Things that I've found have worked well for me: * Respect the time of the person reading your CV. Make it trivially easy for them to find the information they

Things that I've found have worked well for me: * Respect the time of the person reading your CV. Make it trivially easy for them to find the information they want, quickly. Use a clean structure, clear sections and sub-sections, and consistent formatting. Two pages absolute maximum. * Tailor your CV to the specific job that you're applying for. For example, if you're applying for a web development job then put your web development experience at the top. * Pay attention to detail. Be consistent in your use of punctuation and capitalisation. Ensure that there are no spelling errors. * Use LaTeX (there are some great CV templates available) and send your CV in PDF. Microsoft Word documents invariably look messy when you open them in Word. It's much better to send the "final" output. * Emphasise specific skill areas (e.g. software development, system administration, domain-specific knowledge) and list my skills in each area. This makes it easy for the reader to immediately identify what I can do, they don't have to read through descriptions of my previous jobs. * Be concise and straight to the point. Don't use personal pronouns. Keep descriptions compact. * In the cover letter list three specific ways in which you can contribute specifically to the company to the company you are applying to. Show, exactly, how your profile matches key points in the job description. Don't talk about how great you are or what you want from them. The goal of the cover letter/email is to get people to read your CV. The goal of the CV is to get an interview. The goal of the interview is to check you're a good fit for the job and get the job if you are. Therefore, your CV should encourage the reader to want to interview you. Don't bore them with exhaustive descriptions of what you have done. Less is more. Instead, focus on the highlights and entice them to invite you to interview to find out more. Finally, if you do get rejected, always politely ask why. You won't always get an answer, but the answers you do get are often enlightening, often not what you expect, and will help you immensely with future applications.