The difficulty with a first CV is rarely the writing. It is the conviction, sitting there before a word is typed, that there is nothing to write. Somebody who has been in education, has held a casual job or two, and has not yet worked in the field they are aiming at tends to assume the page will be embarrassing. That assumption is worth examining, because the people reading a first CV are not expecting a career. They are looking for signs that somebody can take responsibility for something and describe it accurately.
What follows deals with the ordinary version of this document: how it gets read, what counts as material when the professional section is empty, how to describe modest work without inflating it, what order things go in, and what to leave off. Interviews and portfolios have pages of their own. This one stops at the point where somebody has read the CV and decided to find out more about the person behind it.
Who reads it, and how quickly
A CV is a filtering document. Its job is not to tell your story; it is to survive a fast first pass and earn a slower second one. Whoever is holding it is usually deciding whether to spend more time on you, and they are making that decision while holding several other people's pages. Everything about the format follows from that: clear headings, short lines, dates that line up, and no dense block of text somebody has to wade into.
Who the reader actually is varies. Sometimes it is the person who would supervise you, sometimes an administrator, sometimes a filtering system before any human sees the file at all. Conventions differ by country and by field, and they differ enough that a general rule is worth less than the instruction printed on the advert. Where an employer states a length, a format or a file type, that instruction settles the question. Where a university careers service publishes local conventions, those beat anything generic.
The practical implication is that the page has to be legible when skimmed and still hold up when read carefully. Those two demands sound contradictory and they are not. A skimmable structure with specific content inside it satisfies both, and it is the combination most first attempts miss, usually by being neat and vague at the same time. A document that looks tidy but says nothing checkable survives the fast pass and fails the slow one, which is the worse of the two places to fail.
What counts when the professional section is empty
The definition of relevant experience most people carry around is narrower than the one actually in use. Anything where you were responsible for an outcome somebody else depended on counts, whether or not it was paid and whether or not it resembles the work you eventually want. Roles inside student clubs and societies are the example people overlook most often, and that category alone covers more of an ordinary life than it first appears to.
Two things make this material work on a page. It has to be specific, so the reader can picture what happened rather than nodding at a category. And it has to be described in terms of what the work required rather than what it was called, since a job title carries almost no information across contexts while an account of the actual responsibility carries a great deal of it.
- Coursework with an output. Projects, extended pieces and group assignments that produced a deliverable. What matters is the thing produced and your part in producing it rather than the mark, and group work also demonstrates coordinating with other people to a deadline.
- Paid work of any kind. Serving, stacking, cleaning, driving, care, seasonal shifts. Ordinary work demonstrates reliability, handling people, working under pressure and turning up, and none of that becomes less true because the job was modest. Paid work alongside study is covered as a subject of its own.
- Clubs, societies and teams. Especially anything where you held a role: treasurer, organiser, captain, committee member. Running something with a budget or a rota is management in miniature, and it is checkable, which matters more than whether it sounds impressive.
- Volunteering and community work. A regular commitment counts for more than a one-off event, because what it demonstrates is consistency. Describe what you were actually responsible for rather than naming the organisation and leaving the reader to guess.
- Responsibility at home. Caring for a family member, interpreting for relatives, running a household budget or managing a sibling's schedule are real responsibilities. They can be described in neutral, factual terms without disclosing anything you would rather keep private.
Describing ordinary work without inflating it
The temptation with a thin page is to make each item sound larger than it was, and it is worth resisting for practical reasons rather than moral ones. Inflated descriptions collapse at the first follow-up question, and those questions are the entire substance of a first interview. Anybody who has done the work can tell when a description has been stretched, because the vocabulary drifts away from the actual task.
The honest version is usually stronger anyway, since honesty forces specificity. Name what you were responsible for, what the work demanded of you, and what changed because you did it. Choose verbs that match what happened: you organised a rota if you organised a rota, and you contributed to a project if that is what occurred. The distance between contributing to something and running it is visible to a reader and invisible to nobody.
Where a role genuinely was small, the repair is not a bigger verb but a smaller claim described precisely. A short, exact line about a modest responsibility reads as somebody with judgement. A grand line about the same responsibility reads as somebody who has not yet worked out what the words mean, which is the impression a first CV can least afford to create.
Structure, and what goes near the beginning
Order matters more than design. The reader wants to know who you are, how to reach you, and what your strongest material is, in that sequence, without hunting for any of it. Contact details come first and should be complete and functional, including an address for email you would be content to read out loud. After that, whichever section is currently stronger goes next. For most people early on that is education, and it stops being education as soon as the work section holds something substantial.
Within each section, most recent first. Keep the date format consistent and avoid gaps that read as errors rather than as life. A short opening line saying what you are and what you are looking for is optional, and it earns its place only if it says something particular; a line that could sit on anybody's page is doing active harm by occupying the part of the document most likely to be read.
