A CV That Tells Your New Story

Warm-up: Today's Goal: Make Your Old Jobs Point Forwards

4 warm-up questions

• When did you last update your CV, and how long did it take you?
• Imagine somebody reads your CV for seven seconds. What do you want them to remember?
• Have you ever used AI to write something about yourself? How did the result feel?
• Do you think a CV should show your personality, or only the facts?

Reading: Same Job, Different Story

Read a 311-word text about Same Job, Different Story

Same Job, Different Story Marta worked for six years as a restaurant manager. Now she wants a job in project coordination. Her first CV said this: "Restaurant manager. Responsible for daily operations, staff and customers." Nobody called her. The line is true, but it only describes a restaurant. A project team reads it and thinks: this is not our world. Rewriting the same six years Marta did not invent anything. She simply chose the parts of the job that the new field cares about, and she used their words: "Managed a team of 14 across two locations, planned weekly schedules and cut supplier costs by 12% in one year." Same job. Same six years. But now a project manager reads it and thinks: this person plans, leads people and controls a budget. How to tailor a CV Read the job advert and mark every skill it asks for. Then go through your own history and find one real example of each. Put those examples near the top, and quantify them: how many people, how much money, how many hours saved. Numbers travel between industries far better than job titles do. Where AI helps, and where it hurts AI is excellent for the first draft. Give it the job advert and your real history, and it will produce clean bullet points in thirty seconds. That saves you an evening. The problem is what comes back. AI loves buzzwords: dynamic, results-driven, passionate team player. Every candidate now sends the same sentence, so recruiters stop reading it. The words are also generic — they could describe anyone. So use AI as a first reader, not a final writer. Take its structure, then put your facts back in, cut every adjective you would never say out loud, and read the whole page aloud. If it does not sound like you speaking, it is not finished.

Vocabulary: CV Language

9 items

Practice: Weak Line to Strong Line

Matching exercise, 7 items

• Responsible for the team
• Good with customers
• Helped to reduce costs
• Dynamic and results-driven professional
• Used various computer systems
• Involved in training
• Passionate team player

Practice: Finish the CV Lines

Gap-fill exercise, 7 items

• I always ____ my CV for the specific job advert.
• Try to ____ your results with real numbers.
• That sentence is far too ____ to be useful.
• ____ points are easier to read than long paragraphs.
• The AI wrote a first ____, and I rewrote it.
• Recruiters ignore a ____ like 'results-driven'.
• One tiny ____ can cost you the interview.

Practice: Fix the CV Mistakes

Error-correction exercise, 6 items

• I am working as a teacher from 2018 to 2023.
• Responsible of a team of eight people.
• I have experience in manage large budgets.
• My personal statement explain why I am changing career.
• I reduced the costs of 12% in one year.
• I am very interesting in this new sector.

Discussion: Your CV, Out Loud

4 discussion questions

• Say your personal statement out loud in three sentences, as if we just met at a conference.
• Which line on your current CV is the most generic, and what real number could replace it?
• How much of a CV do you think AI should write? Where is your limit?
• How might CVs be different in ten years, if every candidate uses the same tools?