Software engineer
Three to six yearsScanned first
What you owned, and how big it was. The stack is checked in about ten seconds and then set aside — what the reader is looking for is a system with your name on it and a change you personally made to it.
Metrics that matter
- Scale of the system: requests per day, records, users
- Reliability: p99 latency, uptime, error rate
- Delivery: release frequency, time from merge to production
Weak bullet
Worked on the backend team using Java and Spring Boot to build APIs.
Rewritten
Owned the payments API (Java, Spring Boot) serving 4M requests a day; cut p99 latency from 850 ms to 210 ms by replacing a per-request currency lookup with an in-process cache.
Why it works: “Worked on” is the weakest verb in engineering — it covers everything from designing the service to attending the stand-up. The stack survives the rewrite, but it is now attached to a system, a scale and a specific change with a before and an after.
Suggested template: Software Engineer — one column, parsing score 5/5
Marketing manager
Mid-careerScanned first
Which channels you own, how much budget goes through your hands, and whether you can connect activity to pipeline rather than to impressions.
Metrics that matter
- Budget under management
- Cost per acquisition or return on ad spend
- Pipeline or revenue influenced, with the attribution model named
Weak bullet
Managed social media and email campaigns to increase brand awareness.
Rewritten
Owned a £340k paid and lifecycle budget across LinkedIn, Google and email; rebuilt the nurture sequence and grew marketing-sourced pipeline from £1.1m to £2.7m in a year at a 22% lower cost per opportunity.
Why it works: Brand awareness is the least falsifiable claim in marketing. Naming the budget establishes seniority in four words, and pairing a growth figure with a cost figure stops the result reading as something that was simply bought.
Suggested template: Marketing CV — one column, parsing score 3/5
Accountant
Qualified, industryScanned first
Your qualification and where you are in it, the size and complexity of the ledger you handle, and the systems you work in. All three are used as filters before anyone reads a sentence.
Metrics that matter
- Working days to close, and the trend
- Entity size: turnover, number of entities, currencies
- Audit outcomes and control findings
Weak bullet
Responsible for month-end close and preparation of management accounts.
Rewritten
Ran month-end close for three entities (£46m combined turnover, GBP and EUR), cutting the timetable from nine working days to five by automating intercompany reconciliations in NetSuite.
Why it works: Every accountant runs the close; the differentiators are scope and speed. Naming the ERP matters more here than in most professions, because finance teams filter hard on the system they already run.
Suggested template: Accountant CV — one column, parsing score 5/5
Graphic designer
Any stageScanned first
The portfolio link, before anything else. The CV exists to get that link clicked and to supply the context the work sat in — who it was for, how widely it shipped, what constraints you were working inside.
Metrics that matter
- Scope: brand systems, ranges or campaigns delivered end to end
- Distribution: where the work actually appeared, and at what volume
- Process: turnaround times, template systems, studio throughput
Weak bullet
Created marketing materials and social graphics for various clients.
Rewritten
Designed and rolled out the visual identity for a 40-product skincare range — packaging, point of sale and social — live in 600 retail doors; cut studio artwork turnaround from five days to two with a component-based template kit.
Why it works: Design CVs collapse into software lists. This rewrite mentions no tools at all: it describes scope, where the work shipped and a process improvement, which is what a design lead is actually hiring for. The portfolio proves the craft; the CV proves you can run a job.
Suggested template: Graphic Designer — one column, parsing score 2/5
Nurse
Registered, acute settingScanned first
Registration status first — the reader is checking whether you can be rostered at all — then the setting and its acuity, then the competencies that decide what you can be assigned to.
Metrics that matter
- Setting: bed numbers, speciality, typical staffing ratio
- Competencies: cannulation, ALS, mentorship, the EHR you use
- Quality work: audits, incident reduction, complaint outcomes
Weak bullet
Provided patient care on a busy ward and worked as part of a multidisciplinary team.
Rewritten
Registered nurse on a 28-bed acute medical ward, typically 1:6 on days and 1:10 at night; shift coordinator twice a week, precepting three student nurses per rotation and leading a falls-reduction audit that cut ward incidents by a fifth over two quarters.
Why it works: Every nurse provides patient care and every ward is busy. What a ward manager needs to know is the acuity you are used to, the ratio you can hold and whether you can take charge of a shift — because that determines the rota from your first week.
