Sections CV

• Given name and family name (surname)
• Your current address
• Mobile phone number
• Email address
• URL to your LinkedIn profile
• Photo; adding a photo is becoming increasingly common. Choose a professional portrait with a neutral background.

It’s also becoming increasingly common to include a few sentences at the top of your CV explaining who you are, what you stand for, or what you plan to do.

You can dedicate this section to your personal qualities and characteristics, such as your creativity, analytical mindset, and flexibility. Provide examples that demonstrate these qualities.

State the name of your study programme(s), the name and location (and country if applicable) of the educational institution. 

When listing the most relevant education on your CV, also indicate: 

• Name and type of your study programme
• Relevant courses
• Relevant electives or minor
• Topic of your thesis 

If you completed an exchange or, for example, a minor within another programme or educational institution, please clearly indicate what it concerns and which Bachelor’s or master’s programme it belongs to.

Not all employers are familiar with a specific Bachelor’s or master’s programme. By mentioning relevant courses, an employer can gain insight into your specific background and skills.

Note: if your graduation date isn't yet in sight, enter ‘present’ as the end date of your programme. You can update this as soon as you know the definitive date.

• Provide the correct job title, the name of the employer, and/or department and the location where the employer is located.
• Briefly describe your tasks, activities or responsibilities. Finding it difficult to name them? Then ask yourself what you do i a day or a week.
• Be clear and speak in terms of actions and results.
• If your internship experience is relevant to the position you are applying for, you can also mention the internship under this heading, work experience.
• If you have a lot of work experience from (short-term) part-time jobs, you can group these under the heading ‘various part-time jobs’. You don’t need to list all periods and employers separately. You’re essentially combining all the employers and work experience you gained during these part-time jobs. You can use the start date of the first part-time job and the end date of the last one as the start and end dates.
• When listing your work experience, include not only the year you started or finished a job, but also the months. ‘2023-2024’ could mean two years of work experience of two weeks. Make sure it’s clear how long you worked there. 

Note: if you are still working in a position, enter ‘present’ as the end date for this work experience.

If you have completed an internship that is relevant to your future job, consider creating a separate section for internships. This will draw extra attention to this experience. 

These are activities you’ve done alongside your studies. This could range from a year on a board to coaching a youth soccer team. 

This section is especially important if you don’t have much or any work experience yet. Feel free to consider it ‘work’ experience and describe it in the same way as explained in the work experience section.

Have you done any volunteer work? You can add that here as well. However, you can also choose to highlight it by adding a separate ‘volunteer work’ section to your CV.

Note:

• Are you unsure whether something qualifies as work experience or an extracurricular activity? Then ask yourself if you’re getting paid. That’s usually your answer.
• If you have more extracurricular activities than work experience and want to make them more prominent, feel free to reverse the ‘work experience’ and ‘extracurricular activities’ sections on your CV and list your extracurricular activities first.

If relevant to the position you are applying for, list the foreign languages you’re proficient in. For each language, indicate your proficiency ir oral and/or written form. Remember to consider your readers: not everyone understands what ‘C2’ means. Keep this in mind.

List the various computer programmes you are proficient in and that are relevant for the position. Consider, for example, graphics or statistics programmes, applications and various operating systems. 

In the Netherlands it’s very common to list hobbies and interests on your CV. Recruiters want to know more about you as a person, and it can be helpful to highlight certain skills. For example, if you enjoy playing chess in your spare time, there’s no doubt about it if you also mention your analytical skills. 

These can also serve as icebreakers in a conversation. Only mention hobbies you still practice regularly and that you can talk about with pleasure.

It is common practice to write ‘upon request’ under this heading. If an employer asks for references, this gives you the opportunity to inform your references first about the application and the required qualifications and experience. 

Finally, you might want to mention on your CV that you participated in a management game or hackathon. Or, if it’s relevant to the position, that you have a driver’s license. In that case, you can choose to include this information in the ‘additional information’ section.