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A CV is read by software before it is read by a person. Most South African CVs are rejected for how they are built, not for what they say.
Two ways to do this
The South African CV and Job-Search System. Sixteen files: two A4 CV designs in Word, matching cover letters and reference pages, an application tracker and nine guides. You download it and do the work.
Send me your current CV and the kind of role you are applying for, and I rebuild it: structure, wording, formatting and a matching cover letter and reference page. Priced per CV, quoted once I have seen what exists.
If the files will do the job, buy the files. They cost a fraction of the service and most people genuinely do not need more than that. I would rather say so here than sell you the expensive option by leaving it out.
The problem, stated accurately
You have probably been told that most CVs are thrown out by robots before a human sees them. That figure comes from a sales pitch by a company that no longer exists, and it is not true. I am not going to use a scare statistic to sell you a document.
What actually happens is duller and easier to fix. An employer's applicant tracking system reads your CV into fields, and a person then reads whatever it managed to extract. Put your work history inside a table, a text box or a sidebar and it can come out shuffled, merged or blank. The person is then judging a mess you never wrote, and you never find out that is what happened.
There is a longer explanation of this, with sources, on how applicant tracking software reads a CV in South Africa.
What gets fixed
- Structure that survives parsingA single column, real headings, no text boxes, no tables holding your job history, no critical information inside an image.
- Wording that says what you didMost CVs list duties. Duties describe the job, not the person who held it. The rewrite turns responsibilities into things you achieved, with numbers wherever you have them.
- South African conventionsA4, South African English, matric and NQF levels stated the way local employers expect, and references handled properly.
- What to leave outID number, date of birth and photograph come off. You are not required to give them at application stage, and circulating your ID number to dozens of employers is a risk with no upside.
- A matching cover letter and reference pageSame typography, same header. Three documents that look like they belong to one person.
What I will not claim
- No “ATS certified” and no “100% ATS compliant”. There is no certifying body, and anyone claiming the badge invented it
- No guaranteed interviews. A document cannot guarantee that, and whoever promises it is selling you the promise rather than the document
- No claim that this was written by a recruiter, because it was not
Free, before you spend anything
There is CV wording you can copy and paste on this site at no cost, and a set of guides covering the questions people actually ask: how long a CV should be, what to leave off, how to handle references, and how to write one with no work experience. Use them whether you buy anything or not.
Employers and agencies
If you need career documents designed at volume, for a training provider, a placement agency or a corporate outplacement programme, that is a project quote rather than a per-CV price.