The happy new year to all! I am here again to convey to you whatever I know and experienced. I always want people to find information easily and use it comfortably. That's the reason I am writing to you, guys. Do not struggle as I did or the others. You can find the information you are looking for here. Anyways, let's get started!
From my experience, if you are applying for a summer internship or a Master's or Ph.D., they don't care about how you look like, it is even weird in some regions to put a picture of you to the CV. However, it could be different for job applications. So, as you can see below in my old CV, I started with my name and key contact details such as my e-mail address, phone number, skype ID, and home address. Following it, there should be different sections for education, professional skills, work experience, awards, honours etc. Everybody has their own way so I suggest you to not copy any CV examples you find online because there are tons of them.. just get the idea and create one for yourself. Nowadays, it is prevalent that there are some types of CVs available which make it easy to understand if it is copied. Â
The first question comes to mind while creating a CV is the layout of the resume. Let's say you are applying for a summer internship or a postgraduate education, then you should have your education right after contact info. The reason is that people spend the least of the time reading your CV. Yes. I am sorry, this will make you sorry but people are busy so you need to catch their attention in a few minutes with your catchy titles and points. Thus, depending on the purpose of your application, the way you prepare your CV, pages of it, some subsections might change. So, I can only advise you to look from the reviewer's way and prepare it accordingly. It is important that what message you'd like to convey with your CV.
For an internship application at a university, you should put your educational background to the top in your CV. Mention your research skills, teamwork and management skills if you are going to work with a group, projects you get involved with, or papers you’ve published. These will be the first things they will be looking for since they would like to take you there for a short time with the skills you are looking for. Take the eyes to the points in your CV. If you are applying to a company, make sure you really know what they do. Ask several questions to yourself while preparing your CV such as what skills should I jot down that can show me out from the crowd? What skills are they looking for a short term internship? How could you be helpful there? Why should they select you?
For postgraduate application, of course, your background information is the most catchy one. Your GPA (most importantly), papers (if you have, that’s awesome! Put them the top), research skills, teamwork, experiences, and finally extracurricular activities. I don’t believe they spend much time on your CV but they do spend time on your transcript, research statement, and reference letters.
I highly recommend using Europass to create your CV. It has the sections and subsections already there, you just need to fill them out. It is especially useful if you apply for Erasmus+ projects and other things in Europe. I also had one prepared with Europass but after a while, I preferred to create one for myself. You can find the link below if you'd like to use it.
