A CV dates in two ways: how it looks, and what it includes. The look is cheap to fix and this page fixes it for you. What it includes takes a few minutes of your own judgement, and this is where to spend them.
The look
Times New Roman at 12 point, a centred name in capitals, “Curriculum Vitae” as the title, sections in bold underlined capitals, a table for the dates. None of this is wrong; all of it says “written in Word, a while ago”. A modern template puts the same content in a readable typeface with clear hierarchy, so the reader’s eye lands on your name, then your current role, then the rest — in that order, without effort.
That is the whole job of a template, and it is why you should not spend a weekend on it. Upload, pick one, move on to the part that matters.
The personal profile
“I am a reliable and conscientious individual who is able to work on my own initiative or as part of a team.” Every CV written in Britain between 1995 and 2015 opens with a sentence like it. Recruiters skip it.
Replace it with a summary: your field, your years, the scale of what you run, and the one thing you are known for. Three sentences at most. If a sentence would be true of anyone in your job, cut it.
Profile, 2012
I am a reliable and conscientious individual with over fifteen years experience in facilities management and I am always willing to go the extra mile.
Summary
Facilities manager with fifteen years running a 40,000 sq ft business park: contractors, compliance, maintenance and a £600k annual budget. Tenants stay because things get fixed.
Duties into results
“Duties include: managing contractors, health and safety, budgets, maintenance schedules.” A list of nouns. The reader learns what the job is, not what you did with it.
For each role, write two or three lines that carry a number: the budget, the headcount, the site size, the thing that got better while you were there. You have these numbers — you just never put them on the CV because the last time you wrote one, nobody asked.
Personal details, references, hobbies
Date of birth, marital status and a full postal address come off. They are no longer expected, and an employer is not supposed to know the first two when deciding who to interview. City and a phone number are enough.
“References available on request” is assumed; the line is space you could use. Hobbies stay only if they say something — a marathon, a club you run — and go if they are “walking and spending time with my family”.
Employment history that starts in 1998
Keep the last ten to fifteen years in detail. Anything older gets a single line — title, company, years — or a short “Earlier career” paragraph. Nobody is hiring you for what you did in 2001, and a page and a half of it pushes the current role off the first page.
What this page does
It reads your old file, keeps the content and draws it in a template you choose. When you open it in the editor, the review does the second half: it points at the profile, the duty lists and the personal details, and offers rewrites built from what is already there.