The high demand for tech talent is a double-edged sword. While it’s good to know there are plenty of employers who need your skills, it’s also pretty hard to stand out from the countless other tech professionals on the market. Here’s a selection of CV tips to help you project – and differentiate – yourself in the best possible way.
Start with a bang
Introduce your CV with a short and punchy profile that gives an overview of your skills, your experience and what you can bring to an employer. If you’re a web designer, outline your design skills and how you use them to win business and satisfy customers. Research the most sought-after qualities in your field and reflect them in your profile.
Make it practical
A CV should be more than just a list of all the software, tools and programming languages you’ve used in your career. You need to show how you apply your technical abilities practically and explain the changes you’ve made to businesses.
Count on clarity
Make sure your CV is easy to digest and cleanly laid out, with a bullet-pointed core skills section and employment summary. Prospective employers need to be able to pick out the key information on a CV quickly and easily. This is especially important for a technical CV.
Write in plain English so that your CV makes sense to non-technical people. Assume the person reading your CV thinks that Java is an island of Indonesia.
Mention the metrics
Use statistics to show the impact you’ve made in your previous roles. These could include the value of a project you were leading, the number of staff you managed, the number of users you supported and the amount of time you took to respond to queries.
Stay up-to-date
By the time you’ve put a tech CV together, tech has probably changed. So make sure you update your CV regularly. It doesn’t mean you’re always looking to move – but it’ll save you a lot of trouble when you do come to search for a new job. Keep up-to-date with the newest and most popular technologies and mention them on your CV.
Streamline your skills
Include only the technical skills that are important to the role you’re applying for. Listing your entire technical repertoire will only obscure skills that are actually relevant and make your CV tough going for any hiring managers.
Transcend the tech
You need more than tech skills to thrive in an organisation. The biggest tech expert in the world won’t be much use to an employer without the ability to interact with other human beings. List your wider skills, such as communication and leadership, to give employers a holistic view of the value you can bring to their company. For example, you might have experience of managing suppliers and gaining sign-off for software upgrades.
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