Suggested template: ATS Simple — one column, parsing score 5/5
Teacher
Secondary, three to eight yearsScanned first
Subject and the age groups you have taught, then evidence that pupils made progress under you, then anything you have carried beyond your own timetable.
Metrics that matter
- Attainment or progress against the previous cohort or department average
- Teaching load: classes, pupil numbers, ability range
- Responsibilities: form tutor, subject lead, intervention programmes
Weak bullet
Taught mathematics to students of all abilities and prepared them for exams.
Rewritten
Taught GCSE and A-level mathematics across five classes (150 pupils); redesigned the Year 11 intervention scheme and lifted grade 5+ attainment from 58% to 71% across two cohorts, against a departmental average of 62%.
Why it works: A percentage only becomes evidence when it has a benchmark next to it. Naming the cohort and the intervention also shows the improvement was designed rather than inherited from a strong year group.
Suggested template: Traditional CV — one column, parsing score 5/5
Sales representative
B2B, two to seven yearsScanned first
Quota, attainment against it, and whether your deals look like the deals they sell. A sales CV without numbers is generally read as a bad year.
Metrics that matter
- Quota and percentage attainment, stated per year
- Average deal size and sales cycle length
- Mix: new business versus renewal, and self-sourced pipeline
Weak bullet
Consistently exceeded sales targets and built strong client relationships.
Rewritten
Carried a $1.2m new-business quota in mid-market logistics software; finished FY24 at 118% and FY23 at 104%, average deal $46k on a 71-day cycle, self-sourcing 40% of pipeline.
Why it works: “Consistently exceeded targets” is the most common sentence in sales CVs and carries no information at all. Two years of attainment against a stated quota, with deal size and cycle length, tells a sales manager within seconds which patch you fit.
Suggested template: Sales CV — one column, parsing score 4/5
Recent graduate
No professional history yetScanned first
What you studied and when you finish, then any evidence of doing something outside a lecture theatre. With no employment record to read, the reader is hunting for signals of reliability and initiative.
Metrics that matter
- Degree classification or GPA, where it helps you
- Anything you ran, organised or were trusted with
- Hours worked alongside study, and what you were given to do
Weak bullet
Worked part-time in a café while studying. Team player with good communication skills.
Rewritten
Worked 20 hours a week through a full-time degree; trained four new staff and took over rota planning for a nine-person team in my second year, while finishing with a 2:1 in Economics.
Why it works: Part-time hospitality work is not filler — on a graduate CV it is the only evidence that you turn up, get trusted and get given more. State the hours, the responsibility and the fact that both ran alongside the degree. “Team player” is a claim anyone can type.
Suggested template: Student CV — one column, parsing score 5/5
Project manager
Five to twelve yearsScanned first
The size of the things you have run — budget, headcount, duration — and whether they landed. Methodology and sector come second, and certifications are usually a filter rather than a differentiator.
Metrics that matter
- Budget and team size, per project
- Schedule and budget variance against the original plan
- Complexity: vendors, workstreams, sites, regulatory scope
Weak bullet
Managed multiple projects simultaneously and ensured they were delivered on time and within budget.
Rewritten
Ran a €2.4m ERP migration across four European sites — 26 people, three vendors, 14 months — delivered five weeks behind the original plan and 3% under budget after absorbing two scope changes.
Why it works: Admitting the five weeks is what makes everything else believable. Any experienced sponsor knows that a whole career on time and on budget does not happen, and a candidate who reports the variance and the reason reads as someone who actually tracks their projects.
Suggested template: Management CV — two columns, parsing score 4/5
Customer service
Contact centre or support deskScanned first
Volume and channel mix first, because the reader is working out whether you can hold their queue. Then quality scores, then whether you have handled escalations or coached anyone.
Metrics that matter
- Contacts handled per day, split by channel
- CSAT or quality score, with the sample size
- First-contact resolution or escalation rate
Weak bullet
Answered customer queries by phone and email and resolved complaints.
Rewritten
Handled around 60 contacts a day across phone, email and live chat on a home-insurance book, holding 94% CSAT from roughly 900 surveys a quarter and 78% first-contact resolution; took ownership of the escalation queue for a team of nine after eight months.
Why it works: A satisfaction score means nothing without the volume behind it — 94% from twelve surveys is noise. Naming the product line matters too: handling insurance claims and handling e-commerce returns are genuinely different jobs.
Suggested template: Business Professional — one column, parsing score 5/5