A recruiter at a busy Lagos agency may have two hundred applications for one role. Most CVs get under a minute, and the first look is shorter than that. In that first look they want three answers: what job you do, how long you have done it, and whether you can do this one.
Put those answers at the top of page one, in this order:
- Your name, phone number (with +234), email and city. No photograph, date of birth, religion, state of origin or marital status — they take space and invite bias.
- A two-line headline: the role you are applying for and your strongest proof. "Sales executive, 3 years in FMCG distribution, grew my territory 40% in 2025."
- Your most recent job, with its results first.
Everything else is supporting evidence. If the top third of page one does not make the recruiter want to keep reading, the rest will not be read.
Exercise: print or screenshot your current CV. Cover everything below the first third. Would a stranger know what job you want and why you can do it? If not, that is the first thing to fix.