How to write a CV when you have almost no experience

When I wrote my first CV I genuinely stared at a blank Word document for about forty minutes. I had no idea what to put. I had done well at school, played football on Sundays, helped out at a community event once — none of it felt like it counted.

So I wrote "hardworking and motivated individual with strong communication skills" and sent it to three places. Heard back from none of them.

The issue was that I was writing what I thought a CV was supposed to sound like, rather than anything real about me. Here's what I eventually figured out.

Your experience counts, you're just framing it wrong

I had helped organise a charity fundraiser at school. That meant booking a room, coordinating six people, managing a budget of £200, and getting 80 students to actually turn up. I'd written "helped with school event." Once I rewrote it properly — what I did, not just that I did something — it started to look like experience.

Same with the Saturday job I had for eight months at a local shop. "Retail assistant" tells nobody anything. "Handled customer service and cash transactions in a busy environment, covering weekends and school holidays" tells someone I was reliable and could manage real responsibility.

Keep it to one page. Seriously.

Mine was two pages because I had padded it with everything I could think of, including GCSEs I'd done three years earlier. Nobody needs that. Cut it down. One page, readable font, no decorative headers, no photo. The content is the point.

The personal statement is where most people go wrong

Don't write "I am a hardworking team player who thrives in a fast-paced environment." I wrote exactly that. It means nothing. Write something true and specific — what you're studying, what kind of work you're looking for, and one actual reason why you'd be good at it.

Get someone to read it before you send it

I had a spelling mistake in mine. Not in some obscure section — in the title of my A-level. My mum spotted it. It had been there for three applications. Small things like that matter more than they should.

The CV just needs to get you a conversation. That's the only job it has.