Network Engineer CV Example

A network engineer CV that includes all the necessary details and is tailored carefully to the job description puts you in a great position. It can help you pass the ATS screening stage, make a strong impression with the employer and reach the latter stages of the recruitment process. We’ll now go through the key sections of a CV and explain how to write them strategically.

Main network engineer CV sections

Your strategy for writing a network engineer 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 network engineer 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 network engineer CV by adding a professional-looking header that contains all your relevant contact information. Include your name, email address, phone number and location (your full address isn't typically necessary for UK job applications). Additionally, consider adding a URL to your LinkedIn profile if you have one. This can help the reader to quickly access further information about your career and credentials that you haven't been able to add to your CV.

For UK jobs, it's generally not a good idea to add a photo or any other personal details beyond your basic contact information. This means leaving off details such as your age, gender, ethnicity and nationality, as these can introduce bias to the selection process and complications related to the Equality Act 2010.

CV Summary

The first section below your CV header is typically your CV summary. This short paragraph outlines some of your key skills, achievements and experience, so employers can quickly get an impression of whether you have the right credentials for the network engineer job. The CV objective provides an alternative to the standard CV summary. While the CV summary focuses on your skills and achievements through your work experience, a CV objective highlights your ambitions and plans for the future, including how the role fits with these. This makes it ideal for junior candidates.

Whether you choose to write a summary or an objective, aim for a length of two or three sentences, introducing your key skills, unique qualities and key achievements or ambitions, making sure they reflect what's included in the job description.

The most effective way to approach a CV summary is to focus on one or two key skills that reflect the requirements of the job description and show how you've used them to create positive outcomes for previous employers. You'll also want to showcase your unique personal strengths, and touch on how they've contributed to your career progression up to now. See below for an example of a strong network engineer CV summary, featuring quantifiable evidence of your impact and concise, easy-to-read sentences.

Above is an example of CV summary that doesn't follow best practice, with some subtle shortcomings and failings. 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 Experience

A CV's work experience section is usually its most important element. Employers tend to value the work experience section, as it shows evidence of how you've put your relevant skills to good use in your career to date. Always tailor this section of your CV, focusing on keywords and phrases that match the job description, so employers can assess how you might put the same skills and qualities to good use in the future.

List only your most relevant jobs, and go back up to 10 or 15 years, depending on your experience levels. List your job title, the name of the employer, its location and the dates you worked there. Also include bullet points for each entry, highlighting how you used your skills to add value for the employer.

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 how to put the work experience section best practice into action:

Take a look at a less strong network engineer CV work experience section above. A less-engaging work experience section might include irrelevant roles or jobs from a long time ago, and generic information that fails to address the requirements of the job description. It could also lack evidence to support the claims made in the bullet points.

Education

Your education section is the chance to list your most recent and highest qualifications, and anything that's relevant or required for the role.

For working in network engineer positions, it's essential to have a relevant university degree, and as such, you'll want to feature it in your CV. Include your Bachelor of Science in Network Engineering or another related degree that qualifies you for the role, in your CV, along with any other degrees or qualifications that highlight your strongest key skills, including TCP/IP protocol troubleshooting expertise or switching architecture design knowledge.

When creating your education section, think about which qualifications are most relevant to the role, and list them in reverse-chronological order, starting with the most recent and working back from there. Add the name and level of the award, the institution, its location and your dates of study or graduation. If you have space or if you particularly want to emphasise your qualifications, you could add one or two bullet points under each entry, highlighting specialist areas of study, projects you worked on, awards you won or societies you were a member of.

You might also wish to add specialist qualifications, certifications or licences that are required for the role. If you add any of these, include the expiry date, if the qualification requires renewal in the future.

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 network engineer CV, focus on the most relevant and essential skills in your skills portfolio, such as communication and network automation scripting skills, to show you're qualified for the network engineer 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 network engineer jobs, critical hard skills you've gained in your career can include firewall appliance configuration skills, and TCP/IP protocol troubleshooting expertise. Review the job description, and include four or five key hard skills in your CV that show employers you're capable of completing the key duties of the role.

The best hard skills section would be based around skills listed as 'essential' or 'required' in the job description. To give yourself the best chance of success, you'll want your strongest skills to match closely with those most desired by the employer, and your hard skills list should reflect this.

Take a look below to see the type of skills that are commonly listed in a network engineer CV hard skills section:

Soft Skills

Your soft skills list should contain a list of your personal strengths that make you suitable for the role, and a good fit for the team and the organisation. In contrast to hard skills, these tend to be transferable and applicable to different roles and levels. Owing to the rapidly evolving nature of the work landscape, soft skills are growing in importance for a number of roles and industry sectors where technology is replacing hard skills. Additionally, soft skills are particularly valuable for junior and entry-level candidates, who might not have much work experience but have the right building blocks for a successful career.

