How to write a graduate CV

Have you recently finished your education and are now about to take your first step into the world of professional work? Creating your first CV as a school leaver may feel like a difficult task, but you are not alone.

CVs for graduates tend to follow the same template. Just because your experience is mainly academic, it doesn’t mean that you can’t create a winning CV. Use this template to help showcase your employability and find your next role after education.

A graduate CV template and a CV template for school leavers are structured in the same format:

• Contact details
• Personal profile
• Key skills
• Work history
• Education
• Hobbies/Interests
• Additional Information

Once you’ve got this foundation, you can tweak and adapt your CV template to each role you apply for. It’s much easier to redraft than to start from scratch. But how do you begin writing a graduate CV?

Start your CV with contact information

The first step of writing your CV is to place the essential information at the top. This includes:

• Your full name
• Contact phone number
• Location or address
• A professional-sounding email address

If your email address is still [email protected], I would advise changing this ASAP!

Beneath this essential information, link to any online professional profile such as LinkedIn. Make sure your profiles are up to date first. And stay active on these channels, to demonstrate your interest in your field of work. Learn more about making the most of your LinkedIn profile.

Include a Personal Profile that relates to the job description

A strong personal statement is particularly important for someone without much experience. Use this part of your CV to explain:

• why you are applying for this role
• why you are a suitable candidate.

This information may not be immediately clear if you have no experience within a certain area. Be specific about why you want to work in this industry.

A potential employer will already know why an experienced sales coordinator would apply for another sales role. However, a recruiter may need help understanding why a History graduate is applying for a job in sales.

For more inspiration, read our guide to explaining why you want the job.

Graduate CV example:

Use your personal statement to introduce yourself. Explain how your academic and employment history or skills and achievements relate to the role you are applying for.

“I am a History graduate with a keen interest in pursuing a sales career. During my degree, I was largely graded on my presentation skills, and this was an area in which I scored highly.

I also held a part-time role as a retail assistant. During this time, I enjoyed developing my interpersonal and customer service skills.

I would like to apply my communication and interpersonal skills to a more challenging sales role. I’m looking for a role with room to grow and develop as a professional.”

Highlight key skills prominently on your CV

Next, use bullet points to define a list of your skills. This part may seem tricky given your lack of professional experience. But consider what hidden skills you didn’t even know you had.

Shout about self-taught skills:

Have you taken it upon yourself to upskill in any way whilst you have been unemployed? If not, it’s never too late to start. Look for opportunities to set yourself apart from the competition.

Transferable skills:

You can learn transferable skills through work experience, part-time jobs or education.

For instance, a History degree may require you to write a lot of essays. As such you can demonstrate strong writing and communication skills. You may also have been required to present your essays to a lecturer. During this time, you will have developed valuable presentation skills.

Soft skills:

Your soft skills reflect your personality traits and often can’t be taught. Examples include being naturally well-organised and a problem solver.

Reflect upon which traits people have always praised you for. Think about positive feedback from teachers, friends or family. You can even take a free online aptitude test to discover more about your core strengths.

If you are struggling, don’t worry. It may be easier for you to think of these skills once you have completed the work history and education part of your CV. In which case, you can return to this section later.

Provide a detailed work history

Many first-time job seekers often struggle when they reach the work history section. If this area of your graduate CV is looking particularly bare, include everything you can think of. Even include previous roles that are not directly relevant work experience to the role you are applying for.

For instance, mention volunteer work or a part-time job you had whilst studying. Including these roles will demonstrate your work ethic, maturity and employability.

List your experience in reverse chronological order. Always start with your most recent role and include:

• The company name
• Your job title
• Your employment dates.
• A couple of lines detailing the main aspects of your role
• Bullet points listing your responsibilities and which key skills you developed as a result.

You can also add any career highlights and achievements. If you can, link to online examples of your work and portfolio.

Avoid CV clichés

Avoid using too many CV clichés when talking about your work history. These clichés tend to be overused phrases which don’t really provide any evidence of the skills you claim to have.

For example: don’t state that you “provided great customer service” without giving any other information. Always offer examples to support each statement.

Instead, use action verbs to explain how you provided great customer service. Rather than saying “provided”, you could use the action verb “improved”. Action verbs sound much stronger on a CV and prompt you to provide evidence of your strengths. Read more on action verbs.

Lastly, do not, under any circumstances, lie about your experience. The transparency of your graduate CV reflects your integrity. Potential employers can easily uncover these lies during an interview or beforehand.

Provide a detailed summary of your education

Next, add your recent education starting with the last place you studied.

Make a list including:

• The educational institution
• The dates you studied there
• The course title and qualification type
• The grade you received

When writing a graduate CV, you can also use this space to go into more details about your achievements, such as:

• which different projects you worked on at university
• online examples of your work
• the skills you developed as a result of these projects.

If your work history is very limited,  you should put the education section above the work history. This is a useful formatting tip that lets you lead with your most impressive examples.

Introduce your hobbies/interests

Do not underestimate the extracurricular section on a graduate’s or school leavers cv . This section provides potential employers an insight into your personality.

List your hobbies/interests with enthusiasm. And remember to include any extracurricular activities you were involved with during your time in education.

Don’t be afraid to go into more detail in this section. Talk about:

• individual and team achievements
• personal awards
• the core strengths and skills you developed during this time.

For instance, you might mention how you played for your university women’s football team. If so, then celebrate how this team reached the semi-finals of the national university championships.

Read more in our guide to including hobbies in your CV.

How to conclude a CV for graduates

At the end of your CV, remember to add a final subheader titled “Additional Information”.

This section should include:

• any other qualifications (e.g. First Aid training)
• licences (such as a clean driving licence)
• certificates which don’t clearly belong in any other sections of your CV

Lastly, put “References available upon request” at the very end of your CV.

Remember to proofread your CV

Finally, don’t forget to proofread your CV multiple times. You can also ask somebody with more professional experience than you to sense-check. As for specific feedback on your graduate CV: would they hire you?

So, you may not have much professional experience, but that’s really no reason to panic. You can still create an impressive graduate CV. Focus on optimising the skills you didn’t even know you had. And avoid embellishing the truth or providing irrelevant information.

Your graduate CV is your ticket to getting you on the path to job search success. So take the time to follow this template carefully. You will be invited to an interview in no time.

• The advice graduate job seekers won’t usually hear
• What today’s graduates need to know
• Fresh graduate? Here’s how to handle the job search