Hey Little Pineapple,

I was really surprised by the number of people reaching out after my last week newsletter with their CVs.
(and if you missed it you can read it here: https://patryksuchy.kit.com/posts/your-cv-is-costing-you-interviews)

There were a lot of common things for people, so I decided to put a small, actionable guide mixed with a recruiter view.

So today you'll learn couple of valuable information that will help you write every resume ever in the rest of your life.

Let's dive in.

Let me paint you a picture.

It’s a Tuesday morning.
I’m going through a stack of applications for a unity developer role.

47 new CVs. I’ve got a coffee that’s going cold and a meeting in 45 minutes.

CV number one: “Results-driven professional with a passion for innovation and a track record of delivering excellence in fast-paced environments.” (that's real quote from CV)

CV number two opens with: “I shipped three mobile titles in two years, worked on all of them from idea to release, and mentored a team of four juniors from scratch.” (also real quote)

Which one do I keep reading?

You already know the answer.

Part 1: The Rules Nobody Tells You (But Everyone Needs to Hear)

Before we get into the details, there are a few fundamentals I see broken on a daily basis.

I’m not trying to be harsh. I genuinely think most people just haven’t had anyone explain this clearly.

Your CV has exactly one job.

Not to tell your life story.
Not to show how much you know.
Not to impress a hiring manager with a beautiful design.

Its only job is to get you to an interview.

Everything you put on it (and I mean EVERYTHING): every line, every section, every design choice should pass a simple test:
does this help me get the interview? If the answer is no, or even “maybe,” cut it.

That test alone will eliminate about 30% of what most people put on their CVs.

The fold test (try it right now)

Print your CV and fold it in half.
Whatever’s visible in the top half is what a recruiter sees before they decide whether to keep reading.

What’s up there? A giant “CURRICULUM VITAE” in bold?
Your name in size 80 font? A photo and some generic bio about being “passionate about games”?

Or is it something that would make me want to read the next line?

The myth that recruiters spend 5-7 seconds on a CV is half right.

Those first seconds aren’t spent reading.
They’re spent deciding if it’s worth reading at all.
Your opening has to earn that decision.

The more popular the role, the more important this becomes.

It's easy to check every CV thoroughly when you have 6 applications.
But try doing that for character artist role where you get 100+ applications with portfolios.

Structure: what goes where

A solid CV follows a clear order. Nothing fancy needed.
Clean and logical beats creative and chaotic every time.

• Name and contact details (phone with area code, email, LinkedIn, portfolio if relevant)
• Professional bio / summary
• Work experience (reverse chronological - most recent first)
• Education and certifications (if relevant to the job)
• Skills
• Projects (especially if you’re light on experience)
• Hobbies (optional, but can be useful, especially if you are changing careers into gamedev)
• GDPR footer if required in your region

How long should it be?

One page if you’re just starting out.
Two pages once you have meaningful experience across multiple roles.
Three pages absolute maximum. And even that’s rare.

I’ve reviewed CVs from people with 20-year careers that fit cleanly on two pages.
I’ve also reviewed CVs from junior candidates that somehow stretched to five.
Length isn’t a measure of experience.
It’s often a sign that you haven’t edited ruthlessly enough.

And if you’re choosing between a font size of 8 and adding a page, just add the damn page.
Cramping everything into one page with font 8 and no white spaces is an act of violence.

Format: keep it readable, not impressive.

Arial or a similar clean sans-serif font. Size 11 or 12. Consistent spacing. That’s genuinely all you need.

Colour is fine in small doses. A subtle header, a section divider.
​
But I’ve received CVs that look like they were designed for a festival poster, where half the text is unreadable against a dark background. That’s not standing out in a good way.

And please for the love of Sweet Jesus in Raspberries - no Comic Sans.
There are better ways to make a personality statement.

Part 2: The Experience Section (Where Most CVs Fall Apart)

Golden rule:

Stop writing job descriptions.

Here’s what I see constantly:

• “Responsible for developing gameplay systems”
• “Assisted in the creation of level design documentation”
• “Collaborated with cross-functional teams to deliver project milestones”

When Game Designer applies for a Game Design role and writes in their experience their job was designing games the only thought in my head is "no shit Sherlock".

Because these tell me nothing. I already know what a game designer does.
And you can safely assume the recruiter will have at least a vague idea about the role.

What I don’t know is what YOU did: what you built, what you fixed, what got better because you were there.

The shift from job description to achievement is the single biggest upgrade you can make to your CV.

Let me show you how.

The AWO Formula: Action -> Work -> Outcome

Every bullet point in your experience section should follow this structure:

Action: What you did
Work: What it involved
Outcome: What it produced

Let’s take a weak bullet and fix it:

❌ Before: “Responsible for optimising game performance across platforms.”

