Sections and what belongs in each
The eleven sections, what each is for, and the rule for deciding whether to include one.
Add content offers the sections not yet on your CV. When they are all on it, it says so rather than showing an empty menu.
The sections
| Section | What belongs in it |
|---|---|
| Experience | Professional roles and employer history, internships included. |
| Projects | Key projects, with your role, the challenges and the impact. |
| Education | Degrees and schools, with focus, honors or exchange terms. |
| Skills | The hard and soft skills that help you do the work. |
| Languages | Languages and how well you speak them. |
| Volunteering | Unpaid work worth showing. |
| Awards | Recognition worth naming. |
| Certificates | Formal qualifications. |
| Publications | What you have written. |
| Interests | Used sparingly, and usually last. |
| References | Whom to ask, where you have permission to say so. |
Experience or Projects?
The distinction that matters for contractors.
Experience is employment: who you worked for, from when to when. Projects is work: what you built, what was hard, what it achieved.
A contractor with fifteen short engagements has an unreadable Experience section and an excellent Projects one. An employee of eight years has the opposite. Use the one that describes your working life, not both out of completeness.
The rule for including a section
Include it if it makes this particular pitch stronger. A CV is an argument, not an archive.
Interests and References are the two most often included out of habit. If Interests does not support the pitch, the space is better spent on a highlight in Projects.
Removing one
Remove a section and its content goes with it. Duplicate the CV first if you want a version with and a version without: duplicating is exactly for that.