Article 3: Building a Winning CV | How to Write a CV That Gets Noticed

Your CV Is Your First Impression. Make It Count.

Before an employer ever meets you, before they hear your voice or shake your hand, they see your CV. In many cases, that single document is the only thing standing between you and an interview. And yet, most people put surprisingly little thought into it.

The truth is, a great CV does not need to be complicated. It does not need to be ten pages long. It does not need fancy graphics or unusual fonts. What it needs to be is clear, relevant, honest, and easy to read. A recruiter or hiring manager might spend as little as thirty seconds scanning your CV before deciding whether to read it properly or move on to the next one. Your job is to make those thirty seconds count.

The good news is that most CVs out there are not great. They are either too long, too cluttered, too vague, or missing important information. This means that if you follow the guidance in this article and put in a little effort, your CV will almost certainly stand out from the majority of what lands in an employer’s inbox.

Let us build it from the ground up.

How Long Should a CV Be?

This is one of the most common questions, and the answer is simpler than most people think.

For someone just starting out or with less than five years of experience, one to two pages is ideal. For someone with more experience, two to three pages is acceptable. Beyond three pages, you are asking a busy recruiter to do a lot of work, and most will not bother.

The goal is not to fill space. The goal is to include everything relevant and leave out everything that is not. A tight, well-written two-page CV will always beat a bloated five-page one.

What to Include in Your CV

A good South African CV typically includes the following sections, in roughly this order:

1. Personal Details

This goes at the top of your CV and should include:

• Your full name
• Your contact phone number (make sure it is a number you answer and that has voicemail or WhatsApp enabled)
• Your email address (more on this in a moment)
• Your city or general area of residence (you do not need to give your full street address)
• Your LinkedIn profile URL, if you have one

You do not need to include your ID number, your full home address, your marital status, your religion, or a photograph on a South African CV, although some employers do still request a photo. If the job advertisement specifically asks for one, include it. If not, leave it out.

A quick word on email addresses. If your email address is something like “sexybabe1987@gmail.com” or “thug_life_forever@hotmail.com,” please create a new one before you start applying for jobs. Your email address is part of your professional presentation. A simple format like firstname.lastname@gmail.com is perfect and takes two minutes to set up.

2. Professional Summary or Profile

This is a short paragraph, three to five sentences at most, that sits just below your personal details and gives the reader a quick snapshot of who you are professionally. Think of it as your elevator pitch in written form.

A good professional summary covers three things: who you are (your experience level and field), what you are good at (your key strengths), and what you are looking for (the type of role or contribution you want to make).

Here is an example of a weak summary:

“I am a hardworking and dedicated individual who is looking for a challenging position where I can grow and contribute to a dynamic team.”

This tells the employer almost nothing. It is vague, it is generic, and honestly, every second CV says something like this.

Here is a stronger version:

“Customer service professional with four years of experience in retail banking and financial services. Known for resolving complex client queries quickly and maintaining high satisfaction scores. Looking to bring strong communication skills and a client-first approach to a frontline service role in the financial or insurance sector.”

See the difference? The second one is specific, it mentions real experience, it highlights a genuine strength, and it tells the employer what kind of role is being sought. That is a summary worth reading.

3. Work Experience

This is the most important section of your CV, and it should take up the most space. List your work experience in reverse chronological order, meaning your most recent job comes first.

For each position, include:

• The name of the company
• Your job title
• The dates you worked there (month and year is fine, for example: March 2021 to November 2023)
• A brief description of your responsibilities and achievements

The description is where most people go wrong. They either write too little, just the job title and nothing else, or they write a long paragraph of vague duties that does not tell the reader anything useful.

The best approach is to use short, punchy bullet points that describe what you actually did and, where possible, what the result was.

Weak example:

• Responsible for customer service
• Helped with admin tasks
• Worked in a team

Stronger example:

• Handled an average of 60 customer enquiries per day across phone, email, and walk-in channels
• Processed daily cash-up reports and maintained accurate filing systems for a team of eight
• Trained three new staff members on point-of-sale systems and store procedures

The stronger version gives the employer a real sense of the scale of your work and the specific tasks you handled. It is far more convincing.

If you do not have much formal work experience, do not panic. Include any part-time work, holiday jobs, community service, volunteer work, or informal work you have done. Even helping to run a church fundraiser, assisting a family business, or doing odd jobs shows initiative and real-world skills.

4. Education and Qualifications

List your educational qualifications in reverse chronological order, most recent first. Include:

• The name of the qualification (for example: National Senior Certificate, Diploma in Marketing, Bachelor of Commerce)
• The institution where you studied
• The year you completed it

If you did not complete a qualification, it is better to leave it off rather than include it and then have to explain it in an interview. However, if you are currently studying, you can include it with a note that it is “in progress” and your expected completion date.

