A hiring manager at a Pakistani software house opens between forty and three hundred CVs for a single junior opening. Nobody reads them. They scan, and the scan takes about eight seconds.
Everything below is about surviving those eight seconds, because the interview you are trying to get is decided there and nowhere else.
What the reviewer looks at, in order
- The top third of page one. Name, role you want, and two or three lines that say what you can build.
- Project links. Whether there are any, and whether they open.
- The technology list. Scanned for the two or three things the job actually needs.
- Employment or internship history, if there is any.
Education is checked last and briefly, unless you are a fresh graduate, in which case it moves up one place and still matters less than your projects.
The five lines that get CVs rejected
1. An objective paragraph
“Seeking a challenging position in a reputable organisation where I can utilise my skills.” Every reviewer has read this ten thousand times. It says nothing and it costs you the most valuable space on the page. Replace it with one line naming what you build.
Better: “Full stack developer. React and Node. Three deployed projects including a booking system in daily use by a Rawalpindi clinic.”
2. A technology list with eighteen entries
Listing HTML, CSS, JavaScript, React, Node, Express, MongoDB, MySQL, Python, Django, Java, C++, PHP, Laravel, Flutter, Figma, Photoshop and Git tells a reviewer you are competent at none of them. Nobody with three years of experience is good at eighteen things, and reviewers know it.
List six. Put them in order of how well you know them, and be ready to be interviewed on every one.
3. Projects with no links
A project described but not linked is treated as not existing. Every project needs a live URL, a GitHub repository, or both. If it cannot be deployed, put a two minute screen recording online and link that.
4. Duties instead of outcomes
“Responsible for frontend development” describes a job description, not you. “Rebuilt the checkout flow in React, which cut abandoned carts by about a fifth” describes a person who did something.
If you do not have numbers, use scope: how many users, how many records, how long it ran, who used it.
5. Three pages
One page under five years of experience. Two pages after that. A three page junior CV signals that you cannot tell what matters, which is itself a job relevant skill.
How to write bullets that land
Use the shape: what you built, what you built it with, what happened.
- Weak: Worked on the company website using WordPress.
- Better: Rebuilt a 40 page WordPress site, cutting load time from 6 seconds to under 2, which moved three service pages onto the first page of search.
- Weak: Made an ecommerce app in Flutter.
- Better: Built a Flutter ecommerce app with JazzCash checkout and order tracking, now on the Play Store with around 400 installs.
When you have no experience at all
Almost every fresh graduate has the same three tutorial projects, which is why none of them differentiate anyone. What works instead:
- Build for one real person. A local shop, a family business, a friend’s clinic. A working system with an actual user beats a polished clone every time, and it gives you something to talk about for twenty minutes.
- Finish and deploy. Two finished projects beat six half built ones. Reviewers open links; they do not read repositories.
- Show the hard part. A README explaining what broke and how you fixed it demonstrates engineering. A screenshot demonstrates nothing.
- Count structured training as experience, if it involved real project work. An internship where you shipped to a client is experience and should be described as such. Our note on what employers actually test at interview covers what to prepare alongside it.
Format, briefly
- PDF, never a Word file. Name it Firstname-Lastname-Developer.pdf.
- One column. Two column templates confuse automated parsers and hide your projects.
- Plain fonts, no photo, no skill rating bars. Nobody believes you are 85 percent at React.
- GitHub and LinkedIn as clickable links at the top, not as typed out text.
Tailor two lines, not the whole document
Rewriting a CV for every application is not sustainable and does not pay off. What does: change the headline and reorder the technology list to match the job. Two minutes per application, and it puts the words the reviewer is scanning for exactly where the scan lands.
Frequently asked questions
How long should a software engineer CV be?
One page below five years of experience, two after. Length signals judgement.
Should I include my CGPA?
Include it if it is above 3.2, otherwise leave it out. Nobody asks about a missing CGPA once you have shipped projects to show.
Do Pakistani companies use applicant tracking systems?
Larger ones do, and most smaller software houses read manually. Single column plain formatting works for both, so there is no reason to design for one.
Should I attach a cover letter?
Not a formal one. Four sentences in the email body: what you build, one relevant project with a link, why this company, when you are available. That gets read. An attached letter does not.
Ezitech reviews hundreds of applications each intake for its hybrid IT internships. If you want production work to put on the CV, see the current tracks.