If your career and educational history is documented in a format other than a style common in the North America, some employers today, regardless of their nationality, might be less willing to interview you because traditional CV's tend to be at the same time wordy and insubstantial.

All over the world, the most dynamic hiring managers at some of the most exciting firms want and need to know immediately, from a document between 1-3 pages, precisely what you can do for them if you worked for them. You are unique. A good employer wants to know why and how you are different as an employee. These companies do not care if you have a full driving license, what profession your father pursued, what courses you took in elementary school, what languages you have "notions" of but cannot really communicate in, or what you did on your last vacation. Too many CV's contain all that useless nonsense and more. While it might seem to be personal, in this format it really tells little about you as a person or as an employee, and that is really what an employer reading a CV or resume needs to know, and quickly.

If you do not have experience writing a North American style resume, that is OK. What matters is that you can describe what you can do today for an employer, rather than leaving it for the employer to guess or to assume what you might know or might be able to do well. Your competition will be able to describe themselves in this way, and because they took the extra time to detail their employment strengths clearly and explicitly, they might get the job that you might have obtained.

Some people feel that it is demeaning to "market oneself" in a CV, so they will tend to write a CV that is a listing of dates of employment, titles held, and a few other facts, such as address, telephone and email address. Such a document does not do you justice as a person or as an employee. You are more than a list of titles and dates. You have done things in your career - valuable things. And you have a unique style. This is what you need to put into your CV or resume. Let the reader learn who you are by describing your career through your achievements.

If you were to meet an employer face to face, and s/he asked you, quite bluntly, "Why do you think that you would be good for our company?", would you tell the employer, "I'm not going to sell my attributes to you, by telling you why I would be good for your company!"? If you would not be offended to tell an employer about yourself in a personal interview, please do not be offended to describe your strengths clearly in your CV or resume. After all, the whole point of writing a CV or resume is to get a job that will improve your career and your life. This is marketing for a good cause: for your best interests. So please take writing a resume or CV seriously and as an opportunity to tell a stranger about yourself, rather than as a chore or a puzzle. Approach writing your CV or resume as an opportunity to write a strategic marketing document that is intended to tell a stranger who you are as an employee.

If the employer knows who you are, they can better understand if you are a fit for their company. If they only have a vague sense of you, they might assume that you are someone quite different from who you really are.

Give an employer a clear mental picture of the kind of companies that you worked for, state the duties that you held, the products or services that your firms offered, and your achievements at those firms.

And please, do not worry about format. There is no one single rule on how a resume or CV should be written. What really matters is clarity. At the end of the document, the reader should have a reasonably good idea of what you have done, what you have achieved, what kinds of situations you have dealt with, what kinds of problems that you have solved, and, indirectly, what kind of approach to business that you have.

If English is not your main business language or if your resume or CV is not in English, we still very much want to get to know you, but we cannot consider your application without some sort of resume in English.  If you do not yet have a formal English resume prepared, you may wish to do so in order to provide yourself with additional career options. For our initial purposes here, please consider sending us a document in English giving a job-by-job description, listed in reverse chronological order, detailing your duties, achievements and products or services, with the dates of employment at each company stated clearly, along with your educational details. The document should not be in the form of a biography or letter. Do not worry at this stage about English errors; it is more important that we get to know each other. If we should require a CV in your national language we will request one.

For information on writing effective resumes (how employers think and what they like to see when you describe yourself and your career), CLICK HERE