Table of Contents
Introduction
Full disclosure, I will not claim to be a CV expert, I know what has been very successful for me and what I have liked about the hundreds of CVs I have seen. The purpose of your CV is to showcase how you are a potential match for an advertised role or perhaps how your skills can fit into the vision of a company or department within a company. You need to make it as easy as possible for the reader to connect your CV to the role, and this is where most fail! You have a very, very, very, I cannot stress enough, very, small number of seconds to get the attention of the reader. This in itself should be a starting guide on the important elements of your CV.
When assessing a CV, I want to, as quickly as possible, know if you have a subset of skills matching what we are looking for. A section of bullet-pointed Technical Skills on the first page that my eye will naturally gravitate towards is the winner. I instantly want to find out more, so where to next?
Your Professional Summary. I really want this to be GIS/Geospatial orientated and tailored to the job spec. If I am looking for a GIS Analyst and I read… I am a Software Developer with extensive experience in fintech… You’ve lost a lot of my initial attention!! This is a renewable energy sector role that does not require software development to solve our financial problems. Here’s what I could have read…A Geospatial Professional with software development experience seeking a role in the renewable energy sector to utilise my skills to combat climate change. Well HELLO! Let’s get down to your work experience and see if those skills you listed match your experience.
Make it simple for the reader to want to read more. It needs to looks like you have made an effort to tailor your CV, your generic CV is going to lower your percentage hit rate. Read on and we’ll walk through a CV that is perfect for the Irish market.
Photograph
No, just no. Do not include a photograph. I don’t know who started this trend or where this trend started, but it does not belong on your CV no matter how much you think it does or how proud you are of your graduation photo, resist the urge and keep those photos for Facebook or Instagram.
Your Name
Have it nice and clear at the top of the CV, not on the side, or somewhere obscure, right at the top of the page.
We’ll show two options going forward, one pretty plain…
…and the other a little more fancy (but only ever so slightly)
Professional Summary
Here is where you begin to make it easier for a recruiter, or anyone reading your CV. A short excerpt of what you are all about. To start, label yourself and quantify your years experience.
GIS Professional with 3 years experience…
Senior Geospatial Professional with 7 years experience…
GIS and Earth Observation Specialist with 10 years experience…
Above 10 years you can probably ditch the quantification with something like the below…
GIS/Geospatial Consultant with extensive experience…
Now it’s time to sell yourself, what are your strengths in the geospatial realm? Mention that strength and how it has been used in your career.
GIS Professional with 3 years experience creating informative maps for various projects and reports such as offshore wind farms and environmental impact assessments.
Senior Geospatial Professional with 7 years experience utilising skills to automate repetitive tasks and develop custom tools for common and bespoke workflows.
This is coming along nicely, let’s add something that you enjoy or are passionate about. State your enjoyment or passion for the geospatial world and give examples of what these are. Make sure these enjoyments and passions are evident in your professional experience or perhaps in a link to a personal (or business) website or Story Map. Do not put something in here that you have no experience with. Always remember, anything on your CV is open to scrutiny and questioning, honesty will shine.
GIS Professional with 3 years experience creating informative maps for various projects and reports such as offshore wind farms and environmental impact assessments. GIS brings enjoyment beyond map production with many facets such as spatial analysis, data management, developing applications for field work, and dashboards for sharing information.
Senior Geospatial Professional with 7 years experience utilising skills to automate repetitive tasks and develop custom tools for common and bespoke workflows. Going beyond providing efficiency and value with automation, there is a passion for knowledge sharing amongst peers and training colleagues.
The above are merely examples. You should look at tailoring your professional summary to the job spec. You might have a passion for geostatistics and training, but the job spec specifically mentions mentoring colleagues, so lean into the knowledge sharing and training side and present your geostatistics in your skills and/or professional experience section.
Your Details
While not essential, your basic location is a very nice to have/know, and really just for future roles. If I know you’re based in Cork and role comes up in that part of the country, you’re probably going to be one of the first to get a call (granted that your experience fits the bill)
I have always put my full address down, I have never seen a reason not to, nor has someone’s address ever prevented me from considering them, but something like Clane, Co. Kildare or Dublin City Centre will suffice.
