How to Write a CV That Gets You Hired in Nepal

Most CVs in Nepal get rejected in the first 20 seconds, before anyone reads a single line of your experience. An employer or recruiter scanning fifty applications is looking for a reason to move on, not a reason to stop — your job is to make the first glance work in your favor.

Structure that actually gets read

Keep it to one page if you have under five years of experience, two pages otherwise. In this order:

• Contact details — full name, phone number, email, and city/district. A professional email address matters more than people think; ditch anything that is not close to your real name.
• Professional summary — two to three lines, not a paragraph. State your role, years of experience, and one concrete strength. Skip generic lines like "hard-working and dedicated" — every CV says that, so it says nothing.
• Work experience — reverse chronological (most recent first). For each role: job title, company, dates, then three to five bullet points describing what you actually did and, where possible, the result (numbers help: "processed 40+ customer applications daily", not just "handled customer applications").
• Education — degree, institution, year. Put this above work experience only if you are a fresher with little or no job history.
• Skills — a short, honest list. Group technical skills separately from language skills (e.g. Nepali, English, Hindi — and your actual fluency level, not just "known").
• References — "available on request" is fine; do not list a person's phone number without asking them first.

Mistakes that quietly cost you the interview

• One CV for every job. Employers can tell. Before you apply, re-read the job description and make sure the two or three skills it asks for most are visible near the top of your CV, not buried on page two.
• A photo that does not belong. Government and some traditional private-sector applications in Nepal still expect a passport-style photo; many modern private companies and international employers do not, and in some countries attaching one is actively discouraged. When in doubt, check the job posting or company website rather than defaulting to old habits.
• Exaggerating experience. It is tempting when the market is competitive, but a mismatch between what your CV claims and what you can actually demonstrate in an interview ends the conversation immediately — and word travels fast in smaller industries.
• No proofreading. A CV with spelling mistakes or inconsistent formatting (different fonts, misaligned dates) signals carelessness before the reader has learned anything about you. Read it aloud once, or ask someone else to.

If you are a fresher with little or no work experience

Lead with education, academic projects, internships (even short or unpaid ones), college society/club roles, and volunteer work — these all demonstrate real skills (teamwork, initiative, reliability) even without a formal job title attached. A well-described three-week internship beats a vague, padded "experience" section every time.

The goal of a CV is not to get you the job — it is to get you the interview. Save the full story for the conversation.

Once your CV is ready, keep it updated every time you gain a new skill or finish a role — it is much easier to update as you go than to reconstruct two years of experience from memory the night before a deadline.