Your name
Your address
Your phone number
Your e-mail address

Education

Your university, September 2005–present
Your degree and class obtained
Explain how your course is relevant to the job you are applying for. Give a general overview or highlight the relevant modules. If you did a dissertation or special project, mention it here.

Your secondary school, September 2001–June 2005
Your A-levels or equivalent
Eg Business Studies (A), Economics (B), etc.

Your GCSEs or Standard Grades
Nine GCSEs (grades A–C). It’s not necessary to list every one.

Employment

You can give details of any part-time work, summer jobs or work experience placements and explain what you gained from each.

Service Assistant, Hal’s Restaurant, Birmingham
Explain your responsibilities and skills gained (eg I worked as part of a team serving meals in a busy restaurant. This gave me the ability to concentrate, deal with customers and solve problems when they arose.)

Sales Assistant, Shoes R Us, Birmingham
Don’t repeat yourself – mention any different skills gained here.

Maintenance Worker, Camp Graduate, Pennsylvania, USA
Mention any summer jobs or placements that might help make you stand out from the crowd.

Agency Worker, Temps R Us, Birmingham
If you have had several similar jobs, you can group them together – this helps summarise them without listing them all.

Skills

You could incorporate a skills profile into your CV. This is particularly useful if you don’t have any relevant employment as you can describe the skills you have developed through other activities. You should still include your personal details, education history and referees as usual. For example:

Organisation
Highlight and draw together the relevant skills you have gained from other aspects of your life, eg academic and social activities.

Teamwork
Eg ’Organised a fashion show with four colleagues. Involved delegating tasks among team members, setting clear objectives and deadlines, and meeting regularly to monitor our progress. I was responsible for financial management, booking the venue and negotiating the price.’

Computing skills
Give examples of the computer programs you have used.

Interests

Highlight any team or sporting activities, hobbies or work in the community. These show you have a life outside of work or study and give recruiters an insight into your personality. Two or three sentences are plenty.

Referees

If you have room, you can mention the name, address, e-mail and phone numbers of two referees. It’s usual for recent graduates to give one academic referee and one employer referee. It’s not essential to give them at this stage – you can simply write ’referees available on request’.

If you do give referees’ details, ensure they know that they may be contacted.