Loki helps us write our CV? (curriculum vitae / résumé)
Sure. A note: some industries may have slightly different standards. Look into your industry's preferences before sending out a CV. This is also assuming you are applying to a job, probably in the US, and not for a fellowship, internship, or academic/art residency. I (Loki) wrote all this out and realized it is an insane amount of information but I promise this is not the result of ChatGPT I wrote this with my two horrible very professional hands.
Anyways. Here are Loki's Résumé and CV general best practices.
Assume, in 2026, that a robot (whether AI or a more simple Applicant Tracker System, usually referred to as ATS) will skim your CV before a person does, and design a machine reading-compatible CV. Unless you are 100% positive your CV will be read by a person and not a machine (aka you know the recruiter personally, etc) avoid design flourishes that could confuse a machine. These include:
Columns and sidebars, especially that popular two-column format with a bio on the left side.
Clip art or images, including headshots.
Section headers. Avoid using the header and footer tool. These are often not machine readable. Keep section headers clear and differentiated.
"Soft returns" for line breaks. Always hit enter instead of shift+enter for line breaks between sections. Only use soft return for paragraph breaks within the same section.
Use a generic font, and utilize the built-in heading styles that Docs or Word offer (header, subhead, body) as these are often more machine-readable. If you want to differentiate sections visually, use simple colors and the horizontal line tool in Docs or Word as a divider.
A good basic content order: Contact information, Education, Experience, Skills. Here are some basics to help you master each:
Your job title or desired title can appear after your name using a comma. AKA: Loki Laufeyson, Professional Trickster
Do not use JPG/PNG icons/images before your email, phone number, etc. If you feel you MUST include a visual instead of just writing "email: [email protected]," use standard unicode symbols. Even emoji are preferable to actual PNGs or logos
Education: Note: this is only relevant to my experience in the United States (Loki has graduated with degrees from NYU and also briefly was scammed by the University of Phoenix.)
People often put too much information here. Include graduation year only, not the range of years you were there. If you graduated more than 10 years ago, you don't need the graduation year, just the degree.
Degree honors and relevant coursework can be used to pad out a resume but are not required. If your work experience is sparse this is a good add-in. For example, it is absolutely a good idea to add in the title of your honor's thesis on Thermodynamics if you're applying to an entry-level job in STEM, and it should appear in this section, under the degree title and year, not in work experience.
This is another place where people tend to put too much information, or the wrong information. This is NOT a place to put every job you've ever worked, and employers will not assume you started holding jobs only when you started working in your career field if you omit totally irrelevant jobs from early in your career. The basic things this section should achieve are showing your progress over time, your achievements, and hit key words from the job description.
To format experience: give the job title, a short job description, and the date range. Month and years for dates are OK; for contract positions, you can list the Month/Year and note Contract Position. For your top two or three most recent/relevant jobs, you can and should add additional details.
These additional details should be outcome-oriented, not task-oriented. People tend to make a mistake by doing the inverse of this: they'll leave work outcomes as a one-sentence blurb, then give bullet points describing work tasks and roles. Do not do this. Avoid words like "responsible for" and "in charge of" for items outside the job description line. Focus on positive contributions and completed projects.
Good example:
Trickster at Stark Tower
August 2012–Present
Horrible green freak operating all relevant wretchedness directed at Earth's mightiest heroes
• Completed the "big wet prank" on Thor, resulting in the production of several new international bylaws against lipid production in the NYC metro area
• Property value of surrounding residential and commercial real estate dipped 60% year over year during my tenure
Not as good:
Trickster, Stark Tower, August 15 2012–August 23 2026
• Responsible for pranks and jests day to day
• Balance inventory in Excel for purchasing operations and productions of prank materials
• Responsible for freaking everyone out and giving people a headache and a stomachache and hives and having a bad time
• No one likes me as a result of this, which is awesome
Finally, if you're applying to entry-level roles, or are breaking from hourly wage service industry or internship work into white collar work, it is better to get creative about passion project or volunteer work than to list excessive but irrelevant roles in the experience section. Some people are too worried about seeming "honest" about this and don't think through a hiring team's priorities when fielding this info. No one will care if your work was self-motivated and you don't need to list "self employed" as the employer–just the years and when you did it. Hiring committees for people making this jump want to see your relevant experience, and you should control the narrative and not hedge around it.
An example of what I mean: I once revised the CV of a friend who had been in his local music scene for 10+ years and was a bartender as a day job. He wanted to start working in insurance–but had put "local music" in the hobby section of his CV, and listed "bartender" at 4 different local bars in the experience section. I pointed out to him that running a touring band is a significant amount of logistical and clerical work that he was in charge of and was actually more relevant to the job he was applying for. I suggested he list "band manager" as an experience item and give targets / a job description that highlighted success like local music festivals, driving ticket sales, touring and coordinating with venues, etc. (He now has an office job fwiw so I'd consider this a success story.)
It is best to limit this work to one or two instances, and is best for when you need to pad out experiences or make a pivot into a new industry. Add it below the most relevant recent professional experience like so:
Trickster, Stark Tower,
August 2012–Present
[Description as outlined above]
Norse God of Mischief, Freelance
The Dawn of Time–Present
[Description]
Junior Trickster, AsgardThe Dawn of Time–July 2010
Remember: it's always OK to compress irrelevant jobs down to just their title if it gives you more room to describe your relevant jobs.
This section will be short. It's another place people tend to go too far. My strong suggestion would be to use this area as almost a copy-and-paste for keywords from the job description. It should be where you add in relevant key words and things you couldn't describe elsewhere. Machine-read resumes look for these words.
For things like software proficiency, only add specific software where proficiency is required in the JD or may be exceptional based on your expected level of experience. For example, if you're an entry level designer but also know how to do motion editing, add that. If you're an engineer but have significant project management software experience, add that.
You'd be surprised at how often the software and tool add-in works against people especially in corporate work, mainly because outside of the very basics you're expected to know, every company's software stack is different. You might have done project management in Teams but they use Notion and won't want to train you–if you're not sure, just list the skill instead of the software. For example, if you're an entry level designer but also know how to do motion editing, add that. If you're an engineer but have significant project management software experience, add that.
Qualitative words/terms like "good with kids" and "fun to be around" are fluff. If you must add these words, go into the company's values or mission statement and pull qualitative terms from that. Always be careful directly copying & pasting, but this is much less apparent for single words and similar.
People both overthink and under-think the CV. Be clear, put your best foot forward, and play as much as possible to the job description. Prioritize a clean, machine-readable resume template that uses basic formatting. You can find samples of this online. There are AI and ATS resume "checkers" available, but some aren't accurate. The best thing you can do for yourself is know what the best practices are and use a solid template. Good luck.
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