How to Write a CV With No Work Experience

When you have little work history, education is your strongest section, so place it near the top. Include your degree or programme, university or school, and your graduation date or expected date. Add relevant modules, a final-year project or a dissertation topic if it connects to the job.

Above it, write a two or three line profile that says what you studied, what you are good at and what kind of role you want. For example: 'Business graduate with strong Excel and presentation skills, interested in an entry-level operations or analyst role.' Keep it specific and honest.

Experience does not have to mean a paid, full-time job. Many activities build the same skills employers want, and they belong on your CV under headings such as 'Projects', 'Volunteering' or 'Activities'.

• University or school projects, especially team projects
• Internships, placements or job shadowing, even short ones
• Part-time or seasonal work in shops, cafés or call centres
• Volunteering with charities, events or community groups
• Student societies, clubs and leadership roles
• Personal projects such as a blog, an app or a design portfolio

How you describe an activity matters as much as the activity itself. Write each item like a job entry: a title, the organisation, the dates and two or three bullet points about what you did and what came of it.

Compare 'Member of the events club' with 'Coordinated logistics for a two-day student career fair, liaising with company representatives and managing a team of volunteers'. The second version shows organisation, communication and teamwork. Start bullets with action verbs such as organised, built, researched, presented or led.

Without a work history, recruiters often look for other evidence that your skills are real. Online courses, certificates and skill test results can all help, as long as they are relevant to the job.

You can take free skill tests in areas such as Excel or communication on Talaskill and add the results to your CV. Trying a day in the job simulation is another way to experience real tasks from a role and talk about them with confidence in an interview. Keep the skills section focused on what the advert asks for rather than listing everything you have heard of.

Many student CVs are held back by the same few problems, and most are easy to fix once you know to look for them. Ask a lecturer, a careers adviser or a friend to read your CV before you send it.

• Leaving the experience section empty instead of adding projects or volunteering
• Listing soft skills such as 'leadership' without any example
• Using a casual email address or an unprofessional photo
• Adding hobbies that say nothing about you, such as 'reading' with no detail
• Sending one generic CV to every internship and graduate scheme

One page is usually enough for a student or recent graduate CV, especially in the US. In the UK, Europe and the Gulf, a single page is often preferred at this stage, though a second page can be acceptable if everything on it is relevant.

Tailor your CV for each application. Move the most relevant projects to the top, reuse key words from the job advert where they are true for you, and remove anything that does not help your case. A CV builder with clean templates makes it easier to keep several versions tidy. Our career guide for students has more ideas for planning your first steps.