Adopt the same approach as you did with your hard skills list, reviewing the job description to understand the requirements, before assessing which soft skills you can provide evidence for throughout your network engineer CV. Create a list of four or five transferable skills, combining the most essential skills from the job description with the skills that help you to stand out as a unique and compelling candidate for the position.

The section below provides an overview of soft skills often highlighted in a network engineer CV.

Foreign Languages

If you speak any additional languages, you might want to consider adding a languages section to your CV. Even if languages aren't a requirement of the job description, speaking a foreign language can reflect well on you as a candidate, and correlate with other soft skills that can increase your employability. List any foreign languages you speak, together with an indication of your proficiency level.

There are several methods of confirming your foreign language skills on your CV. The simplest way is by assigning a basic descriptive word, 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

Certifications, Training and Licences

Depending on the role you're applying for, and the type of qualifications you have, you might want to include a separate section for certifications, in addition to the education section. It's often beneficial to include it as it can illustrate a positive attitude towards self-improvement and professional development, as well as a proactive mindset. All these qualities will appeal to most employers and decision-makers. In addition, the certifications section can be a valuable addition to your network engineer CV if you're applying for a role that cites certain certifications or licences as a necessity in the job description. These might include roles where the use of specialist software or equipment forms part of your everyday duties.

These example certifications and licences are ideal for candidates applying for network engineer roles:

Additional Sections

Optional sections can be useful to add to your CV, to provide additional evidence that you have the skills for the network engineer job. Consider optional sections for your CV if you're looking for ways to show you're right for the job, beyond your work experience. Optional sections are particularly valuable if you haven't had the chance to build up relevant work experience, for example, if you're applying for entry-level roles or you're changing careers to a new industry or role.

You can find more detailed advice on tailoring your CV in our career resources, where we cover proven ways to highlight your skills effectively.

Hobbies and Interests

One valid way to show you have relevant skills for the job is by listing your hobbies and interests. 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, it's important to only mention hobbies and interests that are relevant, or related to, the role you're applying for. If your hobbies don't help you to show skills required for the role, that are missing elsewhere in your CV, it's best to leave this section out.

Career Achievements

Compiling your key career achievements into a single list is an effective way of making your CV more readable at a glance. In this section, add any awards or recognition you've received for achievements, and any career milestones you've reached that show you're a strong candidate for the job.

Voluntary Work

Another way of showing employers your skills and experience is through volunteer roles. If you're struggling to show you have the necessary credentials through your work experience, volunteering can provide valuable examples of how you've put your skills into action. Your volunteering section should follow much the same structure as your work experience section.

Add a description of the volunteer role or a job title if you had one, the name of the organisation, its location and the start and end date of your volunteering. List bullet points that show how you put relevant skills to good use to create positive results for the organisation.

Best action words for a network engineer CV

Adding strong action verbs to the bullet points in your CV's work experience section is a great way to focus on the key skills required for the job, while showing the impact you've made. Start each bullet point with an action word that reflects the job description, so the reader can easily identify your best qualities. 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.

Full example of network engineer CV

Now that we've covered the main sections to include in your network engineer CV, we can see how it would all come together in its final form in the example below:

If you're not sure what your one-page, finalised CV design might look like, check out our examples.

Guide to CV ATS optimisation

Applicant tracking systems (ATS) are becoming more and more integral to the recruitment process for many employers. These systems ease the burden of the recruitment process by performing various tasks, including scanning and ranking CVs based on their likely fit to the job description. This task can relieve some of the strain on hiring managers through the recruitment process, which can become very resource-intensive, with roles often eliciting hundreds of applications.

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 mirror the job description to maximise your chances of ranking highly in the ATS screening stage.
• Use standard CV headings that make your CV easier to navigate, such as 'work experience', 'education' and 'skills'.
• Choose a simple, standard CV structure and omit any design elements that might make your CV less easy to read by automated systems, such as text boxes and columns.
• Select a font that's widely used and maximises readability, including popular serif and sans serif fonts between size 10 and 12 for body text, and 14 and 16 for headings.
• Use bullet points in place of full sentences and paragraphs, as these are easier for ATS apps to scan and parse, and help your keywords stand out.

You might feel there are a lot of steps to creating an ATS-compatible network engineer 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 an impactful network engineer CV

To grab the attention of the reader with your CV, tailor it to the exact specifications of the job description, incorporating keywords and phrases that match the employer's requirements. 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, using an eye-catching, expert-designed CV template from Jobseeker can really give your CV an edge over those from rival candidates, helping you to achieve success in your job applications.

Sources:

1. Barnet Council (UK local government), Recruitment tips: How to write a supporting statement
2. Jobseeker, HR Trends