A CV that would get you an interview at a software house in Lahore can fail a government scrutiny committee in the same city. Public-sector recruitment in Pakistan — federal ministries, provincial departments, autonomous bodies, public universities, PPSC and FPSC-linked posts — runs on documentation, eligibility and verifiable facts. The private-sector habit of writing a persuasive, story-led CV is not what the reader is looking for.
Who reads it, and how
In most departments the first reader is a clerk or a scrutiny committee whose job is to confirm eligibility against the advertisement: age, domicile, qualification, experience, and whether the required documents are attached. Only after that does anyone look at the CV as a description of a person. So the CV has to make eligibility checkable at a glance.
Layout: plain, complete, in order
Government readers are used to a fixed order. Use it.
- Personal particulars — full name as on CNIC, father's name, date of birth, CNIC number (yes, here — see below), domicile district and province, nationality, religion if the form asks, marital status if the form asks, postal address, phone, email.
- Educational qualifications — a table, most recent first: degree, institution, board or university, year of passing, marks or CGPA, division or grade.
- Professional experience — a table: post held, organisation, from-to dates, nature of duties. Total experience in years and months at the bottom, calculated honestly.
- Training and certifications — with the issuing body and year.
- Other — computer skills, languages, publications for academic posts.
- References — two, with designation and contact, because government forms usually ask.
- Declaration — "I certify that the above information is correct to the best of my knowledge," signed and dated.
The CNIC question, answered for this case
Elsewhere on this site we advise keeping your CNIC number off a CV that travels around job portals. Government applications are the exception: the number is required, it is matched against your attested copy, and the application goes directly to one department through a controlled channel. Include it.
Match the advertisement word for word
If the advertisement says "16 years of education in Computer Science or equivalent from an HEC-recognised university," your education table should make it obvious in one line that you have exactly that. If it says "3 years post-qualification experience," your experience table should show the dates so the clerk can add them up without effort, and the total should be stated. Do not make the reader work.
Experience: what counts
Post-qualification experience means after the degree that qualifies you for the post. A year of work before you graduated will not count, even if it was relevant. Contract, daily-wage and project-based experience usually does count if you have an experience certificate on letterhead with dates. Collect those certificates now; they are hard to get from an old employer in a hurry.
Attested documents
The CV is read alongside attested copies of your degrees, transcripts, CNIC, domicile and experience certificates. "Attested" means stamped and signed by a gazetted officer (grade 17 and above). Keep a set ready. A CV that claims a qualification the attached copies do not support is worse than useless.
Age and domicile
Both are hard eligibility filters and both should be visible near the top. Age relaxation rules vary by province and by category — check the advertisement. Domicile determines which provincial or regional quota you fall under; a Punjab domicile applying against a Khyber Pakhtunkhwa quota post will be rejected regardless of merit.
What to leave out
The persuasive elements that private-sector advice recommends: a profile paragraph about your passion, achievement bullets with percentages, colour, sidebar layouts. A scrutiny committee does not score them and an unusual layout can make the eligibility facts harder to find. Save the achievement-led CV for the private sector.
Photo
Usually required — a recent passport-size photograph, often with a specified background colour. Read the advertisement. The passport photo resizer on this site produces the standard 35 × 45 mm size.
The interview
Government interviews tend to ask about your subject, current affairs, and the department's function. They rarely ask behavioural questions. Read the department's website and the last year's news about it before you go.
Using CVora for this
Choose the Classic template, which keeps everything in a single column that prints cleanly on plain paper. Fill in the personal details section fully — the fields for father's name, religion and CNIC are there for exactly this purpose. Then use the plain-text exporter if the department wants the information pasted into an online form.