Applying for your first graduate or entry-level role feels unfair: everyone wants experience, and you are trying to get your first job. The good news is that hiring managers for these roles are not comparing you to veterans. They are looking for proof that you can learn quickly, finish what you start, and work with other people. All of that is already in your student life, waiting to be written down properly.
Put education and projects first
With little formal work history, your degree and projects carry the CV, so give them the top slots. Under your degree, name relevant modules, your final-year project, and any results worth stating. A student CV that leads with a strong Projects section beats one that opens with a thin, generic summary.
- Coursework and projects: name them specifically and state what you built or found.
- Part-time and campus roles: waiting tables and running a society both prove reliability and teamwork.
- Skills and tools: list the software, languages, and methods you actually used, not aspirations.
Turn activities into outcomes
The trap is describing what you were supposed to do rather than what happened. “Society treasurer” is a title; “managed a 4,000 budget and cut event costs by 15%” is evidence. You do not need corporate numbers, you need honest ones: headcounts, grades, funds raised, hours volunteered. Each concrete figure makes you more real than a paragraph of adjectives.
Keep it to one clean page
For a first job, one well-organised page is plenty, and recruiters expect it. Use a single-column, ATS-friendly layout so an automated scan reads every section, and skip photos and heavy graphics that trip the parser.
The students page has templates and tools built for exactly this stage, and the student template keeps the layout clean and scannable. When your draft is ready, the resume builder puts projects up top automatically, and our full CV guide walks the structure section by section.