How to write the perfect CV with former Amazon VP Ethan Evans
What it takes to write the perfect CV and land your dream job.
“You never get a second chance to make a good first impression”
Your CV is not a list of every job you ever had. It is a marketing tool, designed to sell your most important product: YOU.
The audience is made up of recruiters and hiring managers, who will not take a long time to decide if they want to hear your story or not.
On average, employers look at a resume1 for six to eight seconds.
So, you really need to stand out and make these few seconds count.
How to do that?
I recently had the pleasure of interviewing former Amazon VP Ethan Evans, who shared invaluable advice on how to write a CV that maximizes your chances of standing out.
During his 15+ years at Amazon, Ethan helped invent Prime Video, Amazon Video, Amazon Appstore, Merch by Amazon, Prime Gaming (formerly Twitch Prime), and Twitch Commerce.
He has also reviewed 10,000+ resumes, conducted 2,500+ interviews, made 1,000+ hires, and was an Amazon Bar Raiser and Bar Raiser Core Leader.
I’ve been a fan of him and his newsletter ‘Level Up’ for a while, and it has been a real pleasure interviewing him.
Before deep diving into the interview, I want to highlight something I find crucial: formatting.
I'm a stickler for formatting and layout in general, and for a good reason: it makes a difference. Whether it’s in a sales deck, an executive memos, or a go-to-market document, formatting plays a critical role in how the message will be received.
And your CV is no exception.
Design, layout and formatting
A ResumeLab survey of over 500 recruiters, HR professionals, and hiring managers in the U.S. revealed interesting insights about CV design:
51% think substance is what matters most in a CV, however 38% believe style and design are equally important, and 11% choose design over content. If you think layout is not important, think again.
73% of recruiters prefer a black and white only CV. For 27% colors are fine, but you should not exaggerate (i.e. no bold colors). Blue, grey, beige are fine.
77% prefer a two-column CV, and only 5% like a single-column.
71% prefer formal, standardized CVs best, and only 7% prefer creative designs. But I’d say it depends on the type of job you’re applying to. If a job requires you to be creative, then be it with your CV.
While these aren’t strict rules, they highlight strong preferences from recruiters and hiring managers, at least in the U.S.
🎙️Interview with Ethan Evans
Giacomo: Ciao Ethan, thanks for joining me in this edition of the Getting Better newsletter, where I share science-based insights and personal experiences to help people advance their careers and improve their lives.
In this issue, I’m excited to tap into your experience to help readers craft the perfect CV and land their dream job.
Ethan: My pleasure, Giacomo! Thanks for having me - let’s dive in!
Giacomo: Are CVs still relevant? And if so, why?
Ethan: CVs remain relevant because people are accustomed to them. From a purely functional viewpoint an online representation like a well-built LinkedIn profile or a web-based portfolio probably better represents your skills, but conventions and expectations dictate that a CV is the expected format.
By the same token, the CV has a clearly expected format.
There are conventions for what to put on it and to leave off of it.
When people want to either share their own background or ask about that of another, the CV is the expected and accepted way to do that.
Perhaps this is because of just how long it has been used – none other than Leonardo Da Vinci is credited as being the first person to seek work by sending a prospective employer (a duke, in his case) a list of his experience and abilities in a letter.
Your CV remains a symbolic, tangible representation of your abilities.
Given this role, it remains important.
That said, the best use of a CV is in support of an introduction or reference from someone the hiring manager at the target employer trusts.
While people do get jobs from “cold” applications to a company where they have no contact, this is putting a much greater burden on the CV. It is much better to view the CV as a supporting document to your networking efforts.
A mediocre CV attached to a strong introduction from a trusted source will do much better than a great CV submitted by an unknown person through an internet portal.
Giacomo: I bet everyone would love to have a portfolio like Leonardo’s. Ethan, what makes a CV exceptional?
Ethan: Exceptional CVs are clear and easy to read, getting to the relevant things an employer wants to know without a lot of additional fluff in the way.
An employer wants to know if you want the job they have and then what evidence you can give that you can do that job (which is your experience doing other jobs they consider similar).
💡 Did you know that Ethan helped advocate for and draft the Amazon Leadership Principle (LP) “Ownership”? The words “They never say ‘that’s not my job’” are Ethan’s.
Read the full story here.
Giacomo: Do you recommend tailoring a CV to the specific job or industry?
Ethan: Yes, though usually this means simply editing. Changing what you say in your objective or summary at the top, and maybe reordering or changing a couple of bullets in the key jobs that apply to that industry. Because the point of a CV is to get you a call (not to fully get you a job by itself), a deep change in the content is rarely required.
Giacomo: What are the common mistakes candidates make on their CVs?
Ethan: After reviewing over 10,000 CVs in my career, I see 3 common mistakes:
Candidates do not say what kind of role they are seeking. They do this in order to be “flexible and open” to be considered for any job the company might have. The problem is, if I am hiring for a Product Manager, I will get 100 resumes that say they want a job as a product manager, and 100 more that are unclear. It is very easy to just focus on the resumes of the people who clearly want the job I need to fill.
Second, and this is the most important mistake, candidates talk about what they have done but not what impact it had. They will say they worked on a project, wrote code, or made sales calls. Doing so makes them a worker, a programmer, or a sales person. What they do not say what that project did for the business, what the new software allowed the company to accomplish, or how much the customer bought over time.
A person who gives this impact is a leader, problem solver, and difference maker who understands that the value of a role is not to “do work” but to help the company succeed and make money. Great CVs explain the impact of your work, not just what you did.
