Want to write a great CV? Here’s 10 top tips to get you started

CV writing can be mind-boggling at worst, and exhausting at best, so we’ve put together five top tips to help you nail the perfect CV, whether it’s for an internship, placement year, or graduate role. We’ve also got super-expert Emma Alkirwi of The CV Guru coming to our Bloomsbury location, as the first of our Conscious Careers talks, to give you more details about crafting an effective CV.

1. Kick-off with a strong objective statement

You have a maximum of two sides of A4 to grab someone’s attention and sell yourself. Every line of text is important, so kick off with a good impression with a clear, concise, and compelling opening statement. Make sure to avoid making this generic, but personalise this to the specific job or internship. For example, if you are applying for a marketing role, then make sure your opening statement expresses your enthusiasm for marketing and your desire to learn and contribute to the field. Have a look online for some examples.

2. Make sure you have an active LinkedIn profile and include a link to it!

Nowadays, LinkedIn can play an important part in helping employers see you as the right person for the role – the networking site allows you to stay up to date with various brands and employers, which can be evidence to an employer that you’re genuinely interested in their industry. Also, since a CV should typically only be a maximum of 2 pages long, linking to your LinkedIn profile is a good way of sharing more detailed information about your experiences, interests, and achievements.

3. Your experiences should be recent and relevant

It might be tempting to include every single piece of work experience or volunteering you’ve ever done (how else will they know you spent your gap year in India if you don’t tell them?), but seriously, try to resist it. The best way to decide which experiences should go into your CV is to list your experiences in order of most relevant to least relevant and choose your top 3 or 4. Then, arrange these going from most recent to least recent. If you don’t have a lot of explicitly relevant work experience, that’s okay; you just have to do a little more rejigging to highlight how those experiences have helped you to develop skills that are essential to the role you are applying for. For example, you might have worked as a cashier in a store and want to apply for a role in a bank. You could mention how your experience dealing with a variety of different types of customers has helped you further develop your communication skills with people from a variety of backgrounds. Or you could say that working in a customer service role allowed you to gain key skills such as conflict resolution. No experience is ever useless – it’s all about how you adapt it to the role! Have a look for more advice on how to write a CV without experience online.

4. Tailor your CV to the role you’re applying for

One thing recruiters and employers especially hate is irrelevant CVs or those blanket CV’s sent out to everyone. Now, from an applicant perspective, it’s unrealistic to expect a brand-new CV for every application, especially when as a graduate you might send out at least 20 applications a week. To get around this, one thing you can do is put the role and organisation you’re applying for at the top of your CV. If your CV includes colour, change the accent colours to the brand’s colour schemes too to make an employer feel like you’d be a good fit for the company, and have also taken time to think about their branding choices. You should also tweak your experiences to make them relevant to the role and ensure that you list the key skills you have that are included in the job description of the role you are applying for. Another top tip is highlighting and re-ordering your CV to reflect the most relevant skills that the job posting is looking for.

5. Break up long paragraphs and use bullet points

Breaking up text into shorter bullet points and lists is a great way to make your CV visually appealing and easy to read. Also, it makes it easier to pick out key information which is especially beneficial as employers and recruiters have to skim through several hundred CVs per role – they’ll appreciate whatever you can do to make it easier on them! Take a look at the best CV templates to follow.

6. Use action verbs

When describing your experiences, use strong action verbs to make your achievements more impactful. Instead of saying, "I helped with social media marketing," say, "I managed social media marketing campaigns, resulting in a 20% increase in engagement."

7. Quantify your achievements

Numbers add credibility to your CV, you can't argue with numbers! Whenever possible, include quantifiable achievements. For example, "Increased website traffic by 30% in one month" or "Managed a team of 10 volunteers for a fundraising event that raised £5,000." Numbers provide concrete evidence of your accomplishments, they show that you are commercially minded and able to evidence your worth

8. Skills section

A separate dedicated section for your skills is a helpful and digestible way of getting your top skills across quickly and clearly. Mention both hard skills (e.g., programming languages, data analysis, design software) and soft skills (e.g., communication, teamwork, problem-solving) that are relevant to the job. Include any certifications or online courses you've completed that demonstrate your expertise.

9. Use a professional email address

It’s been said many times before and will probably be stressed many times in the future, but a professional email address is fundamental when applying for an internship, placement, or job. If possible, make your new email address as easy as your firstname.lastname@emailprovider.com. To make things more convenient, you can also use your professional email address exclusively for job-related activities

10. Proofread!

We know it sounds so basic, but it is frequently overlooked. A well-structured CV can fall at the last hurdle – spelling or grammatical errors. Consider asking a friend, family member, or career advisor to review your CV as well. Even minor mistakes can leave a negative impression. Don’t skimp on this last crucial step!

CV writing can seem like an impassable mountain at first, but following these tips will put you in a great position to secure opportunities – perhaps even that dream job. Once you get over the first hurdle and get an interview, you can continue to WOW them with your skills, stellar personality, and ambition. You’ve got this!