Graduate CV Templates and Guide
A graduate CV should give an employer a clear and focused picture of your education, experience, skills and potential. It should help the recruiter understand what you can offer without becoming a complete record of everything you have ever done.
Most graduate CVs include sections covering your contact details, education and experience. Depending on your background and the role, you may also include a short personal profile, relevant skills, projects, interests or other activities. Presentation matters because recruiters need to find important information quickly. A simple structure, clear headings and consistent formatting will usually work better than an elaborate design. Your strongest and most relevant evidence should be easy to identify, particularly on the first page.
Your education section can carry significant weight early in your career. Alongside your degree, you may include relevant modules, projects, technical methods or academic achievements where they strengthen the application. Experience is broader than formal graduate employment. Internships and placements are valuable, but part-time work, volunteering, society responsibilities and other activities can also demonstrate useful skills. Focus on what you did, the responsibility you held and what happened as a result.
A separate skills section can be useful when employers need to find technical information quickly, such as software, programming languages, laboratory methods or language ability. Broader skills such as teamwork or communication are often more convincing when demonstrated through your experience. Your CV should also remain accurate and easy to support at interview. Avoid exaggerated job titles, inflated responsibilities or claims that you could not explain confidently if questioned. Although templates can provide a useful starting structure, make sure they do not dictate the final content. The amount of space given to each section should reflect your strongest evidence and the job you are applying for.
Our complete Graduate CV Templates and Guide explains the individual CV sections, formatting choices and final checks in much greater detail, and also provides a template.
Graduate Cover Letter
A graduate cover letter supports your CV by explaining why you want the opportunity and why your background is relevant to it. While your CV provides a structured record of your education and experience, the cover letter gives you more room to make direct connections between that evidence and the employer’s requirements.
Before writing, understand both the vacancy and the organisation. Identify the skills, experience and qualities that appear most important, then decide which parts of your background provide the strongest evidence. A strong cover letter should also explain why the role genuinely interests you. Broad statements about wanting to work for a successful or prestigious company are rarely enough. Your reasons should connect to the work itself, the organisation or the career direction you want to pursue.
Your letter does not need to repeat your CV. Select one or two particularly relevant examples and explain why they matter. This gives the employer useful context without retelling your entire education and employment history. Keep every claim accurate and consistent with your other application documents. Employers may compare dates, qualifications, responsibilities and examples, and anything you include may later be discussed at interview.
Presentation should remain professional and easy to read. In most cases, a graduate cover letter should be concise and fit comfortably onto one side of A4 unless the employer requests something different. The tone should be professional but natural. Avoid corporate language you would never use in conversation and generic phrases that could apply to any employer. A template can help you understand the expected structure, but the final letter should feel written for one particular role. Changing only the company name is not enough.
Our full Graduate Cover Letter guide breaks down structure, addressing the employer, presentation, email applications and the common mistakes that can weaken an otherwise strong application.
How to Write a Graduate CV With No Work Experience
Having little formal work experience does not mean you have nothing valuable to put on your CV. When graduates say they have “no experience”, they often mean that they have not yet worked in their chosen industry. However, employers may also consider evidence from university projects, part-time work, volunteering, societies, caring responsibilities and personal projects.
The first step is to understand what the employer needs. Once you know which skills and qualities matter most, look across your wider experience for examples that support them. Academic work can be particularly useful. A dissertation might demonstrate research and organisation, while a group presentation may provide evidence of communication and teamwork. Technical, creative or research projects may also deserve greater prominence when they are relevant to the role. Part-time work should not be dismissed simply because it comes from another sector. Retail, hospitality, administration and customer-service roles can develop communication, reliability, judgement and the ability to work under pressure.
Your CV structure can also change according to where your strongest evidence sits. If your degree and projects are more relevant than your employment history, these sections may appear earlier and receive more space. Avoid apologising for what you lack. Your profile and experience should focus on what you can genuinely offer rather than drawing attention to the absence of internships or professional employment. You should also resist the temptation to pad the CV. Generic hobbies, unsupported skills and weak sections added only to fill space are unlikely to strengthen your application. A shorter, focused CV is more useful than a longer document with little evidence.
Most importantly, keep the context honest. University projects should be described as university projects, and informal responsibilities should not be made to sound like senior professional experience. Our full guide to How to Write a Graduate CV With No Work Experience explains how to find evidence in your existing experience and decide where and how to present it.
How to Explain Gaps on Your Graduate CV
A gap in your employment or education history does not automatically make you a weaker candidate. Students and graduates may have gaps for many reasons, including illness, caring responsibilities, travel, interrupted study, redundancy or simply taking longer to secure the right role after university. The main issue for an employer is often uncertainty rather than the gap itself. If a longer break is obvious in your timeline, a brief and accurate explanation can make the CV easier to understand.
Not every gap needs its own entry. Short periods between study and work may require no explanation at all. Longer breaks or interruptions are more likely to benefit from a simple description. Where you explain the gap depends on where it appears. A break within your employment history might be included as a dated entry, while an interruption to university study may be explained beneath the relevant education section. Keep the wording neutral and proportionate. You do not need to disclose private medical information, family circumstances or unnecessary personal details. Often, a short phrase such as “family caring responsibilities”, “health-related career break” or “independent travel” provides enough context.
You should also keep dates accurate and consistent. Trying to disguise a gap by altering dates or changing the level of detail between entries can create greater concern than the gap itself. A cover letter may provide additional context when the gap is recent or directly relevant to the application, but it should not become the main focus of the letter. It is also useful to prepare a brief explanation for interview. Your answer should match the information in your CV, explain what happened at a level you are comfortable sharing and then return the focus to your current suitability.
Our complete guide to How to Explain Gaps on Your Graduate CV covers different types of career breaks and how to present them without sharing more information than necessary.
How to Tailor Your CV and Cover Letter
A strong general CV and cover letter provide a useful starting point, but they should not normally be sent unchanged to every employer. Tailoring means adjusting the emphasis, order and evidence so that your application reflects the needs of one specific role. It does not mean changing facts or inventing experience.
Begin with the vacancy. Identify the main requirements and the themes that appear repeatedly. These might include technical knowledge, analysis, communication, teamwork, organisation or interest in the sector. Once you understand the employer’s priorities, match them with your strongest evidence. This could come from university, employment, volunteering, projects or other responsibilities.
Your CV and cover letter should then perform different roles. On your CV, tailoring may involve moving relevant evidence higher, shortening less useful information or changing the emphasis within an experience. The same part-time job, for example, might provide customer-service evidence for one vacancy and organisation or accuracy evidence for another. Your cover letter should then explain the reasoning behind the application. Focus on why the role interests you, why you have chosen that employer and how your strongest experience connects to their requirements.
The two documents should work together rather than repeat each other. The CV presents the wider evidence, while the cover letter adds context and explains the most important connections. Tailoring does not require rewriting every sentence from scratch. A master CV and a bank of genuine examples can make the process more efficient. However, the final documents should still feel clearly written for the opportunity in front of you. Before submitting, review the CV and cover letter together. Check that dates, qualifications and responsibilities match and that no references to another employer or vacancy remain.
Our full guide to How to Tailor Your CV and Cover Letter explains the complete process for identifying employer priorities and adapting both documents effectively.
