How to write Fresh Graduate CV
Are you having trouble writing your CV since you have no work experience? We will be providing you with all you need to know.
It is important to know that, searching for jobs can feel exactly similar to an uphill climb especially when you have no prior work experience. It gets tricky as to how you can write a CV when you have nothing to write about.
However, it really should not stop you. If you never knew, the candidate having the most experience is not always the person that gets the job. The fact remains that recruiters seek more than experience.
This is why you must make use of your CV to showcase who you are and why you are the best fit for the company. If you need answers on how to write a fresh Graduate CV, there are some things you must know.
Your fresh graduate CV template should:
- Introduce you as a young and promising prospective employee for the job position
- It must present all of your relevant accomplishments and skills
- The CV should tell the story of your educational experience or professional experience to date.
- Reflect a thing or two of your character via your interests sections and personal statement.
Note that, your CV should not:
- Be a highly exhaustive list of your every achievement irrespective of your relevance
- It must not have a lengthy discourse about each course you have ever taken
- It should not have bulky information. It must be concise as it will assist your reader and maintain his or her interests and make them want to know you more
Presentation Of Your Fresh Graduate CV
You have to know that, there is no accounting for the taste of your CV and this is why you will need to make the content within it unique. Do not make use of an elaborate layout to make you stand out from others.
No one wants the recruiter to reject their CV just because they do not like the font or layout used. This is why you must make the document as accessible as possible.
Some of the suggestions on this are:
- Make use of a simple business font. You can make use of Calibri, Arial, or Verdana. Just ensure that you have made use of the same font and letter size all through.
- Make use of bold or italics to emphasize text like job roles instead of underlining
- You are to use bullet points, dashes, and numbers to format the content
- Make sure new paragraphs, headings, and bullet points are in line with each other and have a consistent style. For example, headings should be in bold.
- You should split the Cv into sections and make sure the sections are obvious. Some of such sections are the profile, education, experience, and work.
Finally, you should aim for a maximum of two pages in length. With this, you will not be at risk of losing the interest of readers.
Read Also: How to write fresh graduate cover letter
Things Found In A CV
When writing your fresh graduate CV, some of the things to include are:
- Personal header/details
Personal details are standard and demanded by every recruiter. However, you are not to include your marital status, gender, or even date of birth. Make sure your details are placed clearly at the top of the first page of the CV
Note that you are not to take too much space as you can use your name as the header. Do not add “Curriculum Vitae”. The reason is that it is a waste of space and your recruiter already knows the content of the document.
So, the essentials that you are to include are your name, postal address, email address, and telephone numbers.
- Personal profile
This section is optional but it can be used to show the recruiter that you are a focused and determined person that is more than willing to pursue a career in their field. Note that, most of these recruiters want a summary that has suitability and expertise.
However, do not put in statements that you cannot back up. The personal profile should have vital and factual mission statements. This section appears at the beginning of the CV.
It should not be longer than two to four sentences and it should give a general overview of your current situation. You are to be positive, lively, and go straight to the point.
Every applicant makes use of buzzwords like “team player” and “dynamic” these days, so you must avoid using them. Every application you send out must have a different personal profile that is specific to the job role being applied for.
- Your education
It is pertinent to note that your education should be written in reverse chronological order. This means you will need to begin with your university degree. Note that, the recruiter only wants a snapshot of you as nothing but an academic here.
He or she does not want a summary of your fifteen years’ worth of school reports. You are to concentrate on your university grades, extracurricular experiences, and specialization.
This section should contain:
- Your qualifications such a degree, A levels, and GSCE’s. They should be arranged in reverse chronological order.
- The dates you attended each school
- Your degree subject, grade, establishment, and type
- Some more details on university or specialization experience
- A level grades, subject and establishment
It should have some other skills like computer literacy and any other languages.
- Work experience
Since you do not have any prior work experience, you can include all you did from student internships and voluntary works, down to schemes and even summer placements.
For your student work experience, it should be listed in reverse chronological order. It should comprise of:
- Company or organization, job title, and dates
- A sentence that outlines the role you performed
- Some bullet points summarising certain responsibilities that you were given
Also, you must include evidence to support certain skills and achievements that you claim you developed while you took this role
- Interests and activities
This is the section where you write little about yourself as a person, outside of work. This is to allow your personality to shine. You are free to mention any hobby or activity but it must be kept appropriate.
Avoid any form of an irrelevant listing of things you enjoy without any evidence to support your claim.
Examples of some things you can include in this section are sports teams, clubs/societies, hobbies, travel, and awards. Adding your awards is good as it suggests a competitive and high achieving nature.
- References
You can include two references and while one can be academic, the other can be from the time of your work experience. You can decide to omit their contacts if one of them is currently an employer or if you will like to contact them first.
Nevertheless, most people omit the reference section altogether. However, if you are going down this route, you are to place at the bottom of the page that the references are available on request.
Conclusion
When you are done writing your CV, you can try some proofing methods like leaving it overnight before you submit it. This is because we can easily identify mistakes with fresh eyes.
Always remember to make use of spell-check tools as it is invaluable and ensures your punctuations are correct. Another thing you can try out is to read it out loud as it will help in identifying tone and checking the flow.
Finally, you can ask other people to skim through it. While you may want to use your friends, making use of professionals will help as they understand the industry more than you do.
If you need a service of a Professional CV and resume writer or a Career Coach , then Dayo Adetiloye Business Hub is the place to go Call or WhatsApp us now on 081 0563 6015, 080 7635 9735, 08113205312 or send an email to dayohub@gmail.com and we will solve any of your Career problems.
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