✅ After: “Optimised rendering pipeline across PC and console, reducing load times by 30% and eliminating the main cause of frame drops reported in QA.”

Same person. Same job. Completely different impression.

The “after” version tells me what you touched, how you approached it, and what actually changed.

That’s what gets you a callback.

Pro tip: Strong action verbs do a lot of work here. Optimised, reduced, shipped, led, rebuilt, cut, mentored, launched.
Pick verbs that can naturally be followed by a number.

Practical rules for the experience section:

• 3–4 bullet points per role. No more, no less
• Each bullet: maximum 2 lines. If it’s longer, it can be split or trimmed
• Lead with your most recent role at the top (reverse chronological)
• If a past job is completely unrelated to where you’re headed, you can skip it or reduce it to a one-liner, so don't dwell on your barista days too much
• For engineers: mention which specific technologies you used in each role, not just in the skills section. If you know both C++ and C#, where did you use each?
• For anyone who managed people: state the ratio of management to hands-on work, especially if the role you’re applying for is a hands-on one

A note on relevance:

Your career aspirations should shape how you present your experience, not the other way around.

Say you spent three years in customer support and you’re now trying to break into QA.
Don’t lead with ticket volumes and customer satisfaction scores.
​
Lead with the things that transfer: attention to detail, systematic thinking, communicating clearly about problems.
Then mention the personal projects, game jams, or testing work you’ve done on the side.

The question to ask yourself for every bullet point: “Is this relevant to the role I’m applying for right now?”
If it’s not, it can probably go.

Part 3: Why They’re Not Replying (Honest Answer)

Ah, the infamous ghosting.
​
You’ve sent applications.
You’ve heard nothing.
And you’re wondering if your CV is the problem.

Truth is: In most cases you will never know

Sometimes it is. Often it isn’t.

Let me break down what’s actually happening on the other side.

The recruitment process, from my desk.

When you apply, here’s what typically happens:

• Your application lands in an ATS (applicant tracking system) - essentially a candidate database
• I get a notification and open it when I can
• I skim it in the first pass to check for a potential match
• If there’s a match, I read it carefully to make sure it's really a match.
• I reach out to schedule a call or to ask for specific details.

That’s it. That’s the whole process. No algorithm making decisions. No robot reading your CV.
Just a person (usually busy, often with a full inbox) making a call.

Common reasons you didn’t hear back.

Some of these are within your control. Most aren’t.

Examples:

• Your experience genuinely doesn’t match what they need right now (the most common reason)
• There are 200 applications for one role and they simply ran out of time to review them all
• The process is almost closed. They’re nearly at offer stage and aren’t actively checking new applications
• The recruiter dropped the ball. It happens. We’re human.
• Your CV arrived late in a process that moved fast

None of those things are things you can fix after hitting send.

What you can do is follow up.
If there’s a recruiter’s name visible near the job listing, a brief message a few days after applying is completely reasonable.

Something I see often: Candidates who apply for 4 or 5 completely different roles at the same company at the same time. From my side, all of those applications appear under your name in the system. What it communicates is that you don’t know what you want which makes it harder to advocate for you. Pick the role that fits best and apply for that one.

The ATS “robot” myth.

And of course we need to address the most popular ATS robots myth.

There’s a whole industry of advice about “beating the ATS” and “passing the algorithm.”

It’s mostly nonsense.

Applicant tracking systems are databases.
They store your application and make it searchable.
​
The automation they actually run is usually limited to disqualifying filter questions (often called knockout questions).
Things like “Do you require visa sponsorship?” where a company that genuinely can’t help with visas might auto-reject anyone who answers yes.

That’s it. There’s no secret keyword formula.

There’s no way to ‘trick’ the system into surfacing your CV. What actually happens is a person opens it and reads it.

So write your CV for that person. Write it clearly. Write it specifically. Make it easy to understand in thirty seconds.

That’s the only “algorithm” that matters.

You control your presentation.
You don’t control the response.
Focus on what’s in your hands and let go of the rest.

So, to sum up what you've just read:
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Your CV is a sales pitch, not a biography.
Structure it so the best stuff hits in the first half.
Write your experience as achievements, not duties.
Use the AWO formula for every bullet point.
Keep it clean, readable, and focused on the role in front of you, not everything you’ve ever done.

And when the silence comes after sending?
It’s rarely about your CV.
Follow up where you can, and keep going.

Good luck.
You’ve got this Little Pineapple.

PS.
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​Let me ask you one thing - on a scale of 1 to 10, how satisfied and excited are you about your current job?
If your answer is anything less than 8, let's talk. I help people navigate career changes, find work that actually fits them, and stop dreading Monday mornings. Just reply to this email and tell me where you're at.