Planning, applying, interviews and contract

CVs

To apply for graduate jobs, create a CV which explains your relevant skills and experience.

The structure you choose needs to be right for your self-marketing and for the roles you are targeting but often you are presenting your skills in context i.e., detailing your skills in the appropriate section (e.g. Education, Employment).

Your structure and layout can follow a reverse chronology format, a skills-based format or be a combination of elements from these two approaches. A good introduction to these considerations can be viewed in our CV Masterclass video. Check out our CV and cover letter templates and guidance.

CV sections

Personal details

• Have your name as the CV title
• Make yourself contactable: email address, phone number
• Include any links which enable an employer to view additional self- marketing e.g., your LinkedIn profile, personal website, online portfolio 

Profile/career objective statement

• This can be used to customise the first part of your CV – it is an optional section
• List a few personal key selling points and then detail a career objective focused on the kind of employer you are targeting i.e. your motivation and interest

 Education

• As a recent graduate, you would put this section before the "Employment" section if it better explains your recent career-relevant history
• Detail your degree(s): timelines, universities, subjects, and major relevant projects
• List the skills you acquired or developed during and because of your academic studies
• You are presenting only a sample of all the subject specialisms and projects you focused on – the best overlap content from your degree(s) in relation to the employer and their likely areas of interest

Employment

• One option is to list all previous jobs/work experience in reverse chronology but it is often good to use sub-headings, starting with the one that will cover the most relevant type of experience i.e. you can have two or more separate reverse work chronologies each under a sub-heading
• Ensure you sell these experiences by listing your job title, employer, duties and responsibilities, achievements and skills developed
• If you have had several casual jobs of the same type, you can fuse these and their dates together into one narrative and cover all of them at once, avoiding any repetition

Additional information

• This tends to be the place to list any “hard skills”: measurable and definable by level of proficiency such as IT, languages etc.
• Interests can be active, social and include self-marketing focusing on related skills and attributes developed through them e.g., project management, leadership, drive, energy. Example interests are sports teams, student union roles or society committees, campus brand ambassador
• This can be one section or two

Remember, a CV is not everything you have accomplished so far. It is your selection of narrative and skills evidence which you are prioritising to target your chosen labour market sector(s) and employers. The CV is a customised response by you to the labour and skills needs which potential employers say they have e.g. in their vacancy person specifications.

Further helpful resources on graduate CVs, including additional examples.