How to create a professional CV: a step-by-step guide

A recruiter usually decides in a short first look whether your CV deserves a proper read. That first look is about clarity: can they find who you are, what you have done and why you fit this job without hunting for it? This guide walks through a professional CV one section at a time, with the conventions employers in Bangladesh tend to expect and the places where an international format is the better choice.

Start with the job, not the template

Before you open a template, open the job post. Underline the duties, the skills and the qualifications it asks for. Those words are your brief. Everything on your CV should help the reader answer one question: can this person do this job?

This is also why one CV for every application rarely works. You don’t need to rewrite it each time, but you should adjust the summary, reorder your skills and choose which achievements to put first. A sales role and an operations role at the same company want to see different sides of you.

Pick a format that suits you and the employer

For most people the right structure is reverse-chronological: your most recent job or degree first, then backwards. It is what recruiters expect, it shows progress, and it works with the software many companies use to sort applications.

Within that, the layout depends on where you are applying:

• Local companies, government and many NGOs in Bangladesh often expect the familiar local format: a photo, a career objective, personal details and a signed declaration at the end.
• Multinationals, international organisations and jobs abroad usually prefer a cleaner, international CV: no personal details beyond contact information, a profile summary instead of an objective, and often no photo.
• Jobs and study in Europe often use the Europass-style EU format, with language levels on the common European scale (A1 to C2).
• Academic roles and scholarships put education, research and publications first.

If you are unsure, read the job post and the company’s own website. A company that writes in formal Bangla and English and asks for a “CV with recent photograph” is telling you which format it wants.

Your header, photo and personal details

Your header is your name, a one-line headline such as “Accounts Officer” or “Final-year EEE student”, a phone number you actually answer, a professional email address and your city. Add a LinkedIn or portfolio link if you have one that is up to date.

The photo

Many local employers still expect a photo. If you include one, use a recent, passport-style picture with a plain background, good light and formal or smart clothes. Leave out selfies, group photos and heavily edited pictures. For international applications, follow the employer’s guidance; many prefer no photo at all.

Personal details

Bangladeshi CVs traditionally include a personal details block: father’s and mother’s name, date of birth, nationality, permanent and present address, and sometimes religion, marital status or NID number. Include what the employer asks for and what you are comfortable sharing. You are never required to put your NID number on a CV that will be emailed around, and for international jobs this whole block is usually left out.

Career objective or profile summary

Under your header, write two to four lines that tell the reader what you offer. In the local format this is often called a career objective; in the international format it is a profile summary. Either way, make it about the employer, not about you.

The second version names a field, real experience and what you will do for them. A recruiter can picture you in the role.

Work experience that shows what you did

For each job, list your title, the organisation, the location and the dates (month and year). Then write three to six bullet points. Start each one with an action verb and, where you can, show a result.

• Instead of “Responsible for social media”, write “Planned and posted content for the company Facebook page and answered customer messages daily”.
• Instead of “Handled customers”, write “Resolved walk-in and phone complaints and kept a log the branch manager used for weekly reviews”.
• If you have numbers you can stand behind, use them: the size of a team, a budget, a deadline you met, the number of clients you handled.

Only use figures you could explain in an interview. A modest, true number is worth more than a big one you can’t defend.

No formal experience yet? That is normal for fresh graduates. Use internships, tuition, part-time work, club roles, volunteering and university projects. They show the same things employers look for: responsibility, reliability and the ability to finish something.

Education, results and training

List degrees in reverse order with the institution, the years and your result. In Bangladesh it is common to include SSC and HSC (or O and A Levels) alongside your bachelor’s and master’s, with the board, the year and the GPA. Write results clearly, for example “CGPA 3.45 out of 4.00” or “GPA 5.00 out of 5.00”, so nobody has to guess the scale.

Once you have a few years of work behind you, education can move below experience and shrink to the key lines. Add relevant training and certificates too, but choose the ones connected to the job rather than every workshop you have attended.

Skills, languages and the rest

Group skills so they are easy to scan, for example “Accounting: Tally, VAT returns, bank reconciliation” and “Software: Excel (pivot tables, VLOOKUP), Google Sheets”. Be specific: “MS Office” tells a reader very little, while “Excel pivot tables and charts” tells them what you can actually do.

List languages with an honest level: Bangla (native), English (fluent or professional), and any others. Add projects, awards, publications and volunteering if they strengthen your case for this job. Hobbies are optional; include them only if they say something useful about you.

References and the declaration

Many local employers like to see two references, usually a former supervisor and a teacher, with their title, organisation and phone number or email. Always ask your referees first. For international roles, “References available on request” is common and saves space.

The local format often ends with a short declaration, such as “I hereby declare that the information given above is true to the best of my knowledge”, followed by your signature and the date. Include it when you are using the Bangladesh format; leave it out of an international CV.

Length, design and the file you send

One page suits students and fresh graduates. Two pages is fine once you have real experience to show. Academic CVs can be longer. If you are over two pages, cut older or less relevant detail before you shrink the font.

Design should help reading, not compete with it: one or two readable fonts, consistent dates and spacing, clear section headings and enough white space. Starting from professional CV templates saves you hours of fiddling with margins in a word processor and keeps everything aligned.

Send a PDF unless the employer asks for Word, and name the file sensibly, such as “Nusrat-Jahan-CV.pdf”. If the company uses an online system or a job portal, keep the layout simple; our guide on how to make an ATS-friendly CV explains what that software struggles with.

Final checks before you apply

1. Spelling and grammar: read it aloud, then ask someone else to read it.
2. Dates: every job and degree has them, in the same format, with no unexplained gaps you can’t talk about.
3. Contact details: call your own number and send a test email to the address on your CV.
4. Relevance: the first half of page one shows why you fit this particular job.
5. Honesty: everything is true and you can talk about any line in an interview.
6. File: it opens correctly as a PDF on a phone as well as a laptop.

If you would rather not wrestle with formatting, you can create a professional CV online with our CV builder. It has 50+ templates, including Harvard, EU format and Bangladesh Standard. Five are free, and one small payment with bKash or Nagad unlocks every premium template for one CV. You can switch templates without retyping anything, share your CV as a link or download it as a PDF. Prefer the word “resume”? The same tool is our resume builder.