How to write a CV with no experience

Who this is for

This guide works for three groups that face the same problem from different angles: students and recent graduates applying for a first job, internship or graduate scheme; school leavers looking for an apprenticeship or a first full-time role; and people returning to work or changing field after a long break, whose recent history does not match the job they want now.

The method is the same for all three: decide what the employer needs to believe about you, then find proof for it in what you have actually done.

What to put instead of jobs

Anything where you took responsibility and something happened as a result counts as experience. List it in a section called "Experience", "Projects" or "Volunteering" – recruiters and applicant tracking systems understand all three.

• Education: degree or qualification, institution, dates and – if they help – relevant modules, a dissertation or final project topic and a strong grade.
• Projects: a university group project, an app, a website, a research poster, a student society event you organised. Say what you built or organised, for whom and what happened.
• Volunteering: a food bank shift every week for a year shows reliability better than any adjective.
• Part-time and seasonal work: bar, shop, warehouse, tutoring, babysitting, delivery. These jobs prove punctuality, customer contact, cash handling and working under pressure.
• Responsibilities: class or course representative, team captain, mentor, society treasurer.
• Certificates and courses: first aid, food hygiene, a forklift licence, an online data analysis course – include only the ones relevant to the job.

Skills – but with proof

A skills list on its own proves nothing; "communication" and "teamwork" appear on almost every graduate CV. Keep the list short and concrete (tools, languages, software, licences) and put the proof for soft skills into your bullets instead.

Instead of "good communicator", write "Explained course material to 6 first-year students in weekly peer tutoring sessions". Instead of "organised", write "Planned a 3-day society trip for 40 members within a fixed budget". The skill is still there – now it is believable.

The right structure

When you have no work history, the order of sections matters more than usual: put your strongest evidence first.

• Name, job title you are applying for, and contact details (phone, email, city, LinkedIn if your profile is up to date).
• A three-line summary: who you are, what you can already do, what you are looking for.
• Education – first, if it is your strongest asset.
• Projects, volunteering and part-time work, each with 2–3 bullets.
• Skills, languages and certificates.
• Interests – only if they say something relevant (a coding club, competitive sport, a long-running blog).

A worked example

Here is how a business student applying for a junior marketing assistant role could write the top of the CV. The numbers are illustrative – use your own.

Summary: "Final-year business student with hands-on social media experience from running the university entrepreneurship society's channels. Comfortable with Canva, Google Analytics and basic Excel reporting. Looking for a junior marketing role where I can learn campaign planning from a small, busy team."

Bullets under "Entrepreneurship Society – Social media lead (2024–2025)":

• Planned and published 3 posts a week on Instagram and LinkedIn, growing followers from about 400 to 1,100 over the academic year
• Promoted 5 speaker events; average attendance rose from 25 to 60 people
• Built a simple monthly report in Google Sheets that the committee used to choose which events to repeat

Common mistakes

• Leaving the page half empty, or padding it with a long list of adjectives. One well-filled page is enough.
• Writing an objective about what you want ("seeking a challenging role") instead of what you offer.
• Listing duties ("responsible for serving customers") instead of results ("served up to 120 customers on Saturday shifts").
• Hiding part-time jobs because they seem irrelevant. They prove reliability – describe them from that angle.
• Sending the same CV everywhere. Even with little experience, reorder bullets and the summary to match each job ad.
• Inventing experience. Interviewers ask about every line, and entry-level interviews are mostly about your CV.

Let AI do the formatting – from your real facts

If you have the material but not the words, RezuYes can help. Answer a short form about your studies, projects and part-time work (or upload an old CV as PDF, Word or TXT, or paste your LinkedIn profile) and add the job ad. AI writes the summary and bullets only from what you provide – it never adds employers, dates or numbers – and places them in one of 56 designs suited to your field.

The preview is free and includes one free correction; you pay once, with no subscription, only to download the PDF. The package also includes a full LinkedIn profile and 10 likely interview questions for the job, which is useful when the interview is your first.

FAQ