2D Animator CV Example

A meticulously crafted, tailored 2D animator CV gives your application the best chance of passing the ATS screening stage, impressing the hiring manager and progressing to the interview stage. Next, we’ll go through the primary sections of a CV and explain how to construct them strategically while leaving room for personality and style.

Key sections of a 2D animator CV

Your strategy for writing a 2D animator CV will depend heavily on your experience, your level of seniority and the requirements listed in the job description.

However, regardless of your seniority, a 2D animator CV needs to tell a cohesive story of your professional growth. In the following sections, we’ll dive into each part of the CV step-by-step, starting with your header and moving through to your professional achievements.

CV Header

Start your 2D animator CV with a header that features subtle, professional design elements and sets the tone for the document. Add your name, email address, phone number and location (your full address isn't normally needed). If you have a LinkedIn profile, consider adding a URL to this in your header, to help the reader easily find more information on your career and credentials.

When you're applying for jobs in the UK, it's generally not advisable to include a photo or more personal details than are strictly necessary, such as your age, gender, ethnicity or nationality. Including these can jeopardise the recruitment process by introducing bias, and can fall foul of the Equality Act 2010.

CV Summary or Objective

Below your contact information, a short, concise CV summary or CV objective can set the tone for your application and provide brief, basic information on your key skills and qualities that gives a strong indication to the reader about your suitability for the 2D animator role. While a CV summary showcases your key skills and achievements in the context of your career to date, a CV objective provides an alternative approach. It focuses instead on your ambitions for the future, making it ideal for junior candidates without much work experience.

In your summary or objective, write up to three sentences outlining your key skills, unique personal qualities and career achievements or ambitions, taking care to always reflect the requirements listed in the job description.

An effective summary will include brief reference to one or two of your strongest skills, ensuring they reflect the skills listed in the job description. It's important to make your skills and qualities feel unique to you, and show how you've used them to positive effect in your career to date. Find an example below of a positive 2D animator CV summary, characterised by evidence to support your claims and well-structured, easy-to-read sentences.

The 2D animator CV summary above gives you an idea of what to avoid. The differences are subtle, yet significant. Common mistakes that lead to an ineffective summary include a lack of quantifiable experience, vague statements or failing to tailor your summary to the job description. Long, rambling sentences that lack structure can also make your summary harder to read.

Work History

As with most CVs, your 2D animator CV work experience section tends to be the most vital part of your application. Employers tend to look to this section for evidence of how you've developed useful and relevant skills, and used them to add value for previous employers. Always take the time to tailor this section, including keywords and phrases that match the job description. This will help employers to judge how strong a fit you are for the role, and how you might apply your skills for the benefit of the organisation.

List only relevant previous jobs, and add your job title, the name of the employer, its location and your dates of employment. Under this, write several bullet points showing employers how your skills and key qualities contributed to positive outcomes.

Standing out with your CV work experience section means using action verbs and measurable outcomes to show the impact you made. You'll want to outline a progression in your skills development, and list evidence of the value you added. See below for an example of a strong work experience section for a 2D animator CV.

Above you can see an example of what not to do with your 2D animator CV work experience section. A less-effective work experience section could focus too much on irrelevant or out-of-date roles, or include generic information about your responsibilities that fails to show the impact you made. It might lack tailoring to the job description or fail to provide evidence to support the claims made in the bullet points.

Professional Portfolio

For some applications, a link to a portfolio or some examples of your previous work can be a valuable addition to your CV.

Portfolios are typically favoured by creatives or candidates who produce work of a visual nature. However, there's no reason you can't showcase any type of work sample in your CV, assuming you can upload it or find it online. There are several approaches to adding your work samples to your CV. You could add a link to an externally hosted portfolio, either in its own section or in your CV header. Alternatively, you could add links to separate work examples hosted either on a company website (such as case studies), or on your LinkedIn profile.

Education and Qualifications

Your education section should showcase your most recent and highest qualifications, paying particular attention to anything that's specifically required for the role.

A degree is typically a strict requirement for 2D animator jobs, and as such, you'll want to showcase yours in your CV. If you have a Bachelor of Arts in 2D Animation or another similar, relevant degree that confirms your eligibility for the position, include it in your CV. You might also wish to add other degrees or qualifications that highlight your strongest skills, such as storyboard composition planning mastery or cel shading technique knowledge.

