How to improve my CV as a computer Engineering student?

To create a better CV you need to follow a step by step career advice to start it well. Here is what basically a standard CV must have:

Personal information: It is quite essential to include the full name, email address, contact number and address on CV. Also, ensure that they are mentioned on top of the CV.

A statement about yourself: This gives you a scope to tell about yourself and get the attention of the reader. Use this to show your achievements and share your career aspirations too. The trick is that you need to customize the statement to the job description or role.

Work Experience: While writing about the work history, include experiences relevant to the job at hand. Your CV must show you as the best candidate of the lot. If you have less or no experience, think about skills that might help you in the role.

Education: Mention earlier education and educational institutions with a year of attendance and also write about achievements or grades.

Skills & Qualifications: Write about qualifications from either work experience or education which are related to the role.

Interests & Hobbies: Though not necessary, but if you are a fresher and you have less to mention about the experience, you need to write about your hobby and interests too.

References: It is suggested not to include name and contact of references on CV. Always ask permission from a referee before passing on the details to an employer.

How to write a CV?

The career guidance tips is that a CV is basically written in the word format. Often Arial or Verdana font is used.

CV layout

Be clear and precise about your test with bullet points whenever needed. Use proper headings and small paragraphs to allow your recruiter to take a look.

Attributes of a CV layout:

• about two pages of A4

• write CV in Word

• Do not use borders, colors, images, cartoon fonts like Comic Sans.

• Use fonts like; Arial, Verdana or Tahoma and size of 10 or 11 works best.

• Start with your most recent work experience and qualifications first.

• Explain any sabbatical.

• Proofread.

CV writing tips

Here at career advice, wes share some CV writing tips:

• Customise for specific job roles
• Avoid gaps. Or explain them well to your advantage.
• Tell most about your experience.
• Be honest.
• No grammatical errors and spelling mistake.
• Data be specific.

What information to be included in CV?

Personal Statement

Work Experience

Education

Hobbies & Interests

Who would see your CV?

This thing can differ from an organization to another, based on who’s going to recruit. Mainly it would be a hiring manager or a line manager, but each company varies.

If your CV is getting processed through a recruitment agency, chances are that your CV won’t go farther in the hierarchy. Recruitment agencies do the shortlisting of candidates and, only who appears strong candidates are called for interview.

Hello Maya! Great question!

I will tell you a personal experience... when I was in college, one of my friends told me about an international programming contest (International Collegiate Programming Contest sponsored by IBM) and we made a team with another friend in order to solve different kind of problems using different programming languages and techniques. After many months of practicing and having some contests in college, we won the local contest and the regional contest. This gave us the opportunity to participate in the word finals in Poland, an amazing experience! So, besides this great experience and the knowledge obtained during our preparation, this was one of the most relevant topics in my CV when I was looking for my first job :)

Please have a look of the site of this programming contest:

https://icpc.baylor.edu

Hello Maya,

you are doing great with your curriculum and your high CGPA will hold you in good stead. I think you are missing on your strength. You must have done good in your project(s) or App development etc, make a mention, howsoever trivial that may appear to you. I have some more actions to suggest:

1. Look beyond your curriculum: You may work on developing an App or a small macro say connecting two platforms seamlessly like What's App/Voot/Hangout and see if you can customize to make it useful for Digital Marketing/Social Engineering.
2. I am looking at the issue of bank or credit card frauds: how to stop cyber attacks against banks by studying the gaps in the existing system, if you get an opportunity. There is a time lag between fraud detection/ reporting and risk mitigation, presently it goes even upto 90 days or more.There are gaps even in the Operating systems and Ransomewares like Wannacry or Petyacry are exploiting these gaps/or soft spots and punching hole in it, so develop a patch. In fact, possibilities are endless.
3. I worked on a project to connect the Antenna system with a software to control the output and beam it at a particular direction and controlled the power output so that there is no spurious transmission (side or back lobes). Today you have robotics and AI to help in these kinds of projects/products.
4. May be you work on an OS based on Sanskrit! Develop a model or do system analysis, if you can.
5. Assess your capability/liking and working on it as an hobby. Keep looking at the problems we face in day to day world and try to pick up one issue that you can work on. Mention these efforts/products(if you develop and showcase it in your CV).
6. In addition, mention your strength on the subjects like: OS, Data Structures, AI and Robotics or languages etc.

Well try to do some IT certification it will be very good for CV, i am going to give you some IT certification list over here, go through this article.

Career Advice: The Best IT Certifications In Demand

Hi Maya,

Having some programming skills will definitely give a value addition to your CV. Before adding the skills to your CV, just make sure that you have the complete knowledge of those skills. In fact whatever you are going to add in your CV should be known to you.

Try to use some good formatted CV, there are some templates available online. Try to avoid grammatical mistakes. Try to complete as many courses as you can do online, surely this will help you.

Do not add additional technology which you are not aware of and also make it short. you must know in depth about all technology you have written in your CV.