Whether you are looking for your first job, looking for a new job or are unemployed, Curriculum vitae (CV) is an essential part of entering the job market. But how do you create a good CV to attract recruiters?

In general, to get interviews and even a job, this document needs to contain the main information about you and your career.

However, if it has too much data or is not complete enough, it may not even be read by the person hiring.

Want to know how to create a resume in a simple and error-free way? Check out the step-by-step guide below!

To make a resume you don't need to invest a lot of time as many people think.

Simply by combining your personal data, professional experience, main skills and studies, you can have a good CV.

Therefore, your first step will be to define your professional goals. In this sense, show the recruiter what you have done and what you are doing now, what motivates you to apply for the position and how you see yourself now and in the future. See below an example:

“I have a degree in Literature and have been writing blog posts since 2020. Through my words, I want to inspire people and produce truly interesting content for those who are reading.”

And continue talking about expectations for the future:

“I am currently seeking more knowledge in the areas of scriptwriting and writing advertising texts and, in the long term, I hope to be able to teach more people to do what I do and show them how to work online.”

As your CV must contain essential information, but cannot be lacking or over-informed, what you can do is pay attention to fundamental details. 

To help you, we have some tips on what must appear:

Therefore, before you start writing your CV, have everything at hand so that you only have to worry about filling in the information. 

Also, try to keep all the information on just one page as much as possible. This is because recruiters tend to evaluate multiple resumes quickly, so they want to read objective files without too much fuss.

Have you ever stopped to think about what you absolutely cannot put on your CV?

Well, there is some information that is not relevant. Since you will probably be writing your own resume, you should know that you do not need to include:

So, now that we’ve seen what should and shouldn’t appear when writing a resume, check out how to create yours from scratch. In short, there are 8 simple steps:

First, think about the layout of your resume, that is, how to structure it. In short, separate the top part of the page for the header, space to add your personal information. 

The rest of the document is dedicated to skills, professional experience, training courses, etc.

Once you have chosen the layout in which you will create your CV, think about how to fill in your personal details. 

In this sense, use the header to include your name, contact information (telephone and email), link to social networks such as LinkedIn and other information you consider important.

You can choose to place this information further to the left or right, depending on what you think looks best!

Once you have created your personal profile, it is time to talk about your experience. Since not everyone works in the same field, try to understand how other professionals prepare a resume when creating yours.

Also, start this part with a professional summary (like the one we showed at the beginning) and then your experiences.

When it comes to saying where you work and have worked, choosing to put your information in reverse chronological order can help the recruiter. By doing this, your most recent jobs will appear first and will be more important when the evaluator reads your CV.

When adding your job details, include your job title, company name, start and end dates (or if it is your current job) and the most important things you did in this role.

As with the professional part, using reverse chronological order can also be used when you create the part of your resume dedicated to your education.

In this sense, separate your teaching skills into parts such as: degree, courses and school.

After that, add the information from newest to oldest:

Skills and competencies are essential for a complete resume. Therefore, select 5 to 10 things that you have aptitude or mastery of to add to your CV. 

Here, you can add both personal and professional skills such as:

Remember that the items above are just examples. And more: do not add skills that you do not have. As explained before, lying is not an option!

Concluding the part where you enter new information when creating your CV, it is worth adding data such as:

This data may have a special section like “Other relevant information” or something like that. Also, choose only a few elements to add, not everything!

Have you finished writing? Then it's time to standardize everything. In this sense, make sure everything is written in an easy-to-read font; Arial and Times New Roman are usually the most recommended.

Also, check that the lines are spaced at least 1.15pt, so that they are not 'one on top of the other' and that all sections are well marked.

It is worth highlighting the subtitles “Work experience”, “Training”, “Skills”, etc.

Finally, review everything carefully to make sure you haven't missed any spelling or grammar mistakes. No one wants to write a CV with mistakes, right?!

Everything checked?

So I can say that you have learned how to make a stress-free resume with everything you need for the positions you want. And now, all you have to do is hand it in or send it to the recruiters.