Writing a good CV takes a lot of time and work. After all, you need to look at your career so far and select what may be most valuable to your potential employer.
However, don’t think that it’s enough to prepare your CV only once and then send it out in response to various job offers. For your application documents to be effective, you need to edit them often – depending on the specific advert.
Why is CV editing necessary?
A CV is not a document that you can prepare once and forget about editing it. Even a perfect CV is not a skeleton key that opens every door. In order for a recruiter to pay attention to your CV, it is necessary to personalize it. What does that mean? Well, it is about adapting individual elements in a CV to the specifics of a specific job offer.
Such personalization may be necessary when:
- The employer requires you to include a specific clause regarding the processing of personal data.
- You have completed or have completed additional courses or training that you would like to indicate in your application documents.
- You want to highlight the features that the employer pays attention to in the recruitment advertisement.
At different stages of building a career, you may need to edit different sections of your CV. Sometimes it will be a short professional summary or a section on skills – and sometimes you may need to mention completed stages of education or a job change.
When to edit your CV
If you finish a certain stage in your career – such information should be updated in your CV. After all, the information provided in your application documents should be current and consistent with the actual state of affairs. However, it is worth making changes to your CV not only when you start actively looking for a job. It is good to do it on an ongoing basis – even if you are not actively looking for a job.
It’s worth having an up-to-date CV on hand – this way you can quickly respond to an offer that appears on social media or in an online ad. After all, you can find your dream job even if you’re not actively looking for it. When an opportunity arises, it’s worth acting quickly.
PDF Editing – No Working File
When creating a CV, it is worth making sure that you have access to a working file – a document in which you can make changes on an ongoing basis. Thanks to this, you are able to quickly update the CV, export the finished file as a PDF and send it in response to a job advertisement.
However, in reality, it often happens that a work file gets lost somewhere. Maybe it was deleted while tidying up your desktop, or maybe you have it on another computer that you don’t currently have access to.
If you only have a CV in the form of a PDF file, it does not mean that you have to create the entire CV from scratch to make changes. Although PDF is a format that is not intended for editing – but for printing or presenting content – there are ways to quickly modify it.
How to edit a PDF file with a finished CV
To be able to edit a PDF file, you need the right software. Many commonly used text editors have the ability to export to a PDF file, but they do not have the ability to edit it.
In such a situation, the SwifDoo PDF program can be extremely helpful, it can also help you convert PDF to DWG or other file formats. Even if the working file has been lost somewhere, you can simply import the finished C V into the program (by dragging it to the open project). Then its individual elements will be recognized, and you will be able to quickly edit individual sections.
You can modify all of these things even without having access to the working file from which the C V was exported. Then, simply save it to a PDF file and send it along with the required application documents.
Remember that individual elements of the document cannot always be read perfectly – a lot depends on how the file itself was prepared. However, it is worth trying, because such editing of the PDF file will certainly take much less time than preparing the entire CV from scratch.
In Closing
To sum up – a CV must be constantly improved. If you want such a document to really convince you about your candidacy – it is worth making sure that it is up to date and tailored to the given job advertisement. Therefore, editing PDF files can be a really helpful solution in many cases.