Writing Your First CV

The "no experience" problem isn't what you think it is

Here's the thing. Almost nobody writing their first CV has "nothing to put on it." They just haven't learned to see their experience for what it is yet.

You've spent three or four years at university. You've submitted coursework under pressure. You've worked in groups where half the team disappeared two weeks before the deadline. You've maybe pulled pints, stacked shelves, tutored a younger student, run a society Instagram account, or volunteered at a food bank on Wednesday mornings.

That's experience. All of it.

The problem isn't that you have nothing. It's that no one has shown you how to frame what you have in a way that makes an employer pay attention. That's what this guide is for. We'll walk through the structure, the wording, the formatting, and the stuff that actually matters when your CV lands in a recruiter's inbox -- or, more likely, gets scanned by software before any human sees it.

The structure that works

Keep it simple. A graduate CV needs four core sections, in this order:

1. Personal profile -- 3 to 4 sentences about who you are and what you're looking for
2. Education -- your degree, your university, relevant modules or projects
3. Experience -- and we're defining that broadly
4. Skills -- specific, relevant, honest

That's it. You don't need a "hobbies and interests" section. You don't need a line that says "References available on request" (employers already know that). You don't need a photo, your date of birth, or your marital status.

One page. Single column. Clean headings. Let's break each section down.

Your personal profile

This is the first thing a recruiter reads. It sits right under your name and contact details, and it needs to do one job: make them want to keep reading.

Three to four sentences. That's all you've got. Use them to say who you are, what you've studied, what you're good at, and what kind of role you're after.

Example: "Recent English Literature graduate from the University of Leeds with strong research and analytical skills developed through a dissertation on digital media narratives. Experienced in deadline-driven environments through part-time retail work alongside full-time study. Looking for an entry-level role in content, communications, or marketing where I can apply my writing ability and attention to detail."

Notice what that does. It's specific. It mentions a real university, a real subject, a real dissertation topic. It connects part-time work to a transferable skill. And it tells the employer exactly what kind of role this person wants.

Compare that with this:

Avoid: "Hardworking and enthusiastic graduate seeking a challenging role where I can utilise my skills and develop my career in a dynamic organisation."

That second one says absolutely nothing. It could belong to anyone. Employers read hundreds of those a week. Don't be one of them.

Presenting your education

When you're a graduate with limited work experience, your education section is doing a lot of the heavy lifting. Don't waste it by just listing your degree title and university name.

Include:

• Your degree title and classification (or predicted grade if you haven't graduated yet)
• Your university and dates of study
• 2 to 3 relevant modules, especially if they connect to the job you're applying for
• Your dissertation or final project title, with a one-line description of what it involved
• Any academic achievements worth mentioning -- prizes, high-scoring coursework, published work

Example:
BSc (Hons) Business Management, 2:1 -- University of Birmingham, 2023-2026
Relevant modules: Digital Marketing Strategy, Consumer Behaviour, Data Analysis for Business
Dissertation: "The Effect of TikTok Marketing on Brand Perception Among 18-24 Year Olds" -- conducted primary research with 340 survey respondents and analysed results using SPSS

That's far more useful than just writing "BSc Business Management, University of Birmingham." It gives the employer something to talk about in an interview. It shows research skills, analytical thinking, and initiative.

What about A-levels and GCSEs?

If you've got a degree, your A-levels are secondary. List them briefly -- subjects and grades on one line. GCSEs can be summarised as "9 GCSEs including Maths (7) and English Language (8)" or similar. If you're applying for a role that specifically requires Maths or English GCSE at a certain grade, make sure that's visible. Otherwise, keep it compact.

Experience -- and what counts

This is where most graduates get stuck. They think "experience" means "professional job in my target industry." It doesn't.

