Graduate / Entry-Level CV

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# Graduate / Entry-Level CV — Template

> A free CV template from GeraJobs designed for university and college graduates, school-leavers, and career-starters with limited paid work history. Written so a recruiter can find evidence of capability in your projects, placements, and societies — not just your degree.

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## [Your Full Name]

[Your City, Country] · [+44 7xxx xxxxxx] · [[email protected]] · [linkedin.com/in/yourprofile] · [Portfolio / GitHub URL]

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## Personal Statement

[2-3 sentences. State your degree subject + classification (or expected), the type of graduate role you are seeking, and one specific reason a hiring manager should pick you over another graduate. Example: "Recent BSc Computer Science graduate (2:1) from University of Manchester. Looking for a graduate software engineering role at a mid-stage scale-up, with a focus on backend Python. Built and shipped a peer-reviewed personal project that serves 4,000 daily users — production code, not a coursework project."]

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## Education

### [BSc / BA / etc. Subject] — [University Name], [City]
**[Month Year] – [Month Year]** · **[Classification: 2:1 or "expected 2:1"]**

- **Dissertation:** [Title — one-line summary of question + finding.]
- **Relevant modules:** [3-5 module names that match the job ad.]
- **Final-year project:** [One-sentence summary if separate from dissertation — e.g. capstone, group project, hackathon win.]

### [A-Levels / Highers / IB / Foundation], [School / College]
**[Month Year]**

- [Subject 1: Grade] · [Subject 2: Grade] · [Subject 3: Grade]
- [Notable extra-curricular qualification: EPQ A*, DofE Gold, national maths challenge — anything that shows initiative.]

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## Projects & Coursework

### [Project Name]
**[Stack / Tools] · [URL or GitHub link]**

[2-3 bullet points. Treat coursework, hackathon entries, and side-projects with the same rigour as paid work. State what you built, what stack, what scale (users, traffic, dataset size), and what specifically YOU did in a group project.]

### [Second Project]
[Same shape. Pick the projects most relevant to the role you are applying for. A graduate CV with 2-3 strong projects beats one with 8 weak ones.]

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## Work Experience

### [Job Title — including part-time / summer / volunteer]
[Employer Name], [City] · [Month Year] – [Month Year]

- [Verb-led bullet describing one transferable skill, even from unrelated work: "Trained 4 new team members on the EPOS system during the summer 2025 trade peak; cut average new-hire onboarding from 5 shifts to 2."]
- [Customer-facing / responsibility-bearing bullet: "Cash-handled up to £6k per shift with full till reconciliation."]

### [Placement / Internship]
[Company Name], [City] · [Month Year] – [Month Year]

[Same shape. Industrial placements and internships rank higher than retail/hospitality work for graduate applications — list them first even if they were chronologically earlier.]

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## Skills

- **Technical:** [Languages, frameworks, software, lab techniques — whatever your degree covered. Be honest about depth.]
- **Languages:** [English (native) · French (B2) · Armenian (C1)]
- **Software:** [Excel, PowerPoint, Tableau, Figma, AutoCAD, MATLAB, R, SPSS — whatever is true.]

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## Achievements & Activities

- **[Achievement / award]** — [Month Year, awarding body]
- **[Society / sport / volunteering role]** — [Tenure, what you did]
- **[Competition / hackathon / publication]** — [Outcome]

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## References

Available on request. *(For your first graduate role, expect to provide one academic reference (usually your dissertation supervisor) and one professional / placement reference.)*

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## Tips for graduate CVs in 2026

1. **One page only.** A graduate CV that runs to two pages signals that you cannot prioritise. Trim until it fits.
2. **Education first, then projects.** With limited paid work history, your degree + your strongest 2-3 projects are the evidence. Burying education at the bottom is a US convention that does not transfer to UK / EU graduate recruiters.
3. **Quantify everything you can.** Even unrelated work has numbers: shifts trained, customers served, fundraising raised, society members recruited.
4. **Tailor every application.** Generic graduate CVs get filtered out by the same ATS systems that filter senior applicants. Edit the personal statement and skills section for each role.
5. **Cover letter still matters.** For graduate scheme applications (PwC, Civil Service, McKinsey, etc.) the cover letter is often weighted more heavily than the CV. This template plus a tailored 500-word covering letter is the minimum viable package.

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