Student CV Example (No Experience)

What to put on a CV when you have no work experience

A student CV follows the same order as any other, with one change: education goes near the top, straight after your profile, because it is your strongest qualification. Then comes an experience section that covers far more than paid jobs.

• Part-time and seasonal work: retail, hospitality, tutoring, delivery, call centres, festival work.
• Volunteering: charity shops, food banks, mentoring and tutoring schemes, sports coaching.
• Society and team roles: committee positions, captaincy, running events, student media.
• Projects: your dissertation, a substantial group project, a hackathon entry, a website or app you built.
• Schemes and awards: for example the Duke of Edinburgh's Award, Young Enterprise or a scholarship.

Use honest titles: 'Volunteer Tutor', 'Treasurer, Economics Society', 'Group Project Lead'. Recruiters check references and some run background checks, and an inflated title is easy to spot in an interview.

How to write a student CV profile

Keep your profile to two or three sentences that answer three questions: what you are studying and where, what you are applying for and when you are available, and one or two things you can already prove.

• Weak: 'Hard-working and motivated student looking for an opportunity to develop my skills.'
• Strong: 'Final-year BSc Economics student at The University of Manchester, predicted a First, seeking a graduate analyst role from September 2027. Manage an £8,400 society budget and work 15 hours a week in retail alongside my degree.'

Rewrite the profile for each type of role. A marketing internship profile should mention the society's social media you ran; an analyst application should mention Excel, R or your dissertation's methods.

Making part-time jobs and societies count

Employers know a weekend job in a shop isn't the role they're hiring for. They read it for evidence of reliability, handling customers and money, and managing your time alongside study. Make that evidence visible with specifics.

• State your hours: '12–16 hours a week alongside full-time study' shows time management without you having to claim it.
• Quantify responsibility: cash handled per shift, number of staff you trained, budgets you managed, sponsorship you raised, event attendance.
• Pick the duties that relate to the job you want. For a client-facing graduate scheme, describe difficult customer situations you resolved; for finance, mention cashing up, stock counts and budgets.

Compare 'Served customers and stocked shelves' with 'Handled cash and card takings of up to £3,000 per shift with no till discrepancies in two years'. The second takes the same space and gives a recruiter something to ask you about.

Your education section: grades, modules and projects

List your degree with its full title, university, dates and your expected or predicted grade. Under it, add what makes your course relevant to the role:

• Three to five relevant modules, for example Econometrics, Corporate Finance or Data Analysis for Economists.
• Your dissertation or final-year project title, the methods used and any notable mark.
• Prizes, scholarships and a year abroad or placement year if you did one.

For school results, list A levels, Scottish Highers, the Leaving Certificate or the International Baccalaureate with grades. GCSEs can usually be summarised on one line ('9 GCSEs including Maths and English at grade 7') unless you are a school leaver or the employer asks for them.

Length, format and tailoring for internships and graduate schemes

Keep a student CV to one page. Use a clean single-column layout, a professional email address and your town or city rather than your full address. In the UK and Ireland, leave out your photo, date of birth and 'references available on request'.

Tailor each application: reorder bullets so the most relevant come first, swap modules to match the role and mirror keywords from the job description. Many graduate schemes also use online application forms with competency questions, so keep your CV bullets detailed enough to reuse as examples there and in interviews. In your skills section, name concrete tools and levels, such as Excel pivot tables, R or Spanish at B1, rather than traits like 'hard-working'.

Student CV summary examples

Student CV bullet point examples

• Worked 12–16 hours a week as a sales assistant alongside full-time study, including every Saturday during the Christmas peak.
• Handled cash and card takings of up to £3,000 per shift with no till discrepancies over 18 months.
• Trained four new seasonal staff on the till system, returns and stock checks.
• Secured £2,500 in sponsorship from two local firms as society treasurer, funding three careers events.
• Organised a careers panel with five alumni speakers, attended by 120 students.
• Tutored two Year 10 pupils weekly in GCSE Maths; both raised their predicted grade from 4 to 6 over two terms.
• Led a four-person group project analysing bus punctuality data in R, awarded the module's highest group mark (74%).
• Raised £1,850 for a local food bank by coordinating a 10 km sponsored run with 35 participants.
• Grew the hockey club's Instagram following from 600 to 1,400 in one season by scheduling match-day posts and player profiles.
• Built a personal budgeting web app in HTML, CSS and JavaScript, published on GitHub with setup instructions.

Skills for your Student CV