Journal

Notes from the studio.

Writing about craft, careers, and the quiet work of being seen. No listicles, no clickbait — just the notes we'd want to read ourselves.

CV writing/14 August 2026/5 min read

What an ATS actually parses, and the five formatting choices that break it

No applicant tracking system scores your CV out of a hundred and rejects you at 74. It turns a file into database rows. Five common design choices make that fail.

CV writing/9 August 2026/5 min read

From duty to outcome: ten CV bullets rewritten in front of you

Nobody is impressed that you were "responsible for" anything. Ten real bullets from real CVs, rewritten line by line, with the reasoning shown each time.

CV writing/3 August 2026/5 min read

Arabic CV, English CV, or both — decide by who opens the file

The language of your CV is not a statement about your identity. It is a guess about the person who will read it, and you can usually make that guess accurately.

CV writing/23 July 2026/4 min read

The photo on your CV: keep it in Cairo, cut it for London

Whether a photo helps or hurts is not a matter of taste. It depends entirely on which market opens the file, and the answer flips completely between Riyadh and Dublin.

CV writing/16 July 2026/4 min read

The career-change CV, when your history argues against you

Changing field means every line of your CV is evidence for the wrong case. Here is how to re-order the document so your history stops working against your application.