Writing a CV for a CCNA Role

After completing your CCNA qualification, it is likely that you are going to be looking for CCNA jobs, so you’re going to need an appropriate CCNA CV. 

Here we take a look at some of the formalities that you’ll need to stick to but also a few way in which you can make your CCNA CV stand out from the rest of the pile!

CCNA CV: The format

The format of your CV should remain pretty consistent as it helps recruiters know where to look for particular information. You need to make sure that you make finding your key attributes as easy as possible so they aren’t overlooked, as a result, you should look to include the following:

Profile Summary – a quick introduction in to you and your career aims

Education – all your qualifications both scholarly and professional  

Experience – try to include all your previous positions, list these in reverse chronological order

Interests – give the recruiter a flavour of your personality; keep it brief though, just a couple of lines is plenty!

Referees – include these if possible but if you don’t want them being contacted just yet add in “references available on request”.

Tailor your CCNA CV

When looking for

, tailoring your CV to each role can be crucial to helping you stand out from the rest of the pile. It is likely that most (if not all) of the applicants will have a CCNA qualification and so the recruiter will be looking at other areas of your character and experience in order to establish who is likely to be the best fit for the role and the company. Really take your time going through the job description in detail and highlight the key things that they are asking for. From here you are able to tailor your CV to demonstrate that you are the ideal candidate for the role. A key way of doing this is to use examples…

Use examples

Using examples from your own life experiences can demonstrate your skills and in turn be very influential with recruiters. Examples add to your character profile and help give your CV personality but do be careful to keep your examples brief as long winded stories can be off-putting to recruiters.

Use keywords so employers searching can find you

More and more employers are searching online to find candidates for roles that will never be advertised, so make sure that you are available to be headhunted by using keywords in your CCNA CV. You should try to include keywords that signify what job you would like, not just the keywords that describe the role you are in. Put yourself in a recruiter’s position and think about what skills they might be looking for and make sure you mention these. Variants of phrases or keywords should also be included to try to ensure you show up in all relevant searches made by recruiters.

Use creative layout or design

Having a standard format for a CV doesn’t mean that you aren’t able to inject a bit of your own personality in to it. Many people pick a theme or font for their CV to make it stand out or to bring attention to key areas, if you are going to do this though, here are a few things to keep in mind:

• A white background is usually best as recruiters tend to print CV’s in monotone so any other colour and you risk your CV not being very easy to read or not being read at all.
• Be careful not to let the design or layout overshadow your skills and experience – only add it in if it adds value.
• Be consistent across your whole application.

Be concise

Repetition is a huge turn off to most recruiters so by aiming to keep your CCNA CV concise you should be able to stop yourself from going over the same points several times as you focus on the most important elements of your skills and experience. You should try to keep your CV to no more than 2 A4 pages.

For more help and advice writing your CV, we have partnered with CV Knowhow who offers a FREE CV Review by expert CV authors. If you would like to take advantage of this offer, click here.