Do you often get confused with which CV template you should use when applying for a new job position? If yes, this article is for you. Whereas the length is what pops out first, you should know that – especially in Europe – the type of company you are applying to, determines how detailed they expect you to describe your experience and qualifications.

Sprint CV will help you clear your mind and make sure you know when to use which and nail those recruitment processes.

One-page CV – Clean, sexy and more suitable to approach start-ups

A one-page CV, also called Resume, has it origins in the US and is commonly used in Silicon Valley. In Europe, it is becoming more trendy to use it.

One-page CVs are clean and straight to the point, and recruiters can immediately have a perception of your professional experience, skills and education. Also, they can identify, in less than 60 seconds, if it has the keywords they are looking for and, if so, you will be moved to the next steps of the recruitment process.

This type of fast-information is very useful when you are applying to Start-up or big tech companies like Google or Facebook. In these cases, your Resume works somewhat like a business card, followed by a long selection process with a series of subsequent interviews, trials and code challenges.

However, one-page CV has some drawbacks that can play against the IT professional:

• Overall, they are graphical, full of images and icons, which are great to the human eyes, but terrible to be processed by computers. Most of the times, before a recruiter opens your CV, it will be “scrapped” and classified in keywords by ATS (Application Tracking System). So, after spending so much time creating a masterpiece in terms of layout, your CV will be totally ignored since it isn’t ATS friendly. So make sure you don’t do this common mistake;
• One-page CVs also tend to be too summarised and, that said, not representative of your professional experience;

See how you can build an amazing IT resume without effort and step up your game with this example of an IT Resume template.

Customised CV – Detailed and suitable for consulting companies

If you apply for a consulting or outsourcing company, where recruitment processes are usually shorter, you should know that these companies need complete information about your qualifications and experience, which is something a detailed CV provides.

Having a detailed CV is a sign of experience – it can easily tell the difference between a junior and a senior candidate – and offers more guarantees of what they can expect from you. A customised CV is shorter than Europass, but tells all your story, professional achievements and IT skills.

In the IT world, you should use a CV that has a nice design, that puts you in advantage, that is no longer than 3 to 5 pages and is optimised to the IT industry.

What means to be optimised to the IT Industry?

• Starts with the summary of your IT skills and time of experience in each technology;
• Helps the recruiter to have enough information to keep reading your CV;
• Describes the technology stack on every professional experience;
• Demonstrates yours achievements on each project;

Check here for all the tips and tricks of how to optimise your IT CV to the IT industry.

However, we advise you to check if the company asks for or prefers a Europass CV. Some companies use Europass with their logo as their internal template, so you want to avoid the trouble of having to update it later.

See here how you can build a killer IT CV. Check here and example of an IT Consultant CV template.

Europass CV template – The safest option and always correct

It is the not-so-loved but still-much-needed CV template when applying for public institutions, big corporations and all the “old school companies”. Remains the major CV template used at a European level, so applying to a job with it is always correct. We advise you to make some improvements, as the Europass standard CV template doesn’t put your IT skills in evidence.

With Europass you shouldn’t be afraid of being too detailed and have an 8 to 10 pages CV – Europass is meant to tell all your professional story, so use it in your favour. This works well for those times when a company asks you to update your CV so it matches their template – you provided all the information, so the most you can do is be available if they have any questions.

See here how you can build a Europass optimized for the IT industry. Check here and example of an Europass CV generated by Sprint CV.

Our advice – Use each CV template in your favour

We suggest that you have a one-page CV, a customised CV and a Europass CV ready to shoot. When applying to a job opening, you should always analyse which CV template is more suitable for that given position and company.

We know how time-consuming and boring is to keep many different versions of the CV up-to-date and synchronized, so with Sprint CV you can centrally manage your professional information and export it to any template available – from an IT Resume, to a Customised CV or Europass optimized for the IT industry –  just by pushing a button.

You are now ready to make the next move in your career!