Recruiters spend an average of six to eight seconds scanning a CV before deciding whether to read it properly. That's barely enough time to read your name, glance at your last job title, and form a first impression. If your English CV is dense, generic, or littered with the wrong phrasing, it lands in the "no" pile before anyone has actually considered you. The good news: the techniques that get a CV past those six seconds aren't complicated. They're just rarely taught.
An English CV isn't a list of everything you've done — it's a marketing document arguing that you're the right person for one specific role. The shift from "comprehensive history" to "targeted argument" is what separates the CVs that get interviews from the ones that don't. Here's how to write one that does the job.
Lead With a Sharp Personal Statement
The top third of your CV is the most expensive real estate on the page. Don't waste it on "Hardworking professional seeking new opportunities." That sentence tells the reader nothing they couldn't have guessed. Instead, write a three-sentence personal statement that names what you do, who you do it for, and what you've measurably achieved.
Compare these two openers. Weak: "Motivated marketing professional with experience in various industries seeking a challenging role." Strong: "B2B marketing manager with seven years' experience scaling SaaS companies from £2M to £10M in annual revenue. I specialise in content-led growth and account-based marketing for mid-market technology firms." The second one tells a hiring manager exactly what they're looking at within four seconds — and gives them three reasons to keep reading.
Use Strong Action Verbs, Not Job Descriptions
The single most common mistake on English CVs is describing your role instead of your impact. "Responsible for managing a team of five" is a job description — anyone holding that title was responsible for that. "Led a team of five to deliver a £500K product launch six weeks ahead of schedule" tells the reader what you actually did. Action verbs do the heavy lifting here.
Strong English action verbs to start your bullets: Led, Delivered, Launched, Built, Negotiated, Secured, Reduced, Increased, Streamlined, Implemented, Designed, Spearheaded, Transformed, Resolved. Avoid weak verbs like "helped," "assisted," "worked on," "was involved in." They make you sound peripheral to the work — like you were in the room when it happened, but didn't drive it.
Quantify Everything You Possibly Can
Numbers anchor your achievements in reality. "Improved customer satisfaction" is a claim. "Improved customer satisfaction scores from 72% to 89% over 18 months" is evidence. Even when you can't get exact figures, ranges and proportions still beat vague language. "Managed a portfolio of around 40 clients worth roughly £3M annually" is far stronger than "Managed several large clients."
If your role doesn't lend itself obviously to metrics, look harder. How many people did you train? How many languages do you operate in? How big was the budget you handled? How many countries did you cover? How much time did you save your team with that process you redesigned? There's almost always a number hiding in your work — find it.
Get the British English Conventions Right
If you're applying to UK or European employers, your CV should follow British English conventions, not American ones. Small things signal whether you've actually worked in this market. Use British spelling — "organised," "specialised," "favourite," "centre" — not American spellings. Use "CV" rather than "résumé." Dates should be written as "May 2026" or "05/2026," not "5/2026" American-style. Phone numbers begin with +44 for UK applications.
British CVs are typically two pages, never one — that's an American convention. Don't include a photo, your date of birth, your marital status, or your nationality unless you specifically need to demonstrate the right to work. UK employment law makes hiring decisions based on those factors illegal, so including them creates awkwardness rather than helping you. Stick to: full name, professional email, phone number, LinkedIn URL, and city of residence.
Tailor It to Each Role — Properly
"Tailoring your CV" is advice everyone gives and almost no one follows. Most candidates change two words in their personal statement and call it tailoring. Real tailoring means reading the job description carefully, identifying the five or six skills the employer is genuinely prioritising, and rewriting your bullets so those skills appear in the first half of each section.
The trick is to mirror the language of the job advert. If the role asks for "stakeholder management," your CV should say "stakeholder management" — not "client relationships" or "working with senior leaders." Many companies now use applicant tracking software that scans for exact keyword matches. The candidate whose CV uses the exact phrasing of the job description gets ranked higher than the equally qualified candidate who used a synonym. It's not glamorous, but it's how the system works.
Writing a winning English CV is partly about the words and partly about the thinking behind them. If you'd like feedback on your CV from teachers who understand both the language and the British professional context, our Workplace English programme at Kensington English includes practical sessions on professional writing — see our courses for the full picture.
