the way through the process of securing a job, and you’ll need to do most of it while in conversation with real human beings.