Include any short courses, workplace training, certificates, or professional development programmes you have completed. These show initiative and a willingness to keep learning, both of which employers value.

5. Skills

This section is a concise list of your key skills. Keep it focused and relevant to the kind of work you are applying for. A good skills section covers:

• Computer and technology skills (for example: Microsoft Office, Pastel Accounting, SAP, specific industry software)
• Languages (list each language and your level, for example: English, fluent; Zulu, conversational; Afrikaans, basic)
• Any industry-specific technical skills
• A small selection of your strongest soft skills (no more than three or four, and be specific rather than vague)

Avoid padding this section with things like “good communicator” or “team player” without any context. These phrases have become so overused that they no longer mean much. Either show the skill through your work experience descriptions, or leave it out of the skills section.

6. References

The standard approach in South Africa is to include two or three professional references at the end of your CV. A professional reference is someone who has directly supervised or worked closely with you in a professional capacity, a former manager, a supervisor, a lecturer, or a senior colleague.

For each reference, include:

• Their full name
• Their relationship to you (for example: former line manager at ABC Company)
• Their contact phone number
• Their email address

Always ask people’s permission before listing them as a reference. Nothing creates a worse impression than a reference who is caught off guard by a call from a potential employer and has no idea why they are being contacted.

If you are just starting out and have no work references, it is acceptable to use a teacher, lecturer, community leader, or someone in a position of authority who knows you well and can speak to your character and reliability.

Some CVs say “References available on request” instead of listing them. This is acceptable but slightly less convenient for the employer. If you have good references who have agreed to be contacted, listing them directly is the better option.

Formatting: The Basics That Make a Big Difference

You do not need a designer to make a good-looking CV. You just need to follow a few simple rules.

Use a clean, readable font. Arial, Calibri, or Garamond are all good choices. Stick to one font throughout. Font size should be 11 or 12 points for body text, and slightly larger for your name and section headings.

Use consistent formatting. If you bold your job titles, bold all of them. If you use bullet points in one job description, use them in all of them. Inconsistency makes a CV look rushed and careless.

Use white space generously. Do not cram everything together. Leave space between sections. Use margins of at least 2 centimetres on all sides. A CV that looks airy and uncluttered is easier and more pleasant to read.

Use clear section headings. Make it easy for the reader to find what they are looking for quickly. Bold headings work well. You can also use a slightly larger font size for headings if you prefer.

Save and send your CV as a PDF. Unless the employer specifically asks for a Word document, always send your CV as a PDF. This ensures that your formatting stays exactly as you intended it, regardless of what device or software the employer uses to open it. A CV that looks great in Word on your phone can look completely broken when opened on a different computer.

Keep the design simple. You may have seen CVs with coloured sidebars, profile photos, skill bars, and icons for everything. Unless you are applying for a creative role like graphic design, keep things simple and professional. A clean, well-structured CV in black and white will always be taken more seriously than an over-designed one that is hard to read.

Common CV Mistakes to Avoid

These are the mistakes that appear again and again, and they are all very easy to fix once you know about them.

Spelling and grammar errors. This is the most common and most damaging mistake. A CV with spelling mistakes tells the employer that you either do not pay attention to detail, or that you simply did not care enough to check your work. Always proofread carefully. Then proofread again. Then ask someone else to read it too.

Using the same CV for every application. We will cover this in detail in Article 4, but briefly: a generic CV that you send everywhere is far less effective than one that has been adjusted to match the specific job you are applying for.

Including irrelevant personal information. Your age, your religion, your political views, and detailed personal circumstances are generally not relevant to your job application and can, in some cases, work against you. Keep it professional.

Lying or exaggerating. It is tempting to stretch the truth a little, especially if you feel your CV is thin. Do not do it. Employers check references. They verify qualifications. They ask detailed questions in interviews. Getting caught in a lie is far more damaging than having an honest gap in your experience.

Using a photo that is not professional. If you are including a photo, use one where you are dressed professionally and looking directly at the camera with a neutral or friendly expression. A cropped photo from a braai or a selfie taken in your car is not appropriate.

Leaving unexplained gaps. If there are periods in your work history where you were not employed, it is better to briefly account for them than to leave them as a mystery. “Cared for a family member,” “completed a short course in X,” or “took time off to address a personal matter” are all acceptable brief explanations.

A Final Word on Honesty

Your CV is a professional document, but it is also a reflection of you as a person. Keep it honest. Keep it accurate. It is absolutely fine to present yourself in the best possible light, and you should, but there is a difference between presenting yourself well and misrepresenting yourself.

The right job is one where the employer wants to hire the real you, with the skills you genuinely have and the experience you have actually gained. A CV that is honest and well-presented will attract the right opportunities. And that is exactly where you want to be.

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Next up: Article 4, Tailoring Your Application, where we look at why one CV does not fit all, and exactly how to adjust your CV to match a specific job description so that your application rises to the top of the pile.