When listing your qualifications in your education section, select only the most suitable qualifications and list them in reverse-chronological order, starting with the most recent and working backwards. When adding each qualification, include the name and level of the award, the institution, its location (if necessary), and the dates you attended or graduated. It can also be valuable to add bullet points outlining your key achievements and activities, such as projects you worked on, modules you completed, awards you won or societies you participated in while studying.

If the job description requires any specialist certifications or licences, you may wish to add these in your education section. If you add these, it's also a good idea to include the expiration date of the licence or qualification, if it has one.

Key Skills

A CV's skills section is the place to show the reader, in an easily accessible format, that you have the necessary skills for the job. Read the job description to understand the most essential skills, and create a list of both hard and soft skills, ensuring you include some of your strongest, most unique characteristics and qualities to set you apart from the competition. In a 2D animator CV, focus on the most relevant and essential skills in your skills portfolio, such as creativity and character rigging workflow proficiency, to show you're qualified for the 2D animator position and to put you in a strong position to progress.

Hard Skills

Hard skills refer to the technical and specialist skills required for the everyday duties of the job. They might include specialist knowledge, or the use of certain software and equipment. You can gain these skills through study, training or industry experience, and they might require a licence or certification. For 2D animator positions, hard skills that match your abilities, such as vector illustration software expertise, and cel shading technique knowledge tend to be valued by recruiters and hiring managers. Check the skills specified in the job description, and add four or five key hard skills to your CV that show employers you're capable of completing the key duties of the role.

The ideal hard skills section will feature the most essential hard skills from the job description, while closely reflecting your own best technical abilities. The closer your strongest skills are to matching the job description, the higher your chances of success.

Below, you can find the types of skills typically featured in the hard skills section of a 2D animator CV:

Soft Skills

In your soft skills list, add any personal qualities and transferable skills that show you'll be a good fit for the role, you'll settle in well with the organisation and you'll complement other team members. Soft skills are typically more transferable and applicable to different roles than hard and technical skills. The world of work is evolving at a rapid pace, changing the types of hard skills required for many roles, and therefore rendering soft and transferable skills more valuable than ever. Soft skills are also extremely valuable for junior and entry-level roles, where candidates aren't necessarily expected to have a wealth of relevant work experience.

As with your 2D animator CV hard skills list, review the job description to learn the key soft skills for the role. Include the best soft skills that you can provide evidence for throughout your CV. Your soft skills list should reflect the job description as closely as possible, while also reflecting your strongest, unique talents and personal qualities. Aim for a list of around five key skills.

Below is a selection of soft skills regularly featured in a 2D animator CV.

Certifications and Training

Depending on the role and your qualifications, it might be necessary to include a certifications section. If you've been proactive in pursuing professional development opportunities throughout your career, it's worth showcasing them. Not only do they make you more qualified, they also show a proactive and motivated mindset. Furthermore, a certifications section is particularly valuable if you're applying for a role that sets out required certifications or licences in the job description. These might include technical roles that require the use of specialist software or equipment.

See below for a list of example certifications and licences you might add to your CV for 2D animator roles:

Language Skills

Adding foreign language skills to your 2D animator CV can be a valuable addition that reflects well on you as a candidate. Even if language skills aren't listed as a requirement in the job description, if you speak a foreign language, it can be beneficial to add it to your CV. Under this section, list any foreign languages you speak to a professional standard, with an indicator of your competency level for each.

There are a few acceptable ways of citing your foreign language proficiency levels. The simplest way is to assign a basic descriptive word to indicate your skills, such as:

• English: Fluent
• Spanish: Intermediate

Alternatively, use an internationally recognised framework for languages, such as the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR). This gives your language skills a standardised competence indicator, as follows:

• A1: Beginner
• A2: Elementary
• B1: Intermediate
• B2: Upper intermediate
• C1: Advanced
• C2: Proficiency

Optional Sections

Including optional sections in addition to the core sections of your 2D animator CV can help you to show employers you're a strong candidate for the job. If you're struggling to show all the necessary skills for the job through your work experience or other core sections, optional sections can give your CV the boost it needs to progress you to the interview stage. This could be particularly helpful for entry-level candidates or career changers.

