A CV for your first job after graduating

While you were studying, your CV was there to land an internship or a work-study contract: it told the story of your course. Degree in hand, it changes role: it applies for a job, and the recruiter reads it like any other candidate's. This guide shows how to make that switch, section by section, and how to approach the starting-salary question without selling yourself short. If you are still studying, read the student CV instead.

From student CV to candidate's CV

The headline: the job, not your degree

Your headline is the title of the job you are applying for, written as the ads write it, with “junior” if the market uses it: “Junior Quality Engineer”, “General Ledger Accountant”, “Back-end Developer”. Not “Recent graduate”, not the name of your master's: screening software compares your headline with the ad's, and a recruiter searches for a job, not a diploma. Details and examples in our guide to the CV headline; for the three lines that follow it, the CV personal statement.

Making the most of your degree

Your degree is your first argument, but it is read quickly. One line per qualification: exact title, specialism, institution, year obtained. Add honours if they are good, a ranking if the school publishes one, and a double degree or a semester abroad if you have them. Everything else (options, modules, grades) goes: it helped for internships, it no longer helps for a job. A work-study contract belongs under Experience, not Education: it was a real job, with a real employer.

Your internships are experience

Write each internship as a job: a title, the company and its sector, the dates (month and year), three or four duties with their tools, and a result when you have one. Replace each “[X]” with your real figures, never an estimate.

The final-year project

It is the one assignment where you held every thread: it deserves its own section or line, written like an assignment. The problem set, the method, the tools, the deliverable, the result and, if there was one, the client. “Dissertation on last-mile logistics” says little; “Study for a regional haulier: analysis of [X] delivery rounds, optimisation model in Python, recommendations adopted by management” says it all.

The starting salary

You have no reference salary yet, and this is when people undersell themselves most. A starting salary depends on the job, the town, the size of the company and your level of qualification, not on a national average read somewhere. On What am I worth?, you upload your CV: the AI reads your job, your qualification, your experience and your town, and the site calculates your market value from INSEE salary data, with a range by company size. No figure here: it would be wrong for most readers. What the data says about the link between degree and pay is in salary by qualification, and the method for defending your figure in negotiating your starting salary. And for the day a recruiter asks for your figure: how to answer the salary-expectations question.

Cover letter and speculative applications

• The letter fits on one page at most: why this company, what you bring to it (an internship, a project, a skill), and the next step you propose (an interview). It does not repeat the CV. Our guide to the cover letter gives the structure and sample sentences; Nego can draft a first version from your CV and the ad, for you to review.
• A speculative application works when it is targeted: a company chosen for a specific reason, a named person (the head of the department, not “human resources”), an email subject line that names the role, a polite follow-up if you hear nothing.

Checking this first CV

Upload your CV to the CV analysis: it checks the headline, the dates, the job's keywords and your achievements, gives your score against ATS robots and word-for-word fixes. The AI can also rewrite the whole CV for a goal (getting past the robots, aiming higher) without ever inventing a result: where a figure is missing, it writes “[X]” and lets you fill it in.