Experience, on a graduate CV, means any situation where you were responsible for something, worked with other people, solved a problem, or delivered a result. That includes:

• Part-time jobs (retail, hospitality, tutoring, delivery driving)
• Volunteering (charity shops, food banks, mentoring schemes, community events)
• University societies (especially if you held a committee position)
• Group projects and coursework
• Personal projects (a blog, a podcast, a coding project, an Etsy shop)
• Informal work (babysitting, helping with a family business, freelance design work)

The key is how you write about it. Which brings us to the single most important skill in CV writing.

Achievements, not responsibilities

This is the difference between a CV that gets read and one that gets skimmed past. Most people describe what their job involved. What you need to describe is what you actually did and what happened because of it.

Look at the difference:

Before (responsibility): "Responsible for serving customers and handling cash transactions."

After (achievement): "Served approximately 80 customers per shift in a busy high-street store, consistently receiving positive feedback from the store manager for speed and accuracy at the till."

Before: "Helped run the university film society's social media."

After: "Managed the university Film Society's Instagram account, growing the following from 200 to 2,400 over two terms through a consistent posting schedule and collaborations with other societies."

Before: "Worked as part of a team on a group project."

After: "Co-led a four-person team on a semester-long marketing strategy project for a local bakery, delivering a 40-page report and presentation that received a first-class mark."

See the pattern? Numbers. Specifics. Outcomes. You don't need to have saved a company millions. You need to show that you turned up, did the work, and something tangible came out of it.

How employers actually read your CV (it's not what you think)

Here's something most graduate CV guides won't tell you. Before a human ever sees your CV, there's a very good chance it gets processed by an Applicant Tracking System -- ATS for short. Roughly 83% of companies now use one, and that figure hits 99% among Fortune 500 firms. If you're applying through Reed, Indeed, LinkedIn, or any employer's careers portal, your CV is almost certainly going through automated screening.

Understanding how these systems work gives you a genuine advantage.

How ATS parsing actually works

When you upload your CV, the ATS runs it through a parsing algorithm that extracts text and attempts to sort it into structured database fields: your name, contact details, work history, education, skills. Modern parsers achieve about 95% accuracy -- but only if your formatting is clean.

The parser looks for standard section headings. "Work Experience," "Education," "Skills." If you get creative and call your experience section "My Journey So Far" or "What I've Been Up To," the parser might not recognise it. Use conventional headings.

Single column, always

This matters more than most people realise. ATS parsers read documents sequentially -- left to right, top to bottom. A single-column CV presents information in one continuous vertical flow, and every ATS on the market can handle that without issues.

Two-column layouts are where things break. If you've used text boxes or tables to create a side-by-side layout (which many popular templates do), the parser can read straight across the invisible rows instead of down each column separately. Your job title gets mashed together with an unrelated skill from the opposite side of the page. The result is garbled data that the system either misclassifies or discards entirely.

Even modern ATS platforms like Greenhouse and iCIMS, which have more advanced parsing, can only handle two-column layouts reliably when they're built using native column tools in Word or Google Docs -- not text boxes or tables. For a graduate CV, there's no reason to take the risk. Single column. Every time.

File format: .docx wins

PDFs look great on screen. But extensive testing of ATS platforms shows that .docx files are still the most reliably parsed format across the board. Text-based PDFs usually work fine with modern systems, but certain export settings, non-standard fonts, or complex visual layers can break the extraction process. And if you accidentally submit a scanned PDF -- an image file rather than a text document -- the ATS has to rely on optical character recognition, which introduces errors.

The safest approach: keep a clean .docx master version of your CV for online applications. If a job listing specifically asks for a PDF, save your .docx as PDF using "Save As" rather than printing to PDF, which preserves the text layer.

Keywords matter -- but don't game it

ATS platforms evaluate your CV against the job description. Older systems use basic keyword matching -- they look for exact terms. Newer ones, like Workday and iCIMS, use semantic search that understands context and meaning. A semantic system recognises that "led a team" and "managed a group" mean the same thing.

