Most people write a CV as a list of everything they have ever done. The trouble is that an employer is not looking for your history. They are answering one question: can this person do this job?
Make the first page answer it.
- One page if you have under five years of experience, two at the very most after that. Nobody reads three.
- Open with two lines about yourself: what you do, how many years, what you are looking for. No more.
- Experience in reverse: most recent job first. A job from ten years ago can be a single line.
- Put your phone number and email at the top where they are easy to find. If your email address is something like cool_boy_2004, make a new one with your name. It changes how you are read before a single line of the CV.
The biggest point, and the one most people miss: write results, not duties.
- Weak: "Responsible for sales"
- Strong: "Grew branch sales 30% in six months"
The first tells them what your contract said. The second tells them what changed because of you. If you have no numbers, use scale instead: how many customers, how many staff you supervised, how many projects you finished.
One last thing: adjust the CV for each job. Not a rewrite — just move the relevant points to the top. The advert asks for strong Excel? Excel should appear in the top half of the page, not buried in the last line.
Before you send it, read it aloud once. Spelling mistakes and broken sentences show up immediately that way.