<p style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; text-decoration-thickness: auto; text-decoration-style: solid;">There is a question every hiring manager asks the moment they open a designer's CV. It is not "Can they design?" It is not "Do they know Figma?" It is much simpler than that.</p><p style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; text-decoration-thickness: auto; text-decoration-style: solid;"><em>Is this person relevant to my problem — and are they worth my time to meet?</em></p><p style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; text-decoration-thickness: auto; text-decoration-style: solid;">In Cambodia's growing design industry, that question gets answered in under ten seconds. Hiring managers are busy. They are often reviewing fifty or a hundred applications for a single role. They are not reading carefully — they are scanning. And your CV either earns the next ten seconds, or it doesn't.</p><p style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; text-decoration-thickness: auto; text-decoration-style: solid;">Most designers lose those first ten seconds not because their work is weak, but because their CV is doing the wrong job.</p><h2 id="cc8c6aa0-ecd4-451c-b199-8b2a156139b4" data-toc-id="cc8c6aa0-ecd4-451c-b199-8b2a156139b4" style="font-size: 24px; line-height: 1.2;">The mistake that cuts across every level</h2><p style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; text-decoration-thickness: auto; text-decoration-style: solid;">Junior designers list tools. Mid-level designers list responsibilities. Senior designers write summaries full of words like "visionary" and "passionate" that say everything and mean nothing.</p><p style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; text-decoration-thickness: auto; text-decoration-style: solid;">The underlying problem is the same at every level: describing what you&nbsp;<em>did</em>&nbsp;instead of what&nbsp;<em>changed because of what you did</em>.</p><p style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; text-decoration-thickness: auto; text-decoration-style: solid;">There is a significant difference between these two bullet points:</p><p style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; text-decoration-thickness: auto; text-decoration-style: solid;"><em>"Designed the onboarding screens."</em></p><p style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; text-decoration-thickness: auto; text-decoration-style: solid;"><em>"Redesigned the onboarding flow after research revealed 43% of new users were abandoning before completing registration — reducing drop-off by 31% in the first month post-launch."</em></p><p style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; text-decoration-thickness: auto; text-decoration-style: solid;">The first tells a hiring manager you were present. The second tells them you were useful. One gets interviews. The other gets passed over.</p><h2 id="2f9ba4d5-4e7a-484b-b518-8ecb6f489cd3" data-toc-id="2f9ba4d5-4e7a-484b-b518-8ecb6f489cd3" style="font-size: 24px; line-height: 1.2;">Why this is harder than it sounds</h2><p style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; text-decoration-thickness: auto; text-decoration-style: solid;">Most designers are close to their own work. They know what they built. They know how hard it was. What they struggle to articulate — clearly, concisely, on a single page — is what changed as a result.</p><p style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; text-decoration-thickness: auto; text-decoration-style: solid;">This is not a writing problem. It is a thinking problem. And it is the same thinking problem that separates designers who advance quickly from designers who stall.</p><h2 id="2c42c229-20b3-42ee-9926-4925a77b4cc1" data-toc-id="2c42c229-20b3-42ee-9926-4925a77b4cc1" style="font-size: 24px; line-height: 1.2;">What the Cambodian market specifically needs</h2><p style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; text-decoration-thickness: auto; text-decoration-style: solid;">Designing in Cambodia comes with a set of genuine, distinctive challenges. Khmer typography. Low digital literacy. Trust problems in a cash economy. Devices and connection speeds that most Western design teams have never designed for.</p><p style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; text-decoration-thickness: auto; text-decoration-style: solid;">That experience is valuable. But too many local designers either leave it off their CV entirely — because it doesn't sound impressive — or describe it so vaguely that the value doesn't land.</p><p style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; text-decoration-thickness: auto; text-decoration-style: solid;">The way you describe your experience matters as much as the experience itself. And the standards for what a strong description looks like — at junior, mid, and senior level — are specific, learnable, and different at each stage of your career.</p><h2 id="edfe218d-9f51-48b9-8ffa-dcc10a4ba94b" data-toc-id="edfe218d-9f51-48b9-8ffa-dcc10a4ba94b" style="font-size: 24px; line-height: 1.2;">One question to ask before your next application</h2><p style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; text-decoration-thickness: auto; text-decoration-style: solid;">Go through your CV right now. Find every bullet point that describes what you did. Ask one question for each one:&nbsp;<em>what changed because of this work?</em></p><p style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; text-decoration-thickness: auto; text-decoration-style: solid;">If you cannot answer that, the bullet point is not finished. And your CV is not ready.</p><p><em>This post is adapted from “Getting your next job” a practical course built specifically for Cambodian designers at junior, mid, and senior level.</em></p>

Most designers lose job opportunities not because their work is weak, but because their CV describes what they did instead of what changed. Here's what to fix — specifically for the Cambodian design market.

Your CV has one job and most designers are getting it wrong

What the Cambodian market specifically needs

One question to ask before your next application

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Your CV has one job and most designers are getting it wrong

Your CV has one job and most designers are getting it wrong

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