Are you a student looking for an internship, a work-study program or a first job? Are you looking for a career change? Whatever your profile, if you want to apply for a job and get an interview, you will have to send your resume and cover letter. It is the resume that we will talk about in this article. How to build a resume, rework it or update it? What are the key information to put in a resume? According to your profile, here are our recommendations to create a resume that captivates your reader !
10 steps to build your CV
1# Define your project
Whatever your profile, the first step, even before you start writing your CV, is to know what you are looking for and to think about your professional project.
Internships and work-study programs
It may be difficult for you to know exactly what you want, but you can already ask yourself some questions, such as
- What skills do I want to develop? What job should I do to develop them?
- What kind of work environment would I like to work in? Would I be comfortable in a very hierarchical setting or in a more flexible structure where I could be more autonomous?
- Why do I want to get up in the morning?
- What stimulates me the most in an activity? Meeting a lot of people? Being immersed in an intellectual activity? Being challenged and getting out of my comfort zone?
For a first job or a career change
When you have already had some work experience, you can more easily know what you want and what you don't want anymore. Here are, for example, some questions that you could ask yourself, in addition to those mentioned above, which could help you define your project:
- What activities do I no longer want to do in my future position ? What activities do I want to do/learn to do ?
- What am I looking for that is different in a new position/job ?
- What role do I like to have in an organization ? What role do I want to have ?
- What pace of work suits me ? What working relationships suit me ?
2# Selecting organizations
Once your project is clearer, you can start your job search by identifying the organizations you would like to join. Beyond a job, a sector or a job offer that would fit your needs, you can also focus on other elements to apply. For example, by watching a video of the company, does the team look nice? By looking at the vocabulary used on the website, do you see yourself in what is said? By reading press articles or posts on social networks in which the founder expresses himself, do you want to work with this person?
To get more information, you can also contact someone from the organization directly via LinkedIn for example, or by email if you have an internal contact.
If you have a specific field of interest, there are also job platforms dedicated to certain professions or sectors. In the field of impact and ecological and social transition, for example, you can find inspiration on the job offer page of jobs_that_makesense, both on the job side and on the existing organization side!
3# Identify commonalities with selected organizations
Internships and work experience
If you don't have a lot of professional experience at the moment, you can look into your associative, academic and sports experiences. What did they bring you? What skills did you develop? How can these skills be useful to accomplish the missions of the position to be filled?
For a first job or professional retraining
If you have more work experience, you can make connections between the skills you learned in your previous jobs and the future job you want to do.
If you are in a career transition and the job has nothing to do with what you may have done in the past, tell yourself that there are still connections to be made!
👉 For example: if you were a bank advisor and you wish to retrain in building energy renovation, there are skills you can put forward like: your customer relations and your pedagogy, which will be useful to manage the relations with the customers you will visit to carry out work.
Build your resume
4# How to write a resume?
Let's start writing your resume! A professional resume is generally organized into 4 or 5 sections:
- Presentation
A paragraph at the top of your resume will allow recruiters to know what you are looking for. You can mention the type of contract you are looking for and its duration, especially for internships and work-study programs. For work-study programs, you can also specify the pace and nature of the contract (apprenticeship or professionalization).
For example: "I am looking for a 2-year apprenticeship contract, with 3 weeks in the company and 1 week in the school, starting in September 2023".
You can also present your strong points in this part, especially if you do not send a cover letter at the same time as your resume.
- Academic background
Details here the title of your training and some of the skills acquired during your training.
- Professional experiences
As we said before, if you don't have any, you can talk about your school or association experiences. To talk about it, you can detail in 2 or 3 points your missions so that we can understand your acquired skills.
- Your skills
Mentioning some soft skills and competencies will also allow the recruiter to know the assets you recognize yourself in. Talking about your interests and extra-professional activities will also allow them to know more about you.
In the field of impact, personality and soft skills are often a selection criterion for candidates. We talk about it in this article !
- Your contact
Mail, your phone number, your LinkedIn profile.
And optional sections that can be useful:
- The languages you speak, especially for a position that involves speaking with international clients or collaborators.
- References from former interns, teachers, etc.
💡 Since you usually have more than one, present the different stages of your professional school career in a chronological way !
5# Keywords
To create your resume, you can also use the keywords used on the communication materials of the organizations you are applying for. Putting them in your resume will appeal to recruiters, especially those from the SSE (social and solidarity enterprises) who are interested in shared values and the coherence of candidates' backgrounds with their organization's mission.
⚠️ Of course, no bullshit. Only take those that echo your own experiences!
6# To highlight your experiences
For us, copy/paste is not the best idea for applying. Adapting the way you talk about your experiences to each organization shows them that you have spent time learning about the offer and thinking about how your profile can meet the needs expressed in each job offer. In fact, you will have already done this work of personalization beforehand through your information gathering and your introspection. And it will be felt when you read it !
7# Create your resume
To create a resume, you can use a word processor like Open Office or Microsoft Word. You can also use Photoshop, Canva and Powerpoint. You can use existing templates on the internet to create your visual.
8# Choose a visual
Making a good resume also involves the visual and the layout! Beware of the offbeat or blurred photo! There are many resume templates on the internet that you can use as inspiration, with specific fonts, colors and layouts. Depending on the job or the sector you are applying for, you can be more or less creative. If you are applying for an internship in graphic design or art, original colors, fonts and layouts can be appreciated. If you are applying for a job in a sector or a profession that requires rigor, organization and formalism, a more classic form of resume will be preferred.
To give you some ideas, here are 2 examples of resume models according to your profile:
Examples of internship or work-study resumes
Examples of resumes for a fixed-term or permanent contract
There are also sites, you can also find many resume templates to download and edit for free: free resumes, original resumes, English resumes, resumes to fill in, there is something for everyone!
Proofreading and sending your resume
9# Beware of spelling mistakes
Spelling mistakes and also line breaks, extra spaces, missing commas, all these little things can sting the recruiter's eyes, especially if you are applying for jobs that require rigor, like accounting, auditing, administration.
10# Send your resume
Once finalized, if your resume is in Word or Open Office format, the best thing to do is to download it in pdf format to send your applications. Along with your resume, you can send a cover letter, a letter of recommendation and even your portfolio if you are applying for a creative job.
There are several ways to attach your resume: you can send it by email and build an application email, upload it via an online form on the company's website or via a job board.
On jobs_that_makesense, you can attach your resume directly on the platform when you apply for a job!
To go further
👉 Writing a spontaneous application email
👉 Write a cover letter for an internship in 10 steps.
👉 Writing a student resume from A to Z
👉 Volunteering to facilitate professional integration into the impact
To take action
👉 Find all our job offers