What to Put on a CV
When You Have No Experience

You Probably Have More Than You Think

The phrase no experience is almost always doing too much work. What it usually means is no paid job with the same title as the one being applied for, which is true of every graduate applying for a graduate job and is therefore not a disadvantage relative to the people you are competing with. The competition is not between you and someone with two years of the role. It is between you and other people in the same position, and it is won on how well the same raw material is described.

That reframing matters because it changes the action. If the page is empty, the answer is to go and acquire something, which takes months. If the page is full of bad descriptions, the answer is a careful afternoon. In our experience of reading graduate CVs it is nearly always the second, and people reach for another course when they should be rewriting three paragraphs.

The test is specific. Take the advert, list the requirements it states, and mark each one as either already evidenced somewhere on your page, present but badly described, or genuinely absent. Only the third group needs a course. CV and Job Match does exactly this comparison for you, requirement by requirement.

The Four Things That Fill the Page

In order of how much they are worth, which is not the order most people write them in.

The Order On the Page

One page, top to bottom. The rule behind it is that the strongest evidence goes highest, which for most graduates is not the section they were told to put first.

• 1. Name and contact details, one line, no photo unless the market you are applying in genuinely expects one.
• 2. A three or four line profile naming the field, the one or two things you can do, and the evidence below that supports it.
• 3. Education, with the two or three relevant modules or the dissertation described as work rather than listed as titles.
• 4. Projects, if you have any. This section moves above education the moment it is stronger than education, which for a technical role is often immediately.
• 5. Certifications, three to five, each matching something in the advert.
• 6. Experience, including unrelated jobs, one line each about behaviour.
• 7. Skills, specific and honest. Named tools, named languages with an honest level, nothing you would not want to be tested on.

The exact formatting that survives an applicant tracking system, section by section, is in our ATS CV template. It matters more when your CV is thin, because a parser that loses a section has lost a larger share of what you had.

Six Things That Make a Thin CV Look Thinner

• Padding with an interests section. Reading, travelling and socialising with friends is the clearest signal on a CV that the writer ran out of material, and it costs a line that a project sentence would have used.
• Rating your own skills out of five, or with progress bars. It is unverifiable, it parses badly, and a bar at four fifths invites the reader to ask four fifths of what.
• Listing module titles instead of describing the work inside them.
• Writing a profile made entirely of adjectives. Hardworking, passionate and detail oriented are claims every applicant makes and none can support.
• Sending the same CV everywhere. With no experience the only lever you have is targeting, and it is a strong lever. Changing the profile, the order of the sections and the three certificates per application is an hour that beats another month of study.
• Hiding the thinness with design. Columns, sidebars, icons and colour blocks make a thin CV harder to parse and no more convincing, and they fail applicant tracking systems that read plain text.

Where a Course Actually Helps

A course helps in exactly one situation: a requirement the advert states, which nothing on your page currently answers, and which you could plausibly answer in the weeks you have. Outside that situation it is a way of feeling productive while not applying, and the job hunt gets longer rather than shorter.

When it does apply, choose on what the course makes you produce rather than on the certificate at the end. The thing a thin CV needs most is a second line under an entry saying what was built, so a course that ends in a project is worth more here than a longer one that ends in a quiz. Then write it up properly, which is what our guide to listing courses on your CV is for, and be honest with yourself about whether the certificate is worth paying for, which is what are online certificates worth it is for.

If you would rather not pick alone, Course Path orders the gaps between your CV and your target role and names one course against each, so you take one course rather than four.

Rewriting One Line, Worked

The whole argument of this page in one example. Same degree, same work, same person.

If You Are Applying in the Gulf

Two differences worth knowing. Volumes are high and a lot of applications arrive through portals that strip formatting, so a linear layout and full provider names matter more than they do elsewhere. And adverts are often more explicit about named credentials, which is useful: it turns the question of which course to take into something you can read rather than guess.

Check what roles in your city actually ask for and pay before you commit months to anything, using Job Scout and the salary pages, and read the Gulf salary guide for the wider picture.

Related Reading

• Job hunting guide. What to do with the CV once it is written, and how to keep the applications targeted.
• Best courses for a career change. If the gap on your page is a direction rather than a skill, start here.
• The full course catalogue. Filter by subject, level and price once you know which requirement you are closing.

Frequently Asked Questions