How to write a CV that gets read in Nepal

Two lines describing the same job:

Responsible for kitchen operations

Cooked for around 60 guests a night. Trained two junior cooks. Ran the ordering when the head chef was off.

The second one gets a call back. Almost everything below is a version of that same difference.

Write what you did, not what you were responsible for

Everyone in that kitchen was responsible for kitchen operations. The word tells an employer nothing about you.

So write the work. How many people, how many rooms, how much cash you handled, how many trucks you loaded, how many machines you looked after. The numbers do not have to be impressive. They have to be true, and they have to be yours.

If you cannot put a number on it, describe the actual task. “Handled customer complaints at the counter” beats “customer service excellence” every time.

Put your phone number where a thumb can find it

Name, phone, email, at the very top. Nothing above it.

Many employers here will call rather than write, especially for field work. If your number sits at the bottom of the second page, you have made a busy person hunt for it. Give the number you actually answer, not the one that stays switched off.

Say which job you are applying for

A CV that could be sent to any employer reads like it was sent to every employer. One line under your name fixes it:

Applying for: Site Supervisor

When the same CV goes to a hotel and to a construction firm, that line changes each time. It is the cheapest edit on the page and the one most people skip.

Cut it to one page

Two pages only past about ten years of work. A long CV does not read as experienced. It reads as unedited.

What to cut first:

• Your school, once you have real work behind you

• Hobbies with no connection to the job

• “References available on request” — they will ask if they want them

• Any skill you would not want to be tested on tomorrow morning

The photo, the date of birth, the father’s name

On a CV in Nepal these are ordinary, and most local employers expect to see them. Applying to a Nepali company, leave them in.

Applying abroad, take them out. In many countries an employer is not permitted to weigh your age, your photograph or your family details, and a CV carrying them can be set aside for that reason alone — before anyone reads a line about your experience.

Keep two versions: one for here, one for abroad. Ten minutes of work, and it stops a good application being dropped for the wrong reason.

Send a PDF, and name the file properly

A Word file can open differently on someone else’s computer and your layout falls apart on the way. Export to PDF, then open the PDF and check it still looks right.

Then name it. Not “cv final final 2.docx”:

Ram_Bahadur_Thapa_CV.pdf

Whoever receives it is dropping your file into a folder with two hundred others. Make yours findable.

If you upload it to Alwass, it fills your profile in for you, so you are not typing the same details a second time — but the file itself is still what an employer opens first.

The sixty-second check, before you send

• Call your own number. Does it ring?

• Is the company name in the document the company you are sending it to?

• Is your own name spelled right? Is the job title?

• Would somebody who has never met you understand what you actually did all day?

That last one is the whole test. If the answer is no, nothing else on the page will save it.