Length conventions vary widely by country and by field, so treat any absolute rule with suspicion and follow the instruction in the advert where one exists. Short and complete is easier to read than long and padded. Send the file in the format requested, name it so that it is identifiable sitting in a folder alongside many others, and check how it looks on a screen you did not write it on.
What to leave off
Deciding what to remove is as useful as deciding what to add, partly because a shorter document reads as more confident and partly because several common inclusions actively cost you something. The general test is whether an item helps somebody decide. Anything failing that test is occupying space that a specific, checkable line could have used instead.
Personal details are the one area where local convention genuinely governs, and it varies. In some countries a photograph and a date of birth are expected on a CV, and their absence looks careless. In others their presence is unusual and unwelcome. Your own convention does not necessarily travel with you, so check what is normal in the place you are applying to rather than assuming the question has a single answer.
- Skills you cannot demonstrate. A list of software names and languages is useful only if you could survive a question about each one. Where your level genuinely varies between them, say so in words rather than implying uniform competence across the row.
- Rating bars and star graphics. Graphics implying a measured level of proficiency invite the reader to disagree, and they replace a description with a decoration. Words about what you have actually done with a skill are much harder to dismiss at a glance.
- Detail that has been superseded. Early school-level results can shrink to a single line once there is later education to report. The page should get shorter at the far end as it gets longer at the near end, otherwise it grows without improving.
- Long personal statements. A paragraph of adjectives about being hardworking and passionate gets skipped by most readers and tells them nothing checkable. Where the space is used at all, it should carry facts rather than character claims.
- Referee details, unless asked. Names and contact details for referees are rarely needed at first contact, and publishing them exposes other people's information unnecessarily. Say that references are available and keep the details until somebody requests them.
Tailoring without starting again
Rewriting the whole document for every application is unsustainable, and it is not what tailoring means in practice. Keep one long master version containing everything you have ever done, including material that will never appear on anything you send. Each application then becomes a copy of that file with items cut, sections reordered, and the opening adjusted to the role in front of you.
What actually changes is small. Which experience sits nearest the beginning, which lines survive the cut, and whether the vocabulary matches the words used in the advert wherever it is honest to use them. Reading an advert properly, listing what it asks for, and checking each line of the page against that list takes very little effort and marks the difference between a document that has been sent and one that has been aimed.
A CV and a portfolio do different jobs
The two documents get conflated constantly, and the conflation is costly in both directions: it produces a CV bloated with detail nobody scans and a portfolio too vague to verify anything. One asserts and the other proves. The CV compresses everything into checkable claims a reader can move through quickly, while the portfolio holds the actual work so that somebody can look at it and form their own view without your help.
Where work can be shown, the two operate together: a line on the CV points at a piece, and the piece supports the line. How to choose and explain those pieces is set out in the guide on building a student portfolio. Where your material comes from placements and part-time roles rather than made objects, the guide on internships covers what to record while the work is still happening around you.
Once the document exists, the next thing it has to survive is somebody asking about it, which is a different skill and needs separate preparation. Anything on the page is fair material for a question, so a line you would not want to be asked about is a line worth removing before you send it anywhere. The wider matter of how early roles connect to each other, and what to do with a first one once it arrives, is covered across the early career pillar.
Common questions
- What do I put on a CV if I have never had a proper job?
- Start from responsibility rather than employment. Coursework that produced something, casual or seasonal work of any kind, a role in a club or team, volunteering with a regular commitment, and responsibilities carried at home all show that somebody depended on you doing something and that you did it. Describe each in terms of what the work required rather than what it was called, since a title carries little meaning across contexts while a description of the actual responsibility carries a great deal.
- How long should a student CV be?
- Conventions vary widely by country and by field, so treat any figure offered as universal with caution and follow the instruction in the advert wherever one is given. The more useful principle is that short and complete reads better than long and padded, and that a first CV rarely needs to stretch to fill space. Where a section looks thin, the repair is a more specific description of what is already there rather than additional lines of adjectives.
- Should I include a photograph and my date of birth?
- That depends entirely on where you are applying. In some countries both are standard and their absence looks odd; in others neither is expected and including them is unusual. Your own convention does not necessarily travel with you, so check what is normal in the country and field you are applying to rather than assuming there is one answer. A university careers service, or the employer's own application instructions, will settle it faster than any general rule.
- How do I describe part-time work without making it sound trivial?
- Describe what the work actually required rather than what the role was called. Shifts that had to be covered, stock that had to balance, customers who needed handling while something else was going wrong, new staff you showed the routine to: each of those is specific and checkable. Avoid stretching the verbs to cover it. A precise account of a modest job reads as somebody who understands work, which is exactly what a reader of a first CV is trying to establish.