Career service
Your CV has about six seconds to survive the first cut.
Tailored resume coaching that aligns with Australian standards to highlight your strengths and increase interview success.
- Format
- 1:1, in person or online
- Typical length
- 2 sessions to a sendable CV
- You leave with
- Master CV + role versions
- Reviewed by
- Mentors who hire in AU teams
Why applications go quiet
Most rejections happen before anyone reads your projects
A junior developer role in Sydney routinely draws two to four hundred applications. Almost none are read end to end. A recruiter scans for a role title, a stack, a location and a work-right status, and moves on.
Before that, an applicant tracking system has usually already filtered on keywords. A CV written for a different market — a photo, a date of birth, a personal statement, a dense two-column layout the parser cannot read — often fails there without ever reaching a person.
This service fixes both layers: the machine read and the six-second human scan. The content is yours; what changes is what a hiring team can find in it, and how fast.
What we work on
Eight things we change, line by line
Every session works on your real CV against a real job ad — never a template exercise.
- Australian format and conventions
- No photo, no date of birth, no marital status. Work rights stated plainly near the top. Two to three pages is normal here, and reverse-chronological is expected.
- Getting through the ATS
- Single column, real headings, standard section names and no text trapped in tables, headers or images. We test the parse, not just the appearance.
- Project descriptions that show engineering
- What the system did, what you personally built, the stack, and the decision you made. "Built a full-stack app with React" tells a reviewer nothing.
- Evidence instead of adjectives
- "Strong problem solver" is invisible. A latency figure, a user count, a test-coverage number or a release cadence is not.
- Keyword targeting per role
- The exact stack wording from the job ad, placed where both the parser and the reviewer will find it — without keyword stuffing.
- Handling gaps and career changes
- Study, relocation, visa waits and non-technical work all have honest framings that do not invite suspicion.
- LinkedIn told the same story
- Recruiters check. A headline, About section and experience entries that contradict your CV cost you the callback.
- Cover letters that are actually read
- A short, specific letter for the roles that ask for one — and a clear answer on when not to bother.
How it runs
From your current CV to a version you can send
- 01
Audit against a live job ad
Bring your CV and a role you would genuinely apply for. We mark it up the way a reviewer would, and you see exactly where attention stops.
- 02
Rebuild the structure
Section order, headings and layout are rebuilt for a parser first and a skim-reader second. This is usually where the biggest jump comes from.
- 03
Rewrite the experience and projects
We work through each entry together — what you built, what you decided, what it produced. You write, we push for specifics.
- 04
Produce role-family versions
One master CV, then targeted versions — front-end, back-end, full-stack, cloud, data — so you are not rewriting from scratch each time.
- 05
Test, then review after real applications
We check the parse and the six-second scan. Once you have sent it out, we look at the response rate and adjust — this is not a one-off document.
What you keep
Concrete outputs, not advice
Documents
- A master CV in an editable format you own
- Tailored versions for each role family you are targeting
- A cover letter template you can adapt in five minutes
- A rewritten LinkedIn headline, About and experience section
And the working knowledge
- The keyword list for your target roles, and where to place it
- A checklist you can run against any future version yourself
- Your CVs stored in the student portal, ready for SmartApply to match against jobs
- An honest read on which roles you are and are not competitive for yet
Who this is for
Three common starting points
- No local experience yet
- Overseas or study-only background. The work is making transferable and project experience legible to an Australian reviewer.
- Applying with no replies
- Fifty or a hundred applications, almost no callbacks. Usually a parsing or positioning problem rather than a skills problem.
- Changing direction
- Moving from another field, or from support into development. The CV has to argue for the role you want, not the one you had.
Questions
Before you book
Do you write the CV for me?
No — and that is deliberate. You write it with us guiding each line. A CV you cannot defend in an interview is a liability, and reviewers can tell when the document and the person do not match.
How long does it take?
Most students reach a sendable master CV within two sessions, then add role-specific versions as they apply. Ongoing review continues while you are job hunting.
I have almost no experience. Is there enough to work with?
Yes. Course projects, team projects and self-built work all count if they are described as engineering rather than as coursework. Getting that framing right is most of the job.
Does this cover visa and work-rights wording?
Yes. Where and how to state work rights — including 485 and other temporary visas — so it answers the question early instead of raising it.
Is it only for developer roles?
Mostly, but the same work applies to adjacent technical roles — testing, support, data, cloud and business analysis.
Bring your CV and one job ad
The first session is a genuine audit — you will leave knowing exactly why applications are stalling, whether or not you continue with us.