Here's what worked for me: 1. I always prepared (exactly) 2 page CV. 2. One thing, that paid off (I think) I always prepared CV for specific Job offer. Takes

Here's what worked for me: 1. I always prepared (exactly) 2 page CV. 2. One thing, that paid off (I think) I always prepared CV for specific Job offer. Takes time, but exposes the best of you in paper for the position you are applying for. 3. I have a belief that "If text looks good on paper - it will look good on screen", not necessarily otherwise. Thus I print my CV, read it loudly, mark and correct bits and pieces with pencil, edit the electronic form, rinse & repeat until I don't have anything to edit. 4. I wrote cover letter twice in my life - basically it was among the lines of: "I would love to work at your company, because you are cool at something I am interested in working on and I think I have the skills you need (references to CV, showing my experience in what they needed)." So far so good, through the years I applied to companies in Lithuania, Denmark, Sweden and UK (London) - I got offers from all of them. I applied for Software Engineer position in PHP or Python companies.