How to write a student CV in the UK

What goes on it, and in what order?

A layout that works for most students is your name and contact details at the top, then education, then experience, then skills, and a short line of interests at the end if they say something about you. Within each section, put the most recent thing first: Cambridge’s careers service and Prospects both say to list everything in reverse chronological order.

Education comes first while you are a student, because it is the main thing you have done. Give the degree, the university, the dates and your grades so far, then your A levels or equivalent with grades. For GCSEs, the University of Kent’s careers service suggests giving the number and the grades rather than listing every subject, and Cambridge’s guide notes that school results matter more on a first-year internship application than by your final year.

Leave out a photo, your date of birth and anything else personal that an employer does not need. Kent’s careers service advises against including age, date of birth, gender, race, religion, sexuality, marital status or disability, and Cambridge’s guide says not to include a photograph in the UK unless an employer asks for one.

How long should a student CV be?

Two pages at most. Cambridge’s careers service says that in most cases a CV should be no more than two sides of A4, that some sectors prefer one, and that some employers, such as banks, may ask for one page only. Kent adds that it should be one or two full sides rather than one and a half, which is a useful test: a page and a half usually means either padding or something cut that could have stayed.

For banking and other finance jobs, aim for one page. Lancaster University’s management school careers team puts it plainly, that financial CVs need to be one page only, and it also suggests not listing AS levels or individual GCSEs.

How to write a line about experience

Cambridge’s guide suggests a structure that works for almost any bullet point: accomplished something, as measured by something, by doing something. So “Responsible for social media for the chess society” becomes “Grew the chess society’s Instagram from 150 to 600 followers in a term by posting a puzzle every weekday”, and “Worked as a waiter” becomes “Served up to 40 covers a shift in a busy restaurant and trained three new staff on the till”. The second version of each tells the reader what you did, how much of it, and that it worked.

Start each line with a verb (organised, built, trained, wrote, cut), keep it to one or two lines, and use the past tense for anything finished. Numbers help most when they are real and checkable, such as people, hours, members, money raised for a society or grades, so do not invent precision you do not have.

What if you have little work experience?

Most students applying for a first internship are in the same position, so use what you have. A part-time job in a shop or café shows reliability, dealing with the public and handling money; a society role shows organising and getting people to turn up; a project, competition or coding repository shows that you can finish something on your own.

Give each of these the same treatment as a job: what you did and what came of it. A section called “Experience” rather than “Work experience” lets you put the society role and the project next to the job without apologising for any of them.

Fitting it to each vacancy

Send a slightly different CV to each kind of role. Cambridge’s guide says it is worth adjusting your CV for each role, and suggests cross-referencing the person specification and mirroring its language where it is accurate, so that the evidence an employer asked for is easy to find.

That usually means changing the order of bullet points, rewriting two or three lines and cutting what is irrelevant, not starting again. A software internship CV puts the projects and languages near the top; a consulting one puts the analysis, the leadership and the results there.

Checking it before you send it

Read it on paper, check every date and grade, and ask somebody else to read it: Cambridge’s guide suggests a friend or family member, since they will notice mistakes you have stopped seeing and a spellchecker misses. Your university careers service will usually look at a CV too.

With an account, Check my application in cookie’s Interview prep reads a CV against the job you are applying for and points to lines that are vague or claim more than they show, quoting your own words. It sends the text to an AI provider and uses credits, and what you send the employer should still be yours.