Research suggests CVs typically need between 25 and 35 relevant keywords to score above an 80% match rate. But here's the catch: going above that threshold, especially through unnatural repetition or hidden text tricks, triggers keyword-stuffing detectors that actively penalise your application.

The right approach is to read the job description carefully and naturally incorporate relevant terms into your achievement-based bullet points. If the role asks for "attention to detail," don't just drop that phrase into a skills list. Show it: "Maintained error-free stock records across 200+ product lines during weekly inventory checks."

The white font trick is dead

You might have seen advice on TikTok or Reddit about pasting the job description in white text at the bottom of your CV. The idea is that the ATS reads it but humans don't see it. Modern ATS parsers strip away all font colour and size data during extraction, converting your document to plain text. When a recruiter opens your parsed profile, all that hidden text is displayed in full view. It's an instant rejection.

Common mistakes graduates make

After looking at thousands of graduate CVs, certain patterns come up again and again.

• Using a flashy template. Those two-column, colour-blocked, infographic-style templates from Canva look lovely on screen. They break ATS parsers. A recruiter might never see your CV because the system couldn't read it.
• Writing a generic objective. "Seeking a challenging role in a dynamic organisation" tells an employer nothing. Replace it with a specific personal profile.
• Listing responsibilities instead of achievements. "Responsible for customer service" is a job description, not a CV bullet point. What did you actually do? What happened?
• Going over one page. You're a graduate. You don't need two pages. If your CV spills onto a second page, cut ruthlessly. Every line should earn its place.
• Inconsistent date formats. This seems small, but ATS parsers use your dates to calculate total years of experience. If you write "Jan 2024" for one role, "2024-03" for another, and "March '24" for a third, the system can miscalculate your experience. Pick one format -- "Month Year" works well -- and stick with it throughout.
• Including a headshot. This isn't standard in the UK and takes up space you could use for content. Leave it off.

The skills section

Keep this concise and honest. Split it into two categories if it helps:

• Technical skills: specific software, tools, or qualifications. Microsoft Excel (intermediate), Python (basic), Adobe Photoshop, full clean driving licence.
• Transferable skills: things you can back up with examples from your experience section. Communication, teamwork, time management, problem-solving.

Don't list skills you can't evidence. If you say you're proficient in Excel, be ready to explain what you've actually done with it. "I made a spreadsheet once" isn't proficiency.

A note on AI and authenticity

It's tempting to run your CV through ChatGPT and let it write the whole thing. Be careful with that. Currently, 24% of HR leaders are actively looking for ways to detect AI-generated applications, and detection tools are getting sharper. They analyse writing patterns -- sentence length variation, word choice, structural rhythm -- and flag text that reads like it was generated rather than written.

Certain words are immediate red flags to recruiters. If your CV uses "synergy," "orchestrated," "spearheaded," or "dynamic" in every other bullet point, it reads as AI-generated. Stanford research has identified specific terms that are massively over-represented in large language model outputs. The word "delve" alone has become a widely recognised tell.

Use tools to help you if you need to. But write in your own voice. Use specific details that only you would know. A human-written CV with genuine, particular examples will always outperform a polished but generic AI-generated one -- because every AI CV converges on the same bland average.

Putting it all together

Your first CV doesn't need to be perfect. It needs to be clear, honest, specific, and properly formatted. Here's a quick checklist before you send it out:

• Single-column layout with standard section headings
• Your name and contact details at the top (email, phone, LinkedIn if you have one)
• A personal profile that's specific to you, not a generic statement
• Education section with relevant modules and your dissertation
• Experience section with achievement-based bullet points
• Skills section that you can back up with evidence
• Consistent date formatting throughout
• Saved as .docx for online applications
• One page, proofread, no typos

The bar is lower than you think. Most graduate CVs are poorly structured, vaguely worded, or formatted in a way that ATS systems can't read properly. Getting these fundamentals right puts you ahead of the majority.