Your email address. Do not use a current employers, this should be a personal email address. You might have a silly named email from when you thought you were going to be a comedian, if so make a new one and attempt to factor in your name or your profession. geospatialjohn@email.com reads better that down2clown@email.com.
Your phone number. In this day and age it is a mobile phone number. Phone numbers can be from all over the world, so make sure to include all the relevant prefix codes.
Your LinkedIn url. Your LinkedIn profile should very closely match your CV. Even if you do not have a LinkedIn url on your CV, you are more than likely going to be searched.
A professional portfolio or website url. If you don’t have one, they are great additions to compliment your CV as they can actually showcase your skills and passions. An Esri Story Map or a Blog are great avenues to take.
NEVER! put your date of birth or gender on your CV!
Technical Skills
The immediate eye catcher! GIS is a technical domain. Job specs list the various technical capabilities required. At a quick glance someone can see that you have potential to meet these requirements. This is the first section that is going to be assessed. If you pass, the eye will go back up and read your professional summary, and down into your professional experience. Simple bullet-points across the page listing 6 or 9 technical skills that match, or closely match the job description. Place the most relevant ones first and the extra ones to shine last. A nice shiny list, my eye will wander there first, it is the initial easier material to consume.
You are saving the person time! If I have to go looking for your skills and have to dig into your CV I am going to give up and just move on to the next. It is on you to clearly communicate your skills.
Aaaaand, always remember, do not embellish, any skills you put down are open to scrutiny and questions. You do not want to get an interview under false pretenses, it just doesn’t end well.
Aaaaand, you’ve listed these skills, make sure you have examples in your professional experience (or education, depending at what stage you are in your career), or available in your online portfolio.
With Python becoming more and prevalent on job specs, it is no coincident to see it appear on more and more CVs. If I interview you, and question the Python entry in your skills, and you tell me you don’t write the scripts, you simply hit the run button, do you think that Python should have been listed?
Professional Experience
While this (eventually) will be the main body of your CV, and it is a very important aspect, it is rare I will get to this section if I struggled to find your relevant skills and didn’t get a small glimpse into your geospatial soul via your professional summary.
As a Graduate you could just call this section Work Experience and list the jobs you did so far like Barista, Bar Staff, Sales Assistant etc, we all start somewhere. Just make sure to knock these off when your two years Professional Experience is done with. We know you are early in your career, you don’t have to feel like you have to pad out your CV or it looks too short. Generally when you apply for a role there is an option for a Cover Letter, or an additional information box, you can add the communications and interpersonal skills you developed while working at your local petrol station there.
Put relevant experience from the most recent to the the least recent.
The relevant information.
- Job Title
- Date: from, to. No need for exact date, June 2021 – August 2022 is good.
- Location, eg Dublin, Ireland or Sydney, NSW, Australia
How to structure your work experience entries? Here is where you expand on the skills you listed in the Technical Skills section.
Most of your entries should follow this formula [Software/tech used][the task performed][why the task was performed]
[ArcGIS Pro used] [to create maps] [for Environmental Impact Assessment Reports.]
Obviously leave out the square brackets [].
[ArcGIS Online] [collaborations setup] [to share information with Join Venture partners.]
[Experience Builder] [WebMap applications created] [to provide interactive capabilities for stakeholders.]
[ArcPy utilised] [to create custom tools in ArcGIS Pro] [to speed up repetitive tasks.]
I can easily see a list of software and technical skills as the first words in each sentence. Its clear to see that these match the skills you have listed in your Technical Skills and those that have not been listed too. And it allows me to gather a bit more information about your use of different software and skills. It also allows for a nice geospatial conversation. “I see you used Experience Builder to create interactive applications, what functionality did you add to various applications?”, “ArcPy! That’s pretty cool, can you tell me about some of the tools you created and your process for creating them?”
It doesn’t always have to be technical, but a similar formula can be applied, [Another task][for what][why?]
