CV Examples: 6 UK Examples for Your Situation

A CV example is only useful if you know what to do with it. Here are six written for common situations, with what makes each one work and a method for building your own from them without copying. The employers, places and numbers are all made up.

What Every Good CV Example Has in Common

Whatever your background, the CVs that read well share the same foundations: one page for students and early careers, two at most for everyone else, your most recent role first, a personal statement of three or four lines written for the job you want, bullets that describe a result rather than a list of duties, and a plain layout with standard section headings, which is the safest way to get through applicant tracking software (ATS). Leave out a photo, your date of birth and your marital status: UK employers do not expect them, and our guide to CV photos explains why. The layout matters too: our CV templates guide compares four layouts on the same CV.

CV Example With No Experience (Student or First Job)

With little paid experience, projects, part-time jobs and societies carry the CV: here the university project stands in for the missing experience, and the summer job shows reliability with specifics. Example for a summer internship in data analysis:

Sales CV Example

In sales, numbers do the talking: a volume, a growth rate, a team size. Every line in this example has one, so you can see the level of responsibility in a few seconds.

Administrator CV Example

Admin roles look alike from one advert to the next. What sets you apart is the volume you handle and the tools you know, which this example names the way job adverts do.

Career Change CV Example

When you change sector, the CV has to translate your old job into the language of the new one: skills come before history, and training in progress shows the move is serious. Example of a move from teaching into corporate learning and development:

Manager CV Example

At manager level, results are about budget, team and company metrics, the same ones the next job will ask you to own. Two pages are fine at this stage. Example in digital marketing:

Developer CV Example

For a technical role, name the technologies the way the advert does and give a result you can measure. The personal project rounds out the agency experience:

How to Adapt a CV Example to Your Own

1. Pick the example closest to your situation, not necessarily your job title: the structure is what matters.
2. Read the job advert and note five words or phrases that keep coming up. Use them as written when they describe what you really do.
3. Rewrite each line in three parts: what you did, how, and with what result.
4. No numbers? Use a volume, a frequency or a length of time: "30 calls a day", "every week", "over two years".
5. Cut anything that does not help for this particular job.
6. Check the length and the layout before you send it.

Mistakes to Avoid When You Copy an Example

The most common mistake is copying an example word for word: identical phrases are easy to spot, and you will have to defend them at interview. The same goes for numbers, since the ones here are made up and every figure on your CV has to be yours, with an explanation behind it. Avoid copying a busy design too: columns, icons and skill-level bars can be misread by applicant tracking software, and our guide to ATS-friendly CV formats covers what gets through and what gets blocked. And do not embellish: a job title, a length of service or an inflated result gets checked, often at interview.

Check Your CV Before You Send It

Once your CV is written, read it aloud, ask someone you trust to read it, and check that applicant tracking software can read the format and section headings before you apply.