Candidates simply write far too much. Candidates fear that if they leave anything out it might be the one thing that the recruiter or hiring manager was looking for. But as a result, they clutter CVs with thousands of words, obscuring their real accomplishments. It is very well known that managers and recruiters skim resumes glancing for key items. The more additional words you put around your top accomplishments, the more likely the recruiter is to start skimming and then to miss your best points.
My CV, covering a 30-year career, is 2 pages long and uses 770 words.
I have an optional additional half page that covers some of my technology patents, that I include if that is relevant to a role. I routinely see CVs covering a career of half that length or less, but that run 1500 words or more. These CVs are using four times as many words per year of experience. They are writing more but not saying (or conveying) more.
The goal of a CV is emphatically not to get you a job. The goal is to get you a call. You can always go into more detail on the call or in person.
A good CV is like a fortune cookie saying or a tweet. It gives the reader enough information to decide you are interesting and wise. You do the rest after they call you.
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Giacomo: Thanks Ethan. Since you briefly touched on this, what are the must-have sections of a perfect CV, and how should these be ordered for maximum impact?
Ethan: Objective – open right at the top with what role you would like to play.
Work history – this comes next unless you are a new college graduate, in which case your education comes at the top. This section should be in reverse chronological order and should contain the results I mention above.
Skills or technology lists - I do not believe there is a lot of value in a giant list of tech acronyms, but many people feel they must include them due to automatic resume scanning systems (Applicant Tracking Systems, or ATS). But, your resume also needs to be readable by a human, and for them, what you have actually done is usually more important than a keyword list.
Education – even if you went to Harvard, if you have 10 years of experience I care more about what you have really done than where you attended college. Many experienced people have never rewritten their CV. Instead, they keep modifying their old college CV, with the education and the top, long after that has ceased to be their most important qualification.
Hobbies, interests, and charity work - If you have room, you can add one or two lines at the bottom about your personal life. The value of these lines is to humanize you, make you memorable, and perhaps form a connection with the interviewer. This section is more about building a connection to the interviewer than about qualifications, but it can make a big difference in the tone of the resulting conversations.
Giacomo: CV summary - yes or no? What should it contain?
Ethan: Yes. It should clearly state the role you want. It can be customized for different companies if you want to pursue multiple roles.
It should not contain what I call ‘happy words’, where you praise yourself without proof. Example of happy words are “motivated self-starter, quick learner, and team player”. These words mean nothing because (a) everyone writes them and (b) you offer no proof, so they are just your claims.
What you should do instead is talk about what you will do for the company. Most people focus on what they want, but the reader is someone who has a problem to solve. The way to stand out is to talk about how you want to help them.
Summary Example: Seeking a senior product management role where I can apply my MBA and six years of product experience to develop new, profitable services for Acme Inc.
This opening says what you want, gives your two most important qualifications up front, and then offers to help the company make money. It shows that you get that being hired is about making money. It puts you far ahead of the people who write about seeking “an environment where I can thrive and grow” which is all about you.
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Giacomo: Many companies use ATS (Applicant Tracking Systems) to filter CVs. How does the filtering work so that I know how to tailor my CV for that?
Ethan: By far the best way to defeat the ATS is to avoid it through networking. Get your resume handed (or emailed) directly to the hiring manager by a friend, mentor, or former colleague.
Forbes Magazine published research in 2023 that fully 80% of jobs are filled by someone with a networking connection to the role. So, worrying about the ATS is worrying about how to compete for the last 20% of possible jobs.
As for how this filtering works, there are many systems and many rumors, much as there are endless rumors about how search algorithms and social media algorithms work. The companies in question constantly change what they are doing and try to keep it secret exactly because they do not want people to be able to “tailor my CV for it”.
Bottom line: play a smarter game and invest your time finding connections who can help you out. Obsessing about ATS systems is playing the wrong game while thinking you are clever.
Giacomo: Can the CV be longer than one page?
Ethan: Yes. In fact, it is much better to have a two-page CV than to have one page that is crammed in with too much data, making it hard to follow and read. White space and visual structure that guides the eye is an advantage.
The key here is to make sure that permission to have two pages does not turn in to permission to include all kinds of data and have two densely packed pages instead of one. The extra page is about space to present well, not space to include much too much detail.
Giacomo: While looking for a Leadership position what is the main reason you reject a CV?
Ethan: I reject leaders who cannot tell me the impact of their work (the business results they generated) as well as leaders who have not progressed quickly in their career. Growth rate is a sign of drive and ambition. Having thirty years of slow experience may in fact make you very experienced and an excellent hire. But it may also make you a slow person of limited past ambition that has only been promoted after lengthy periods in each level. I, and most recruiters, look at trajectory. Growth rate is an indication of focus and results.
Giacomo: Thank you Ethan for the interview. This was really insightful.
Ethan: My pleasure. Thanks for having me!
END OF THE INTERVIEW
Ethan retired from Amazon as a Vice President in September 2020.
Prior to Amazon, Ethan spent 12 years at 3 startups.
Ethan now teaches leaders to become true executives.
Subscribe to Ethan’s newsletter, Level Up, for ongoing career advice, and consider joining the Level Up Career Community. Ethan also offers a range of Leadership Development Courses (live online and on-demand) that go in-depth on topics like “Breaking Through to Executive”, “Managing Up Successfully”, “Leadership Networking” and more.
See you all next Sunday 🗓️
Thanks,
Giacomo
In some parts of the world, “CV” and “resume” are used interchangeably, while in other parts they are two distinctly different types of documents. Here, they are used interchangeably, indicating a document to show your skills and qualifications for a specific position or a specific employer.
Thanks for a good read Giacomo! I think this article would be even better if it had Ethan’s CV as an example. Or your own after applying his advice