Hassle BotTen things that actually improve a South African CV
Most CV advice is written for the American market and quietly assumes an American reader. Some of it transfers. Some of it is actively wrong here.
1. Send a DOCX, not a designed PDF
Even if you are a graphic designer - employers are not wanting a pretty document. It might look amazing, but it’s not the right approach.
2. DOCX or PDF
DOCX parses most reliably across the major applicant tracking systems. I used to make this mistake. Text-based PDFs are usually fine too but why risk it. The one that can quietly fail is a PDF exported from a design tool such as Canva or InDesign, because those are often image-based or heavily layered, and a parser reading one finds nothing at all. Greenhouse’s own guidance says DOCX is the more reliable of the two.
If a job advert asks for PDF, send PDF — but export it from a word processor rather than a design tool.
3. One column, no tables
Parsers read a page left to right. Put your work history in the right-hand column of a two-column layout and the extracted text interleaves your job titles with whatever sits beside them. Nobody rejects you for it. The record simply arrives as nonsense, with nothing lining up against anything.
Tables do the same thing. They look tidy on the page and scramble on the way in.
We need to write our CVs for machines - because the machines are reading them first in most cases.
4. Keep your name and number out of the header
Headers and footers are skipped entirely by some systems, Workday among them. If your contact details live only up there, the record arrives with no way to reach you. Put them in the body of the document, at the top.
5. Use boring section headings
“Work Experience”, “Education”, “Skills”. Parsers recognise headings they have been trained on, and a creative alternative like “My Journey” or “What I Bring” is simply not matched, so the content underneath may never be filed as experience at all.
This is the cheapest fix on the list. It is also the one people resist hardest, usually because the creative version took a lot of effort.
6. Say what happened, with a number attached
Laszlo Bock, who ran hiring at Google, published a format worth using in a 2014 post: accomplished X, as measured by Y, by doing Z.
In practice that is the difference between “Responsible for improving sales” and “Grew quarterly revenue 23% by restructuring the pipeline and introducing weekly reviews”. If you do not have exact figures, a range or an approximation still beats nothing. “Processed around 1,000 applications a month” is a real claim. “Detail-oriented team player” is not.
One honest caveat, since this is the most repeated rule in the genre: we are not aware if it has ever been measured. - Does it works? It is a reasonable convention and it is what recruiters say they want. We dig into this top more in a separate piece.
7. Delete every “responsible for”
A CV is not a job description. Start with what you did: led, built, reduced, negotiated, rebuilt. The same applies to “assisted with” and “involved in”, which indicates that you were there… but is not being clear how you contributed.
8. Use the advert’s own words
If the advert says “project management”, do not write “programme coordination”. If it names Salesforce, write Salesforce rather than CRM systems. Many employers still configure exact-match filters for required tools and certifications, so a synonym can cost you a match on something you genuinely have.
That means a different CV for each application, which is the most tedious instruction on this list. It is also the one recruiters repeat most often.
9. South African CVs are allowed to be longer
The one-page rule is American. Local convention runs closer to three to five pages, and South African recruiters generally expect more detail than their US or UK counterparts, particularly on responsibilities and qualifications.
Read that as permission to be thorough rather than to pad. Length should follow how much relevant material you actually have — three pages of quantified achievement will get read, and three pages of duty lists will not.
10. Map your qualifications to NQF levels
Local recruiters read qualifications in NQF terms, so state the level: Matric is NQF 4, a Bachelor’s degree NQF 7, Honours NQF 8, Master’s NQF 9. The SAQA framework is the reference.
If you belong to a professional body, put it near the top. SAICA, ECSA, HPCSA, IITPSA and the rest are understood here but not everywhere. The membership number is also worth including.
References are handled differently: two or three named people with their actual contact details is normal. Available on request - is the norm elsewhere.
11. Think twice about your ID number
Older South African CV templates ask for an ID number, date of birth, marital status and a photograph. Since POPIA, including your ID number is increasingly seen as unnecessary exposure on a document you email to strangers. I never share my ID unless I absolutely have to. An employer who needs it for a background check can ask at the offer stage.
A photo is neither required nor penalised locally, and is slowly falling away in line with practice elsewhere.
12. Two good studies
Harvard Business School and Accenture’s Hidden Workers study (2021) estimated that millions of qualified people are filtered out by systems screening on exact criteria, and the widely cited “recruiters spend about seven seconds on first scan” figure comes from a study of thirty recruiters funded by a job board.
If your CV gets past the machines, then maybe a tired human - who sees the selection process as a real chore give your document a few seconds.
Recruitment can be a tough job - polish your CV and shine.