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How to Format your Graduate CV 🎓

Tess,   22nd May 2019

How to Format your Graduate CV 🎓

If you are close to graduating, or already have, now is the time to get your graduate CV in order…

You may have worked part-time, volunteered, completed a gap year, or took part in a placement year. Or, you may have dedicated yourself fully to your studies. No matter what your path to graduating was, we can help!

The key to securing an interview is making your CV relevant to the job you are applying for. To do this, hiring managers need to be able to easily identify that you are a worthwhile candidate for the job. Here are our top tips on how to format your graduate CV:

📝 Ensure your personal statement is relevant

You’ll need to have a personal statement, this says a bit about you, your studies and your ambitions. We can help you with this as we understand how awkward it can be writing about yourself. It only needs to be 3-4 sentences long, but it needs to be relevant to the role you’re applying for. A good tip is to look at some of the key words in the job ad, and use them in your statement.

🎓 Include your education at the top

Next, list your Education, in reverse order, so your degree appears first. Unlike non-grad CVs, your education is likely to be your most recent and prominent experience, so list this before any work experience.

Focus mainly on your Uni education, be sure to include your degree title, qualification and any specific modules that are relevant to the role you’re applying for. List your GCSE’s and A levels rather than going into detail, as an employer will be most interested in your degree; as that is the highest level of education you’ve achieved.

💻 Any work experience goes next

Next up, list your work experience, again, with the most recent first, followed by previous duties. You want to include anything that is relevant to the role you’re apply for, for instance, if you worked part-time at Uni as a bartender, your customer service skills will look great if you’re apply for a Sales/Customer Service role. If you volunteered or completed a placement year, be sure to include the details here as you would any job you have done.

🌎 Include your gap year

Don’t go into too much detail about what you did, maybe mention where you went (travelled South-East Asia). You want to highlight the skills you learnt, the group activities you took part in, anything that will make your CV stand out against another candidate – potentially one with working experience.

🎭 Any interests or hobbies

Keep these appropriate to the role you’re applying for; reading or drawing is a good hobby if you want to go into marketing, as it shows you’re creative.  Saying you like to play xbox isn’t going to help you get that Sales or HR job.

✔️ Top tip…

If your email address isn’t professional, create a new one!

Lastly…

We receive a high number of CV’s and the majority of them are sent as CV1, or CV but the best way to send them is in the below format:

Full Name – CV

Get in touch with us today to ensure your CV stands out from the crowd!