A CV has one job: to make someone decide, in seconds, that you are worth reading properly.
What it needs
- Name and contact. A phone number with WhatsApp and a professional email address.
- Location. City and province.
- Qualifications. With institution and year, stated precisely.
- Experience. Employer, role, dates and what you actually did.
- Certifications, with validity dates.
- Professional registration where your field requires it.
What to leave out
National ID number, marital status, number of children, religion. None of it helps the decision.
Mining and engineering
Safety certifications with expiry dates near the top, along with specific equipment, systems and standards you have worked with. These are often threshold requirements.
An expired certification reads worse than none.
NGOs and development
Formal qualifications stated precisely, project experience with named donors or programmes, monitoring and evaluation skills, and clear written English — reporting is a core deliverable.