How to write a good CV: step-by-step guide for 2026

You write a good CV faster when you already have the details. Put them in a list first, without worrying about the nice sentences. You can polish the wording later.

• Jobs: the job title, the employer, the place and the start and end date (month and year) of each job.
• Tasks and results: what you did in each job, and what improved because of your work.
• Education: the name, the institution, the place and the year you graduated.
• Certificates and languages: everything you have obtained, with its validity where it expires.
• Vacancies: choose two or three vacancies that really interest you. Read them through and note the words that keep coming back.

Those vacancies are your yardstick. Your CV does not need to include everything you ever did. It needs to show why you fit those roles.

There are three common structures for a CV. Which one suits you depends on your experience and on the job you are looking for.

• Chronological: your work experience runs from newest to oldest. This is the usual structure in the Netherlands. A recruiter sees at a glance where you worked and what you did there.
• Functional: you group your skills by theme and place the work experience below them. This can help if you are changing career, but it sometimes hides gaps in your work history. Only use it for a good reason.
• Combination: you start with a short summary of your skills and then follow with the chronological work experience. This way you first show what you can do, and then where you did it.

For most people, the chronological format is the easiest. It is clear, you do not have to make choices about the structure, and it works well in an applicant tracking system (ATS). When changing career, a combination can be a good choice: you show what you can already do, and the work experience supports it.

Start with the question: what does the recruiter want to know in the first few seconds? The answer is where you work now, which jobs you have had and what you can do. Put that at the top. The rest of the CV supports that first impression.

A good CV is calm, easy to scan and fits on A4. Use a clear heading for each section, a fixed order and enough white space between the blocks. Decoration draws attention away from the content.

Choosing a template

On the templates page you will find layouts and colour palettes. If you often apply through online forms or to large employers, choose a template labelled ATS-friendly. Want to know first how your current CV scores? Then try the free CV check. If you work in a field where visual design is part of the job, such as design or marketing, a more creative template may suit you better.

Font and colour

Choose one font and use it consistently. Use colour sparingly, for example for your name or the headings. Make sure there is enough contrast: light grey text on white is hard to read, both on paper and on screen.

Layout

Keep the margins generous and the text at a readable size, roughly 10 to 11 point. Avoid text boxes and side-by-side columns for your work experience. Some applicant tracking systems read those in the wrong order, so a job can end up half in the text of another.

Use bold or capitals to emphasise something, but not in every sentence. If everything stands out, nothing stands out.

At the top of the CV you give your name, a phone number, an email address and your town or city. A full street address is not needed; the town or city is enough. You can add a link to your LinkedIn profile if you keep it up to date.

Use an email address with your name in it, such as firstname.lastname, and not an address you no longer check. Check the phone number once more. One wrong digit means the recruiter cannot call you.

You do not need to state your age, date of birth or marital status. It is not required, and it says nothing about whether you can do the job. Use the space for your experience instead.

The profile statement is the summary at the top of the CV. Write three to five sentences about who you are, what you have already done, your strongest points and what you are looking for. Keep it short. A recruiter reads the profile statement to decide whether to read on.

A weak profile statement is generic. Sentences like "I am a hard-working and flexible team player" could be written by anyone, so they say nothing. A strong profile statement contains concrete facts: a field, a number of years, a speciality and a direction.

Example (weak): I am a motivated warehouse operative who enjoys working with colleagues and works accurately.

Example (strong): Warehouse operative with four years of experience in order picking and goods receipt. I hold a forklift certificate, work with a scanning system and keep stock counts reliable. Looking for a role in a distribution centre.

The difference is in the details. The strong example names the field, the duration, the skills and the direction. That shows the recruiter where you stand, without them having to guess.

Write the profile statement only once the rest of your CV is finished. Then you know which points you most want to highlight. Adjust the text per vacancy where that fits.

Want to see what a whole CV looks like? Read the CV example for a warehouse operative, or choose a job in the CV examples.

Work experience is the section recruiters read most closely. For each job, give the job title, the employer, the place and the period in months and years. Short points follow below.

