First CV
A CV with no work experience is not an empty CV
It is a CV with a different order. Education moves to the top, projects do the work that employment usually does, and the unpaid things you have been dismissing become the evidence. Here is what goes on the page, in what order, and the two mistakes that make an inexperienced CV look worse than it is.
- page, and stop there
- 1page, and stop there
- lines in the profile
- 3lines in the profile
- goes first, not last
- Educationgoes first, not last
- uses for “hard-working”
- 0uses for “hard-working”
What goes on the page
Six sections that replace an employment history
Education, in more detail than you would normally give
Later on, education is three lines at the bottom. Now it is the main event, and it can carry the weight: relevant modules, your dissertation or final project, the grade if it helps you, and any coursework that involved doing something rather than reading about it. "Final-year project: designed and tested a queue simulation for a 40-bed clinic" is a real piece of work.
Projects — the section that does the heavy lifting
Anything you built, ran, organised or fixed, whether or not anyone paid you. A shop for a family business, a modded server with users on it, a fundraiser, a translated manual. Describe it exactly as you would describe a job: what it was, what you did, what happened as a result.
Volunteering and unpaid work
Unpaid work is work. Reading with primary pupils, running a club, sorting stock in a charity shop — all of it shows up for something on a schedule and being relied on, which is most of what an employer is checking for in a first hire.
Part-time, seasonal and family work
Two summers in a restaurant is experience. So is a Saturday job, and so is unpaid work in a family business — write it as an employer with dates. People routinely leave these off because they feel unrelated to the job they want, which removes the only evidence that they have ever held down a shift.
Skills, with a level attached
A list of software with no context reads as aspiration. "Excel — pivot tables and VLOOKUP, used for the club’s membership records" is checkable. Languages get the same treatment: name the level rather than the word "fluent", which means different things to different readers.
A short profile that says what you are aiming at
Three lines. What you have just finished, what you are looking for, and one thing you can already do. Its job is to stop the reader wondering why they are holding a CV with no jobs on it — answering that in the first three seconds is worth more than any other line on the page.
How to write it
Four steps, in order
- 1
Put education first
Move it above experience. With no employment history, education is your strongest section and it belongs where the reader looks first. Section order is a drag in the editor, not a template you have to find.
- 2
Write projects as if they were jobs
Same shape: a title, a date range, and two or three bullets that start with a verb. "Built", "organised", "translated", "ran". A project written in this shape reads as work; the same project written as a paragraph reads as a hobby.
- 3
Add everything paid, however unrelated
Every shift you have worked, in reverse order. You are not claiming they are relevant. You are showing that somebody has employed you and you turned up.
- 4
Cut it to one page and stop
A first CV is one page. If it runs to two, the second page is padding, and padding is more obvious on a short career than on a long one.
What to avoid
The four things that make it look worse
Padding it to look longer
Wider margins, 14pt body text, three lines of interests, a skills bar chart showing 70% Microsoft Word. Every one of these signals that there was not enough to fill the page, which is the exact impression you were trying to avoid. A confident one-page CV with white space on it beats a stretched one.
Calling yourself passionate and hard-working
Every candidate with no experience writes this, so it distinguishes nobody, and none of it is checkable. Replace it with something that happened: a thing you made, a group you organised, a shift you covered every Saturday for a year.
Leaving off unpaid or unrelated work
The two most common deletions are the family business and the supermarket job, on the grounds that neither is "professional". They are the only proof on the page that you have ever been relied upon.
An objective aimed at yourself
"Seeking a challenging role that will develop my skills" describes what you want from the employer. "Recent economics graduate looking for an analyst role; comfortable with Excel and SQL from my final-year project" describes what they get.
The through-line is the same in all four: an employer reading a first CV already knows you have not worked much. Nothing is gained by disguising it, and the disguise is what gets noticed. What they are looking for is evidence that you finish things and turn up — which is why a specific, ordinary, true detail outperforms any adjective.
Questions about a first CV
Write it in an editor that lets education go first
Section order is a drag, not a template you have to hunt for. Put education above experience, add a projects section, and see the page as you type.
No card required. One page, exported as a PDF that looks the same on their machine.
Where to go next
- A student CV, written out in fullA complete first CV with no employment history, and why each choice was made.
- Worked CV examplesComplete documents by role, with every choice explained.
- CV advice by professionWhat to write for your field once you have something to write.
- AI CV builderTen questions, and it writes the first draft from your answers.
- ATS-friendly CV templatesClean single-column layouts that parse correctly.
- The CV builder, screen by screenDrag education above experience in about two seconds.
- Free CV builderWhat the free plan includes, and what it does not.
- CV blogLonger guides, including one written for students and graduates.
- All CV templatesThe full library, by category.