内容概览
The first person to read your CV is deciding whether to read it properly. That is a different task from assessing you, and a CV written for the second task often fails the first. What survives the screen is a document where the top third answers three questions without the reader having to assemble them: what you do, where you have done it, and whether you can legally do it here.
What is the reader actually looking for?
A match against a brief they are holding, and disqualifiers. In practice they are scanning for your current function and level, the sectors you have worked in, the markets you have worked in, your work authorisation status, and whether your recent history is coherent.
They are not, at this stage, reading your achievements. Those matter at the second read, which is why the structure that works puts the matching information where it is found in seconds and the evidence immediately underneath.
What belongs in the top third?
Five things, and no photograph of a graph.
- **A line that states the role you do**, in the words the market uses. Not "results-driven professional" — "Financial Controller, manufacturing, Malaysia and Singapore".
- **Your current or most recent employer and title**, with dates.
- **Markets and languages**, if either is relevant to the role. In Asia Pacific they usually are.
- **Work authorisation**, stated plainly — citizen, permanent resident, current pass holder, or requiring sponsorship. Leaving it out does not avoid the question; it moves the question to a phone call you may not get.
- **Two or three lines of substance**, each one a thing you did and what changed because of it.
How should the experience section be written?
One line for the scope of the role, then evidence. The scope line is the part most candidates skip and the part that makes the rest legible: team size, budget or portfolio, who you reported to, which markets you covered.
Then, under it, what you actually did — specific enough that a peer would recognise the work. "Led the migration of a regional payroll to a single provider across four markets" tells a reader more than "responsible for regional payroll operations", and it is the same length.
Where you have numbers you can stand behind, use them; where you do not, describe the change rather than inventing a percentage. Anyone who has interviewed at volume can tell the difference, and one number that collapses under a follow-up question costs you the ones that were true.
What about gaps, short tenures and career changes?
Explain them in one clause, in the CV, and stop. A gap with no explanation invites the reader's worst guess. "Career break — family care, 2024" or "Company closed the regional office" ends the question.
Short tenures are worth pre-empting when there are two or more in sequence: give the reason on the line, briefly and without editorialising. A reader who has to construct a theory will construct an unflattering one.
Does the same CV work across Asia Pacific?
Mostly, with a few real differences worth knowing.
- **Photographs and personal details.** Convention varies. Where they are not expected, including date of birth, marital status or a photograph adds nothing and can introduce bias into a process you would rather have judged on the work. When in doubt, leave them out — a recruiter who needs them will ask.
- **Length.** Two pages is safe almost everywhere. Ten years of detail and a summary line for anything older is a reasonable rule at any level.
- **Language.** Send it in the language the role is advertised in. If you work across languages, say which you work in professionally, as distinct from conversationally — a desk is built on the former.
- **Certifications and licences** carry different weight by market. If the role names one, put it in the top third.
Should you tailor your CV for every application?
Tailor the top third; leave the history alone. Rewriting your whole career for each application produces a document that reads as assembled, and it is unsustainable across a real search.
What is worth changing every time: the opening line, the order of the two or three points you lead with, and whether the sector or the function is foregrounded.
What is the single most common avoidable mistake?
A CV that describes responsibilities instead of work. Responsibilities are what the job description said; work is what you did about it. Reading your own CV and asking "would this line be identical in the CV of everyone else with my title?" finds most of them in ten minutes.
If you want a consultant who covers your sector to read yours and tell you where it stalls, register it with us. We never charge job seekers a fee, and we tell you which company before we put you forward.