How to write a CV when you have no work experience

The blank CV problem is rarely a lack of material. It is not recognising which material counts.

Change the order, not the content

A CV with no employment history should not lead with an empty Experience section. Reorder it:

1. Summary
2. Education
3. Projects, coursework or placements
4. Skills
5. Any work at all, including unrelated jobs

Education moves up because it is your strongest evidence. Projects come next because they are the closest thing to proof of what you can do.

What counts as a project

More than you think. A final-year dissertation. A university group assignment with a real deliverable. A volunteering role. A society you ran. A freelance piece for a family friend's business. Anything you built, organised or finished.

Describe it the way you would a job:

• What it was and who it was for
• What you specifically did
• How it ended

"Final-year project: built a booking system for a 40-room guesthouse in Sylhet, using Django and PostgreSQL. Designed the schema and the availability logic; the owner still uses it." That is a stronger entry than most junior job listings.

Unrelated work is still work

Retail, tutoring, hospitality, a family business. These demonstrate reliability, customer handling and working under pressure — and their absence leaves a gap a recruiter will wonder about.

Describe them briefly and in terms of responsibility: "Handled the evening shift alone, including cash reconciliation and closing" says more than "Worked in a shop".

What to leave out

• School results, once you have a degree
• "References available on request" — assumed, and it wastes a line
• Hobbies with no relevance
• Skill ratings out of five, which you have no basis to assign
• A photo, unless you are applying somewhere it is conventional

Write a summary that admits where you are

Do not imply experience you do not have. State the position honestly and point at evidence:

"Computer science graduate with a focus on backend development. Built and deployed three full-stack projects during my degree, including a booking system now in daily use. Looking for a junior backend role."

That reads as someone worth interviewing. "Dynamic and passionate self-starter seeking to leverage my skills" reads as nobody at all.

Keep it to one page

With no employment history, one page is genuinely enough — and a short, dense CV reads as more confident than a padded two-page one.

Ready to start? Open the builder and pick a single-column template.