There are lot of opinions on how to write an executive CV. These come from various sources including websites, recruiters, headhunters, CV firms, career services and books.
Much of the general advice is not only much of a muchness, but it is flawed, and on lots of levels. Notably, a lot of it is just regurgitated content from other websites. It usually isn’t original, and not all of the tips and advice is always sensible, beneficial or even logical. Indeed, some common advice is even counter-productive.
This 2025 executive CV guide aims to not only provide tips and examples, but also demonstrate why typical examples are flawed.
This article has been written by our head writer, Paul.
Please check out Paul’s credentials
At base level, an executive CV is a sales and marketing document – or at least it should be! Most professionally written executive CVs are not sales and marketing documents. This gives an advantage to those fewer candidates with proper executive CVs. We’ll discuss why most professionally written executive CVs are not sales and marketing documents later in this article. Before then you may wish to check out another of our articles with more advice on what makes for a good CV.
If you listen to some advisors, some suggest that there are lots of differences between an executive CV and one for other professionals. While it is true that the content, and sometimes the visuals differ, the fundamentals hold for both; namely no matter what job or level you are at in your career, your CV is a sales and marketing document (or at least it should be!).
Yes, if you are an executive, you should talk about your executive experience, and your CV needs to be pitched higher and be concise, presentable, legible, relevant, enticing to read. However, even if you were lower down the career ladder, say a senior manager, a manager or someone in mid-career then fundamentally you should be aiming for all the same fundamentals (conciseness, legibility, good presentation, relevance etc).
At base level, the fundamentals are the same. The goals are also the same (to land interviews). It’s just that when it comes to executive CVs, the level is higher/different.
As it happens, lots of executives apply with very similar CVs to those further down the career ladder. For example, say a finance assistant uses the same typical CV company as a finance executive, then even though there is quite a difference in job level, there would be a lot of overlaps. The CV would look the same, have the same sections and even have crossovers in the content.
Notably, in cases like this, there would be more similarities between the same firm’s finance assistant and the finance executive CV than there would be if, for example, you had two CVs for the same role (say finance executive) from two different companies. For example, if you are a finance executive, and you ordered a CV from a typical professional CV firm, then it would be very different to your finance executive CV if you came to us, here at Executive CV Services.
Please see the sample below to give you an idea of this in practice.
Please don’t just look at it, but also read the body of the example for guidance and advice about why many typical executive CVs are flawed.
The above executive CV sample is similar to those produced by CV firms. At the same time, different companies have different formats, so your CV could potentially look like one of the examples below.
Please click the link to view our executive CV example. Please don’t just look at the visuals, but also read the body of the text on the image as that will help explain the logic and rationale behind what we do (because nothing is by chance, it’s all very calculated to help your odds in the executive job market.)
Talking of format, there is more to this than meets the eye. Please click to read our article on executive CV formats.
Most executives apply for top jobs with a bog standard two-page CV. That’s up to them, but you will stand out more if you apply with a well-written one-page CV. Of course, the key phrase here is ‘well-written’, because most professional one-page CVs are not well-written. Please read this article on CV length to discover more.
ATS (applicant tracking system is) isn’t quite what many CV firms would have you believe. Please read this article to discover more about ATS.
Yes, and usually dramatically.
You’d be amazed at what a real top writer can do for you.
Coming back to the original question, hopefully from the above information you will see that there is an awful lot more to genuine top quality CV writing than most people (and even most professional CV companies) realise. If you really want to do it then tips, advice and examples aren’t really enough. It also takes natural writing ability, creativity, experience, marketing expertise, and much more. You also have to look at your CV as a whole, and not just on a line-by-line basis. Please discover more about writing a top-quality CV in the Executive CV Service story.
In brief, we don’t just address/fix the issues mentioned on the sample above, but we go way beyond this, and typically improve pretty much every single aspect of your CV, usually dramatically. This article on the differences between CV firms should give you an indication of just some of the things we regularly improve for executive clients.
We have vast experience helping executives, directors and C-level professionals from the UK and all around the world.
We are different to all of our CV firms. Please check out this page for more information on how we differ.
Please also click the links to discover more about us, and our special writers.
If you would like our unique assistance, then we would be happy to help you.