[Mentored Graduates] [with skills development] [for professional growth and guidance.]
[Point of contact] [acting as a Helpdesk] [for troubleshooting.]
These open up further discussion…”Training and mentoring is an essential part of a team, what material or techniques did you use to help provide guidance?”
“Being a Helpdesk can be tough, how did you balance helping others while making sure your own tasks didn’t fall behind?”
You are going to be asked questions, you should want to be asked questions. If you are uncomfortable with the questions then maybe you have overstated your current capabilities. You need to have the answers, remember, if it is on your CV, it is open for discussion. It is ok to have some entries on there that show your exposure to some skills and tech, but do not have it top-heavy where most of your answers will be – “I only performed that task once and it was 2 years ago. I don’t really know too much about it.”
Your experience entries are also a great place to show continued progression and Continued Professional Development (CPD). Put these last under each position held. You do not need to list every single course, be general and mention some skills relevant to the role.
Access to LinkedIn Learning where I completed several courses relating to Python, SQL, and JavaScript for examples.
Completed several Udemy courses for; ArcPy, GeoServer, QGIS, amongst others.
Completed several Esri MOOCs for such as Spatial, Analaysis, Cartography, and ArcGIS Applications.
You are always trying to get the point across that you have the necessary skills and experience for the role.
Most job specs will list a small amount of must-haves and a larger list of nice-to-haves. Sometimes it is essential to have all the must haves, depending on what they are, but sometimes the must-haves can be lenient, and you only need a subset of the nice-to-haves. When a recruiter or potential employer receives your CV, they want minimal effort to see that you are worthy of an initial call. If you have to make them work to find how you are a potential candidate, there is a very high percent that your CV won’t get the eye-time you think it deserves, and that opportunity that you possibly deserve, slips away.
Education
Similar to Professional Experience, start with your most recent and list in reverse chronological order. State course name, the institute and the dates you attended.
You do not need to add your result!! Do not add your result. I know it’s counterintuitive, you should be putting your best foot forward. You got the qualification, that’s all that matters. If someone asks, you can tell them then. While I know you are proud of your 2:1, I’m proud of you. Someone else could have 1:1 on theirs and unconscious bias can kick in if comparing CVs and potential candidates. Even if you have a first class honours, you smashed it, well done, do not put it on your CV, you just do not know the perception/unconscious bias that goes through someone’s head. As a Graduate, they might see your 1:1 and automatically think that you are going to interview very well, they already have very high expectations of you, but it doesn’t go so well, and now they are thinking that first class honours didn’t really shine there. Whereas if they never knew you had a 1:1 they might just think it was nerves, which we all get when interviewing, and I’ll put my hand up that 17 years into it and I still get nervous.
Write a couple of sentences describing the course and include and technical aspects. The below description is from my own CV for my MSc in Geocomputation.
Certifications / Professional Memberships (Optional)
An optional section that is not for the 400 Udemy and LinkedIn courses you have completed. This for certifications where you had to sit an exam and pass! or had to apply to an establishment to become a professional member. You can mention your CPD with certificates of completion/attendance with the likes of Udemy and LinkedIn Learning under your Professional Experience.
References
Not required. If someone requires references they will come looking for them.
Interests and Hobbies
I recommend not having on your CV, but it is fine up until you are no longer a Graduate, so about two years into your career. An interview generally starts with you being asked to talk about yourself. Before jumping in all gung-ho with the professional babel, actually talk about yourself as a person and what your interests and hobbies are outside of your professional life. I bet you will find you will be more relaxed when it comes to the main events of the interview having started off with a general conversation about yourself.
Conclusion
Keep it simple! You have just been shown how simple a CV needs to be to get some attention in Ireland. You can add a little bit of personal flair but keep it minimal. Its a CV not a resume, you can have multiple pages. I see more and more resume-style documents that look like they have been produced by a professional graphic design artist. They don’t stand out, they generally make it more difficult to find what we want because our eyes don’t know where to look.
The two examples in this post are available for download as Word document templates, but you should always submit your CV as a PDF!