You’ll find more in-depth guidance on structuring your CV in our career resources, designed to help you present your skills as effectively as possible.

Hobbies and Interests

If you have any hobbies and interests that can showcase skills relevant to the job description, it might be worth including them. Additionally, hobbies and interests are an ideal way to show the employers some elements of your personality and interests beyond work, which can set you apart from other candidates. However, hobbies and interests can only add value to your CV if they provide evidence of skills and experience that you can use in the role you're applying for. As such, only add hobbies as a way of filling gaps in the skills you've developed or used through work experience.

Awards and Achievements

Listing your key career achievements in a distinct section can be an effective way of drawing attention to them. If you've won any awards or achieved any key milestones in your career to date, you might want to mention them here.

Voluntary Roles

Listing volunteer roles is another effective way of showing employers your skills and experience. If you're lacking work experience, either as a junior candidate or a career changer, adding volunteering activities gives you a chance to show how you've put your skills into action. In your volunteering section, use a similar structure to your work experience section.

Add your job title or a description of the volunteer role, the organisation name, its location and the dates you volunteered (start and end date). Under this, add bullet points to show the skills you used, and evidence of how they contributed to positive achievements for the organisation.

References

When applying for roles in the UK, it's not standard to include references on your CV, and employers only tend to require them later in the process. Nevertheless, it's worth checking the job advert and being ready just in case. If references are needed, opt for two or three, and always make sure you approach them for permission before including them.

Add their name, their job title, the organisation they work for and their contact details. Alternatively, if references aren't required you could simply add a line to your CV confirming you can provide them when needed, such as 'references are available upon request'.

Top action words to use in a 2D animator CV

Using strong action verbs in your work experience bullet points gives you the opportunity to show how you've applied skills to good effect in previous roles. Starting each bullet point with an action verb, such as 'delivered', 'collaborated' or 'developed' also allows you to show your key skills and qualities in a way that's easily identifiable for the reader. Remember, it's essential to evidence any action verbs you add to your work experience. This will help show your achievements and the impact you made in previous roles. Use past tense for action verbs that describe previous roles, and present tense for your current position.

2D animator CV example

Now that you know exactly what to include in your 2D animator CV, we can take a look at a final, finished example below:

If you want to get a feel for how your CV will look once you finalise its design and layout, check out our CV examples for inspiration.

Tips for optimising your CV for ATS

Applicant tracking systems (ATS) are a valuable tool for many recruiters and employers, helping them manage the recruitment process by scanning and assessing CVs based on their likely fit to the job description. By taking on this task, the systems can save hiring managers the time and effort of reviewing every CV in detail. With vacancies regularly receiving hundreds of applications, this can increase the efficiency of the recruitment process.

The growing prevalence of ATS apps requires a shift in approach by jobseekers, to prepare a CV with the best chance of passing the ATS screening stage. That's why we've put together a list of key ATS CV tips, to maximise your chances of success:

• Include keywords and phrases that match the job description, giving you the best chance of appearing as a strong fit for the role.
• Use clear, standard CV headings that are easily recognisable, such as 'work experience', 'education' and 'skills'.
• Choose a simple, straightforward CV layout with clear, consistent formatting, that avoids text boxes, graphics or other special design elements, as these can make your CV harder to scan.
• Select a font that can enhance the readability of your CV, such as popular serif and sans serif fonts, with size 10 to 12 for body text and 14 to 16 for headings.
• Use bullet points instead of writing full sentences, to reduce the overall length of your CV, make it more keyword-dense and help ATS apps to scan it more easily.

You might feel there are a lot of steps to creating an ATS-compatible 2D animator CV, but with just a few small changes, you can ensure your CV passes this stage. Use one of our ATS-compatible CV templates, which are designed by experts to give you the best chances of success.

Key takeaways for your 2D animator CV

To give you the best chance of success with your CV, tailor it for every specific application, including keywords that reflect the job description. Pick a CV format that matches your experience level, and focus on showing the reader how you've developed relevant skills and put them to good use to add value for previous employers.

Finally, creating your CV using one of Jobseeker's expert-designed CV templates can give your application the edge, placing you among the leading candidates and positioning you for success with your job applications.

Sources:

1. National Careers Service, How to write a CV
2. Jobseeker, Recruitment Statistics