How to Write a CV With No Experience

A CV with no work experience is not an empty CV. It is a document that requires more thought about what to include, not less. The candidates who write strong first CVs are the ones who understand that experience takes more forms than paid employment, and that a CV is really an argument for why you are worth interviewing.

What goes at the top

Your name, email address, phone number, city, and a LinkedIn URL if your profile is reasonably complete. Keep it simple. A photograph is not standard practice in the UK. The personal statement sits just below your contact details and is the section where most first CVs either win or lose the reader's attention.

Write your personal statement last. Two to three sentences that say who you are professionally right now, what you bring, and what you are looking for. The mistake most first-time writers make is opening with something generic: "I am a motivated and hardworking graduate looking for an opportunity to..." This tells the reader nothing specific and sounds like every other first CV. Instead, name the field you are entering, mention something concrete about your background that is relevant, and say clearly what kind of role you are targeting. Specific beats general every time.

Education

When you have limited work history, education carries more weight and should come before experience. List your most recent qualification first. Include the institution, the dates, and the grade or expected grade if it is good. For A-levels or equivalent, list the subjects and grades. For a degree, include the title of your dissertation if it is relevant to your target roles, and note any modules that directly connect to the work you are applying for. Academic prizes, scholarships, or positions of responsibility within your institution belong here too.

Placements and internships

Any formal placement, even a short one, functions as work experience and should be presented exactly like a job: organisation name, your role title, dates, and two or three bullet points describing what you did and what you contributed. Be honest about the level, but do not undersell it. If you helped a team process customer data, assisted in running events, or supported a project with research, those are real contributions. Write them with an action verb and be as specific as you can about what you actually did.

Volunteering and extracurricular activity

Voluntary work, society committee roles, sports team captaincy, charity fundraising, tutoring, and similar activities all count. Recruiters reading first CVs understand that unpaid experience is still experience. The standard is the same: what did you do, and what came of it? If you ran the social media for a student society, mention the platform, approximately how many followers or the growth you drove, and the kind of content you created. Numbers make vague activities concrete.

Projects

Personal projects are underused on first CVs. If you have built something, designed something, written something, coded something, or run something on your own initiative, it belongs on your CV. A project demonstrates motivation, independent thinking, and the ability to complete something without being told to. Include what you made, the tools or methods you used, and any outcome or audience it reached. This applies to coursework projects too, if they are genuinely substantive.

Skills

List skills that are directly relevant to the roles you are applying for. Software you know well, languages you speak, technical tools, platforms, or methodologies. Be honest about your level. "Basic knowledge of Python" is more useful to a recruiter than "Python" with no qualifier, because it sets accurate expectations. Keep the list to twelve or fifteen items. Generic entries like "Microsoft Word" or "good communicator" are filler that most recruiters read as padding.

Length and format

One page. At this stage in your career, two pages would imply more experience than you have. One well-structured, readable page is what recruiters expect from candidates with limited work history. Use a clean, single-column layout. Standard section headings. A readable font at a size that does not require squinting. Avoid columns, text boxes, graphics, and tables: many applicant tracking systems cannot parse them, and they create visual clutter that slows a human reader down too. Consistent formatting throughout, with no section that looks like it was formatted separately and pasted in.

What makes a first CV work

The CVs that get interviews for first roles tend to have three things in common. They are specific rather than generic, describing real things the candidate did rather than qualities they claim to have. They are tailored to the type of role being applied for, with the personal statement and skills section reflecting the language of the job description. And they are honest about what the candidate brings without apologising for what they do not yet have. Confidence in what you have done, combined with clarity about what you want to do next, is a stronger pitch than an inflated claim that does not stand up to a five-minute conversation.