Critical: Spell & grammar check before you publish. Then get someone to review it for you.
Content (in the following order)
- Contact details + (github repos etc - optional but recommended)
- Personal statement + (expected salary - optional)
This is just why you want the job and how you feel you can help them too.
- Skills (relevant to the job)
Preferably in bullet-points or something similar to this: Blue dots on skill Personally I hate this method of portraying skills as it is completely arbitrary. However, it does seem to catch the attention of many employers due to it's "modern style". This will be used as an example throughout this answer.
- Employment history
The format in Modern CV. is a good one to follow, always include dates on employment - do the same for education.
- Education (briefly)
- Outside interests and others (if you like & optional)
A simple 1 or 2 line description is fine here.
- Certificates/awards
Again, more like bullet-points.
- References
Styling
- ALWAYS IN 3RD PERSON NEVER FIRST.
- It has to be viewable at a glance.
People don't have the time, and at the beginning of the process don't really care about candidates until face to face meetings. Therefore the CV MUST have key skills and employment easily readable.
- Type of CV:
As a designer, and sometimes a developer, choosing a website, EXAMPLE, as your CV is usually an excellent idea. This would obviously mean that most of the content mentioned above still applies + social media etc. Obviously references wouldn't go on there.
Otherwise I would go with the Modern CV as a styling reference and work from there.
Finally
For me a CV should be no more than 2 pages, although I know many would potentially disagree with this. My reason for this is 2 pages are enough to fit the critical information on, and yet also not too much that an employer would get bored/care less with the amount of information received. As an old friend once said
Information density.
I did actually consider making a Udemy course on how to write a CV because the amount of crap out there is just depressing (see critical point at the top).