For each point, describe what you did and what it achieved. A task says what you had to do. A result shows what you can do. Compare:

• Task: responsible for the planning of the department.
• Result: set up a planning for twelve colleagues, adjusted weekly with the team leader.

This is what a work experience block looks like. It is a fictional example, just to show the structure:

Logistics team leader, Example Distribution B.V., Tilburg, March 2021 to present

• Day-to-day supervision of six colleagues on the late shift.
• Set up an induction programme for new colleagues, so they could work independently sooner.
• Weekly meeting with the planner about deploying temporary agency workers.

Use figures where you have them: quantities, turnover, the size of a team or the number of customers you served. In the CV example for a nurse and the CV example for a customer service representative you can see how that works in each field.

If you do not have exact figures, describe the scale instead: "around thirty orders a day" or "a team of six colleagues". Do not make up figures. A CV that does not add up is a risk in the interview. References can check the points on your CV.

Start each point with an action verb, such as "set up", "supervised", "improved" or "handled". Use the present tense for your current job and the past tense for older jobs. Be consistent: keeping the same structure throughout your work experience keeps it clear.

Put the newest job at the top. Shorten or leave out older jobs that have nothing to do with the vacancy. A period without work does not have to appear on the CV, but be prepared to explain it in the interview.

No work experience?

Then focus on what you have done: a degree, an internship, volunteering, a part-time job, a project or a hobby that shows what you can do. Put it in the same structure as a normal job, with title, organisation, period and points. A part-time job in hospitality shows that you can work under pressure. An internship shows that you can work in a team and finish an assignment.

Write honestly. An internship is an internship, and a volunteer role is a volunteer role. Anyone who states that clearly comes across stronger than someone who inflates their experience. The interview then focuses on what you learned, and that is something you can answer well.

Skills go on your CV for two reasons. The recruiter sees at once whether you meet the requirements. And an applicant tracking system searches for words from the vacancy. So read the vacancy carefully and name the skills you already have, using the words the employer uses.

Distinguish between hard and soft skills:

• Hard skills are measurable and often technical: a programme, a machine, a language, a certificate or a field of knowledge.
• Soft skills are about behaviour: communicating, planning and working together. They are harder to prove, so link them to a situation from your work experience.

Put the most important skills in a short list of ten to fifteen words. Then check whether you can back up each skill. A skill that exists only on paper will lead to questions in the interview that you cannot answer.

For example, for an administrative assistant: Excel (pivot tables, VLOOKUP), Exact Online (Dutch accounting software), invoice checking, telephone customer contact and taking minutes. You can explain each of those with an example in the interview.

Only use a level indication if you can give it honestly. "Good at Excel" is vaguer than "Excel: formulas, pivot tables and VLOOKUP, used daily". The second is more concrete and gives a good follow-up in the interview.

Put your education after your work experience, unless you have just graduated and your education is your strongest asset. Start with the highest qualification and work backwards. For each one, give the name, the institution, the place and the year you finished.

Did not complete a course? Mention it honestly, for example: "Business administration, university of applied sciences, 2019 to 2020, no diploma". Leaving it out shows a gap that you will still have to explain in the interview.

Courses and certificates belong on your CV where they are relevant: a VCA certificate (the Dutch safety certificate for contractors and industrial work), a BIG registration (the Dutch register for healthcare professionals) or an Excel course for an administrative role. List only certificates you actually hold, and include the validity where it expires.

List your languages with a level. You can use the CEFR levels (from A1 to C2) or words such as good, excellent and native. Be honest: if an employer expects an interview in that language, you must be able to conduct it in that language.

Mention your driving licence if the job requires driving, for example with "driving licence B". If it does not matter for the job, leave it out.

Hobbies and interests are optional. They help if they show something you can do, such as volunteering or a sports team you captained. General hobbies such as reading or walking say little. Leave them out, or make them specific.

A CV is one or two A4 pages. For school leavers and people with a short work history, one page is enough. With more relevant experience, two pages is fine. A third page is rarely needed.

