A Quick Guide to Finishing Touches in IIM CVs

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“A quick guide to finishing touches in IIM CVs”

An easy way to improve your CV by tweaking its formatting.

Intended for internal use in campus placement process

Written by: Arjun Khurana,

PGDM class of 45/15, IIM Calcutta

Date: September 17, 2009

Contact information: +91-9748857277, [email protected], [email protected]

“A quick guide to finishing touches in IIM CVs” : September 2009

Written by Arjun Khurana, PGDM class of 45/15, IIM Calcutta

Preface

The intention:

This document is intended as a quick and guide to some tips for formatting and presentation of final

1 page curriculum vitae for IIM students (specifically with IIMC in mind). It includes some tips

commonly seen, handed from batch to batch. This has been hastily written down, and not really

researched or validated. Use this after meeting all your mentors, some 10-15 seniors, and more or

less finalizing the actual material content of the CV.

What you should expect from this guide:

1. A slightly better ‘looking’ and feeling CV.

2. A rough guide for selecting sentence/CV point structures, and highlighting (bolding).

3. A check on readability, density, and some other miscellaneous parameters of a CV.

What you should not expect from this guide:

1. A total makeover of the CV

2. A change in the meaning of any points

3. A way to “magically” make your CV better

Disclaimer:

This guide has been written based on experience and common general advice, as well as some

heuristics used and advised by the author.

Please do not, in any case, take this guide as any form of stipulation or official guideline.

Please confirm with your placement guidelines and/or placement representatives before

following any of the below guidelines.

The author may not, in any case, be held responsible/liable for your actions or any consequences

of your actions by following the below suggestions.

Any suggestions given below are personal opinions of the author.



Now for the juice!

Let’s divide the polishing and finishing of the CV into the following categories and sub categories:

1. MS Word formatting tips

2. Sentence structure

3. Effective highlighting

4. Other miscellaneous tips

1. MS Word formatting tips:

a. Margins: It might be useful to use the following specifications, in order to make the

CV look not too cluttered, or dense:

i. Left/right margins: 0.5 inches or 1.27 cms on both sides

ii. Top/bottom margins: Set the top margin to leave just about 5-7 mm above

the highest printed matter on the CV. Similarly, set the bottom margin so to

leave just about 5-7 mm below the footer (which normally includes email

address and the name of the institute).

b. Font size and line spacing: It might be useful to use “Garamond” size 11 (make the

bolded parts look better than any other similar serif font). Also, a corresponding line

spacing of 13 points (exactly). Line spacing can be accessed from ‘format’ >

‘paragraph’ > ‘line spacing’ > ‘exactly’ > 13. It is also advisable NOT to tinker with

character spacing anywhere, so as not to compromise readability.

c. Shades of grey: Use a maximum of 2 shades of grey. The darker for the section

headers and the lighter for both the bucket-boxes and the first row of the table

within the ‘Academic distinctions’ header. 25% Grey and 15% grey are generally

found to be a good combination.

d. Borders: Black borders are discouraged. However, you may find keeping ‘white

borders’ useful, as it lets you space out the various cells of the table in which you

type all your text.

e. Table: Making the entire CV in a single table might be useful to ensure proper

alignment of all tables/sections/items.



2. Sentence structure: To understand this section and the next, it shall be useful to

see/understand a few concepts/rules:

a. “The 3 column rule”

See the writing part of your CV sections (not including bucket-boxes) as divided (along

the width of the paper) into three (roughly equal) columns: left most being the primary

(1º) , right most being secondary (2º) and the middle column being the tertiary (3º).

Primary is meant for writing the most important part of any line/CV point (eg ranks,

‘power verbs’). Secondary is meant for writing facts/figures/words of secondary or

supportive importance in the line. These things are essential to bring out the value of

the point but are at the same time not the main thing you are highlighting in that line.

Tertiary can be considered as the most ignored part of the line. While reading, there is a

high probability of missing this part of the line. Use this part to put in the things which

are either not important (meant as fillers etc) or the kind which you’d rather hide.

It may be useful to structure your line in such a way that the most important part of your

line falls in 1º, i.e the beginning, the second most important falls in 2º, i.e the ending,

and the worst parts land up in 3º, i.e the middle of the line.

b. “The 90 +/- 10 rule”:

It is advisable to have the length of your lines at an average of 90% of the writing space

available. The value of free white space lies in enhancing the legibility and hence value

of all other printed matter. A standard deviation in length of 10% of space may well be

acceptable and even appreciated. Hence, the usable range is 80% of space to 100% of

space. Anything smaller than this might look ‘too small’, and any larger won’t fit!

3. Effective highlighting: Highlighting or the practicing of emboldening a few words to attract

attention (bolding as is colloquially called) is a wonderful practice to enhance CV points. A

few tips might, however, improve their effectiveness.

a. Use a maximum bolding of 20-25% for the entire CV

b. Use a maximum of 50-60% bolding in primary (1º) column.

c. Use a maximum of 20-30% bolding in secondary (2º) column.



d. Use a maximum of 10% bolding (3º). This also, should be used for those words/items

which come into this column un-avoidably, just because of sentence structure

requirements, but otherwise ‘belong’ to 1º and 2º.

e. Bolding is not really required in the bucket-boxes, as they already highlight the text

in them, by being filled in a shade of grey.

f. Similarly, bolding isn’t needed in the table listing ‘Academic Qualifications’, except

the first line (headings) of course.

g. Numbers need not be highlighted. They attract attention anyway, so why waste

precious bolding space? 1º column numbers may still be important enough to be

bolded.

h. The lesser the use of bolding, the neater the CV looks, and more is the value of any

bolding used. However, too little bolding also doesn’t look too good.

i. It may be advisable to have any line without a single bold. It reflects your having a

line in which nothing needs special attention, questioning the very basis for putting

it there in the first place.

4. Other miscellaneous tips:

a. Avoid bucket boxes being in all sections. It reduces their value by reflecting that you

have put them just for the sake of it. Leave at least 1 section without the bucket

boxes.

b. Use sub-bullets to put constituent points under the main point, without the need for

a bucket box.

c. Effectively utilize the colon (:), semicolon (;) and the comma (,) to separate different

parts of a line. CV making is not a test of English grammar or sentence making. One

needs to explain achievements properly and aptly, and not necessarily be

grammatically correct.

d. CV points without their time frame (year or maybe month and year in certain cases)

may be considered as an absolute necessity. Without this, points are more or less

incomplete. One way to include the year is to put it at the end of each line, with a

comma. Continuing activities’ years’ may be written as 2001-07. Discrete multiple

events may be written as 2001,2002,2003.

e. A normal CV would have between 38 to 42 lines (CV points). 39 or 40 look best.

A Quick Guide to Finishing Touches in IIM CVs

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