What Should You Include in a CV?

Quick answer

Almost every CV needs contact details and education. Add experience if you have it, and add projects, volunteering or skills if you do not. Include references when you have people who agreed to speak for you. Skip any heading you would have to invent.

Contact details

Use the name on your identity document or academic record, a phone number you answer, an email address that looks professional, and the town or city where you can work. Add a link to a portfolio only if the work is relevant and you are willing for a stranger to see it.

The government CV page also lists identity number, date of birth, marital status, health and driver's licence. Share those when a form asks for them. On a CV for a private vacancy, extra personal data creates risk and rarely helps you get an interview.

Profile

A profile is optional. Use it when you can state the role and one fact in a few lines. Skip it when you are repeating the education section. Do not use it for a slogan.

Education

Include the school or institution, the qualification, and the year. Add subjects or modules when the advert names them. People with a degree can shorten the school section to the school name, National Senior Certificate and year. People still at school should put education first.

Experience

Include paid work, internships, vacation work and learnerships. For each one, give the organisation, your role, the dates and two or three tasks. If you have no experience of this kind, omit the heading. Do not write None yet under Experience.

Projects, volunteering and activities

Include these when they show a skill the advert wants, or when they are your main evidence. A graduate with two internships may keep one strong project and drop the school awards. A matriculant may need all three.

Skills, achievements and certificates

Include a skill if you can perform it without someone standing next to you. Include a certificate if you completed it. Include an achievement if it has a result. A list of personality traits is not a skills section.

Languages are worth listing in South Africa when the job involves the public. Say what you can do: speak isiZulu with customers, or write reports in English. Do not claim professional fluency you do not have.

References

Include names and telephone numbers when the advert asks for references, and only after those people have agreed. Otherwise a line that references are available is enough until you are asked. The government page advises you to confirm that the details still work.

Sections you can leave out

• A photograph, unless the employer asks for one.
• Marital status, religion, children and health.
• Every certificate from primary school.
• Salary expectations, unless the form has a field for them.
• A paragraph copied from a sample CV on the internet.

Match the section to the applicant

• School-leaver: contact details, education, projects or volunteering, skills, references.
• Student or graduate: contact details, profile if it helps, qualification and modules, projects, any work, skills, references.
• Applicant with a job history: contact details, experience first if it matches, then education, then skills.
• Public-service applicant: a CV plus the Z83 and the documents the advert lists. The CV does not replace the form.

Three different CVs from the same person

The sections change with the advert. Imagine one applicant who has a National Senior Certificate, a weekend shop job, and a school project on a small business's records.

Retail trainee advert

Put the shop work first: dates, serving customers, and recording sales. Education can be short. The business project supports numeracy. School sport can come off the page.

Finance trainee advert

Put Accounting and the records project first. Mention the shop only to show that you handled cash. Do not lead with customer-service adjectives.

Public-service administration advert

The Z83 carries identity details and the declaration. The CV carries education, the project, and the shop dates. Do not leave the reference number off the form because it is already in the letter.

Order and length

Put the section that answers the advert immediately after your name, or immediately after a short profile. A reader who stops halfway down the first page should already have seen the qualification or the job that matches.

One page is enough when you have no job history. Two pages are enough for most graduates. A third page is rarely read unless you are listing publications or a long professional history. Cut old primary-school awards before you shrink the project that matches the job.

Checklist

• The employer can see how to contact you in the first lines.
• Every heading has real content.
• The order matches what the advert cares about.
• Dates do not overlap in a way you cannot explain.
• You could discuss every line in an interview.

Information can change

Rules, forms, closing dates and programme requirements change. Treat this guide as a way to prepare and to know what to check. The official page for the institution, employer or funder is the version that applies to your application.

Official sources

• Compiling a curriculum vitaeThe official government list of CV contents, which you should adapt to the employer.