Length is about relevance, not volume. Cut anything that has nothing to do with the job: old work that says nothing about your current skills, or a list of every course you ever took. Ask yourself for each sentence: does this help the recruiter choose me?

If you use two pages, put the most important information on the first. That is where reading starts. The second page holds the older jobs, the education and the extras.

It helps to look at the CV on paper. On paper you see quickly whether there are blank lines, a heading on its own or a gap at the bottom of a page. A second page with little text can look untidy.

In the Netherlands a photo on the CV is common, but it is not required. There is no legal requirement. If you leave the photo out, you are not doing anything wrong.

If you use a photo, choose a recent, neutral portrait: your head and shoulders, a plain background and good light. No holiday snaps, group photos or selfies. A professional photographer is nice, but a good photo in daylight works too.

Not every template has room for a photo. You upload the photo in the CV editor, and after that it appears in the preview and in the PDF. On the templates page you can see which layouts show a photo.

Send your CV as a PDF, unless the vacancy asks for something else. A PDF keeps the layout you chose, on any device. A Word file can look different on another computer.

For an applicant tracking system (ATS), pay attention to three things:

• Plain text: put your name, your jobs and your skills in the document as text, not as an image and not in a graphic.
• Standard headings: use headings such as "Work experience", "Education" and "Skills". A system recognises creative headings such as "My journey" less well.
• Simple structure: avoid text boxes, side-by-side columns and icons for your contact details.

Give the file a recognisable name, such as firstname-lastname-cv.pdf. That helps the recruiter, who has to find it among many other attachments.

A basic CV is the starting point. For each vacancy you adjust a few parts. This does not have to take much time, as long as you follow a fixed order.

1. Read the vacancy twice. First to understand the role, then to mark the requirements and the words that keep coming back.
2. Adjust the profile statement. Use the job title from the vacancy, if it fits your experience, and one or two points that match.
3. Put the skills in the order of the vacancy. What the employer mentions first goes at the top.
4. Choose the points per job. Put the results closest to the vacancy at the top, and remove points that have nothing to do with it.
5. Check the whole. Is the content still correct, and does the CV still fit on one or two pages?

Only adjust what truly matches the vacancy. Do not add skills you do not have just because they appear in the vacancy. That comes out in the interview sooner or later.

Save each version with a recognisable name, for example with the name of the company in it. Then you know later which CV went to which employer, and which words you used.

Go through this list before you send your CV:

• Typing errors and wrongly spelled names of employers or institutions. A recruiter spots them immediately.
• A CV for a different job. Adjust the profile statement and the skills to the vacancy, or the CV stays generic.
• Tasks only, no results. Add at least one point per job that shows what you achieved.
• An email address or phone number that is wrong, or that you no longer use.
• Gaps in the timeline without an explanation.
• Too many words. If you want to shorten the text, start with the sentences nobody would miss.
• Inflated job titles or experience you do not have. That can come up in the interview or during a reference check.
• A file name such as "CV_final_v3_DEF.pdf". Name the file the way you would look for it yourself.

Read your CV aloud. Rewrite the sentences you would not say that way. That is the quickest way to spot awkward wording. Already have a CV as a PDF? The free CV check gives you a score and three points to improve.

Your CV is one part of the application. A letter explains why you want the job and matches it to the vacancy. Write it separately from your CV, but use the same facts, so that the story is consistent. The cover letter examples show the structure and an example letter for each situation. Once your CV is unlocked, you can also have up to five letters drafted alongside it in the editor, which you then adjust yourself.

Want more on Dutch customs? Read How to write a CV in the Netherlands, a guide for expats.

When your CV is ready, check it once more for calm and facts. Then you can start preparing for the interview: the vacancy, the organisation and your own story for each job on your CV. You must be able to explain every point on your CV.

Stuck on the wording? Use the CV coach in the editor. It asks one question at a time and only uses what you tell it. It may suggest better wording, but you decide whether it goes in. The blog has more articles about applying for jobs.