Here's something I noticed back when I was the one screening CVs: the generic advice is all correct, and it barely matters.
One page. Clear headings. Real verbs. Numbers where you have them. Do all of it. But that's the floor. It gets you read, it doesn't get you called.
Because on that first pass I wasn't only reading what you'd done. I was reading how you'd built the document. And what I was looking for changed completely depending on which job you'd applied for.
Your CV isn't a record of your career. For about forty seconds, it's a work sample.
Marketing: the CV is the ad
This is the one people trip on most, and it's the least forgiving.
If you market things for a living, then the document in front of me is a piece of marketing you made for a product you know better than anything else. So: is there a hook in the first three lines, or does it open with "results-driven professional with a passion for growth"? Is the positioning clear, or is it everything you've ever touched, in order?
If you can't position yourself, I'm allowed to wonder how you'd position the product. That's not me being harsh. That's the job.
HR and recruiting: it has to be perfect
Different bar, and it isn't fair, and it's real.
You're applying to be the person who screens other people's CVs and tells managers what good looks like. So a typo in an HR CV reads differently than a typo in a backend engineer's CV. One is a slip. The other is a hint about your eye.
The other thing I watched for: does this person understand the business or only the admin? "Ran onboarding" and "cut the time it took new hires to get productive from six weeks to three" are the same task described by two very different people.
Design: the work comes first, and the CV is also the work
Portfolio link at the top. Working. Not behind a password (and if it has to be, put the password right there next to it, because nobody is emailing you to ask).
Then, inside the portfolio, say what YOU did. Team projects are fine. Team projects where I can't tell which part was yours are not.
And yes, the CV itself is a layout. Spacing, hierarchy, type. Not decorated, designed. The one trap here is going so far that the file stops being readable by the systems that parse it. A little more visual freedom is fine for design roles than for anyone else, but the text still has to be text.
Junior developer: show me you write code when nobody's paying you
Nobody expects five years of experience from you. That's not what the first pass is about.
It's about evidence. GitHub link near the top, and there has to be something inside it. One project you actually finished and can talk about beats twelve half-done tutorial forks. A README that says what the thing is and why you built it does more than the project itself, honestly.
And activity matters. A profile where the last commit was fourteen months ago tells its own story, and it isn't the one you want.
Sales: numbers or nothing
Quota, and what percentage of it you hit. Deal sizes. How long your cycles ran. What you sold and who you sold it to.
A sales CV with no numbers on it reads as someone who doesn't track their own numbers, and tracking your own numbers is most of the job.
Before you send it, read your CV as the person doing the hiring, not as you. Ask one question: what would someone in this role need to see here as proof? Then check whether it's actually on the page, or just in your head.
If your job isn't on this list
The rule underneath all of it is the same one.
Every function has a thing it's judged on. Marketing is judged on positioning. Sales on numbers. Design on the work. HR on the eye for detail. Engineering on what you've built. Ops and project management on whether things are organised, which means a messy CV is doing quiet damage before anyone reads a word of it.
Find the thing your function is judged on. Then make sure your CV is evidence of it, not just a description of it.
Most people write a CV that says what they're good at. The ones that get calls demonstrate it while you're reading.
If you want a second pair of eyes on yours, feel free to reach out.