A CV with no experience: what to put in when you haven't worked yet

“I have no experience” is almost always untrue. You have followed a course, played a role in a team, done a job for money, seen a project through. A first CV is not short of experience: it is short of translation. This guide shows what counts, how to order it, and how to write each line so a recruiter sees a skill in it.

What counts as experience

Anything that required responsibility, a tool or a result belongs on the page. Make the list before you write:

• Internships, even short ones, even work-shadowing: what you saw being done, what you were allowed to do.
• Summer jobs and odd jobs: till work, waiting tables, stocktaking, grape picking, holiday-club leading, deliveries, babysitting, tutoring, helping in the family business.
• Volunteering and associations: club treasurer, organising an event, students' union, fundraising, outreach rounds.
• Civic service, national service, reserve forces: a mission, an organisation, dates, a result.
• Projects: coursework (in a team, with a deliverable) or personal (a website, a channel, an app, a short film, an online shop).
• Sport and the arts at a committed level: competition, captaincy, orchestra, theatre company. They are proof of consistency and teamwork.

The structure that works when you start out

When your course is your main asset, it goes before your experience. The full order, top to bottom:

1. Header: name, phone, a sensible email address, town, driving licence if the job needs it. No age, no full postal address.
2. Headline: the job you are applying for, in the words of the ad.
3. Profile: two lines, what you can do and what you are looking for.
4. Education: most recent qualification first, with its specialism and two or three modules that matter for the job.
5. Experience: internships, jobs, civic service, volunteering, each with dates, the organisation and what you did there.
6. Projects, if you have any: one line per project, with the tools.
7. Skills and languages: tools, software, languages with an honest level.
8. Interests, only if they say something specific about you.

Keep the section headings standard (“Education”, “Experience”, “Skills”): that is how screening software files your CV. For variations by situation, see the order of CV sections.

Headline and profile

Your headline is not “Student” or “Recent graduate”: it is the job you are after, as the ad writes it (“Sales Assistant”, “Administrative Assistant”, “Junior Web Developer”). The profile takes two lines: your course, one proven skill, what you are looking for. The full method and examples are in our guide to the CV headline and personal statement; here, the main thing to remember is that a beginner's profile talks about facts, never about “motivation”.

Skills backed by facts

A list of qualities (“rigorous, motivated, good people skills”) convinces nobody, because everyone writes it. A skill is only worth the fact that proves it. Instead of “organisational skills”, write what you organised; instead of “comfortable with Excel”, say what you built with it. The rule: every skill you claim must appear somewhere in an experience or project line.

To sort and write the section itself (tools, languages, level), see our guide to skills on a CV.

Before and after: lines that change everything

Replace each “[X]” with your real figures, and only with them: an accurate number is proof, an invented one is a mistake.

Every “after” line has a title, an organisation, a period, concrete actions and a sign of trust. That is exactly what a recruiter looks for in an experienced profile; you can give it to them without being one.

The usual mistakes

• Writing “no experience” or “beginner”: you announce a shortfall where you should be showing a skill.
• Going back to secondary school: your GCSE-equivalent and school years drop off as soon as you have a more recent qualification.
• The list of adjectives in place of skills.
• Padding the page with a huge font, enormous margins or a giant photo to hide the gaps. A crisp half page beats a hollow full page.
• A rushed photo: a good photo or no photo, see photos on a CV.
• Making things up, a fictional internship or stretched dates: the employer is entitled to check your qualifications, and false information discovered after you are hired can justify dismissal (see the source at the bottom of the page).

Building this first CV with the site

Got a draft, however thin? On Update your CV, “My structure” sorts it into sections and lets you add an experience by telling it in your own words (“I ran the till at a campsite last summer and handled the bookings”): the AI turns it into CV form, without adding anything you did not say. Then the CV analysis gives you your word-for-word fixes and your score against ATS robots. Still studying? Read the student CV instead; degree in hand, the CV for a first job.