How to Write a CV for UK Jobs in 10 Steps

CV stands for curriculum vitae. Your CV is a summary of your skills, achievements, education, and work experience. Its job is not to record everything you have ever done. Its job is to help potential employers see why your skills and experience suit one vacancy.

This guide shows you how to write a CV from a blank page or repair an existing one. It covers first jobs, graduate roles, career changes, gaps in work history, freelance work, and senior careers.

The advice is written for UK applications. In the United States and Canada, employers usually call the shorter job application document a resume. Academic, medical, and research applications often use a longer CV with discipline-specific sections.

A great CV makes three things easy to find:

1. What role you can do
2. What proof supports that claim
3. Why that proof matters for this employer

That means relevance comes before volume. A long list of duties is not strong evidence. Neither is a page of phrases such as "hard-working", "motivated", or "team player". A hiring manager needs real details: work completed, problems solved, people supported, standards met, tools used, responsibility held, and outcomes produced.

The 10 steps below run in four phases:

A good CV is built around one job. The next 10 steps show how to write a CV that way, rather than around everything you have done.

Do not write the first version around your memory of your career. Work backwards from the employer's decision instead.

Read the job advert, person specification, and company information. Mark the requirements that appear essential, repeated, or tied to a qualification, licence, tool, or result. The National Careers Service advises applicants to use the job advert, job description, essential criteria, and company details when tailoring a CV.

Create a simple evidence list with four columns:

Aim to find proof for six to eight high-value requirements.

You may have more. That is useful for your private notes. Your submitted CV should carry only the evidence that helps this job application.

Keep a private master CV with your full work history, projects, qualifications, online courses, skills, achievements, and useful feedback. It will get long. Nobody else reads it, so let it.

Then tailor your CV into a shorter target version for each application. Step 8 covers how to do that selection.

If that sounds like a lot of work for one application, most of it is done once. You build the evidence list, then reuse it. UK JobHelp also recommends preparing one CV in advance, then tailoring it for each job.

For most applicants, a reverse-chronological CV is the safest choice. It puts your most recent experience first and keeps your dates visible.

Your section order can change when your educational background or another part of your experience carries stronger evidence.

The National Careers Service says early-career applicants can place education before work history. Applicants with more experience may put work history first.

For most UK applications, two A4 pages is a sound target. Keep your CV concise enough for the reader to find the relevant information quickly.

A one-page CV may suit a school leaver, student, recent graduate, or person with a short and tightly relevant history. A three-page CV can be reasonable for some high-level, medical, or unusually complex careers. Prospects recommends no more than two A4 pages for most people, with shorter or longer documents in some cases.

Do not shrink the font to buy space. Edit the content instead. These tips help you save space without making the CV harder to read:

For a long career, give detail to the recent and relevant 10 to 15 years. Group or shorten older roles, unless an older achievement is a strong match for the new job. UK JobHelp gives the same recent-and-relevant advice to older applicants.

Place your contact details at the top of page one in the main document body.

Include:

Do not make "Curriculum Vitae" or "CV" the largest title. The reader already knows what the document is. Your name should identify it, set in a larger font than the body text at the top of page one.

Keep essential contact details out of a Word header, footer, or text box. Some recruitment software can struggle to extract information placed there.

In most UK applications, leave out:

The National Careers Service says not to include age, date of birth, marital status, or nationality. GOV.UK also limits the questions employers can ask about protected characteristics and date of birth during recruitment.

There are limited exceptions for jobs with a lawful age requirement or specialist fields that request particular information. Follow the employer's instructions when a legitimate need is stated.

Your personal statement, also called a CV profile or professional summary, sits under your contact details. Keep it to one short paragraph of three or four lines.

Answer four questions:

Use this pattern:

Professional identity + relevant scope + credible proof + target direction

Do not write vague career aims that only say what you want. Show what the employer may gain from your relevant experience.

Use this example as a pattern, not as text to copy. Replace the course, project, and skills with evidence you can explain at interview.

This version uses relevant keywords but does not invent campaign results.

A key skills section should help the reader match you to the job description.

Your CV should show both technical and soft skills, and each one needs evidence somewhere on the page. Keep every entry relevant to the job you are applying for.

Use real skills, tools, methods, and subject knowledge:

• Budget management
• Customer complaint handling
• Google Analytics
• Social media strategy
• Project scheduling
• SQL
• Safeguarding
• Contract negotiation
• Foreign languages
• Report writing

Avoid long lists of personal qualities with no proof. A hiring manager reads them and learns nothing.

"Team player" tells the reader very little. "Coordinated handovers across sales, design and development teams" gives evidence of teamwork.

"Problem solving" is stronger when another section shows the problem, your action, and what changed.

Relevant qualifications can include:

• Degrees and diplomas
• Trade or professional licences
• Industry certificates
• Mandatory compliance training
• Online courses

Name qualifications accurately. Do not rename a short course to make it sound like a formal award.

Keep the skills section short. Your work history, projects, and education section should prove the claims.

List your employment history and work experience in reverse chronological order.

For each recent role, use this structure:

Job title | Company | Location | Dates

Scope line: One sentence explaining the service, team, customers, area, or responsibility when it is not obvious.

Three to five bullet points: Selected achievements, responsibilities that match the advert, and evidence.

Use present tense for work you still do. Use past tense for completed work.

A duty says what the job required. An achievement or evidence-led bullet says what you did, how you did it, what scale was involved, or what changed.

The shape is:

Action + task or problem + method or scale + outcome

You will not need all four parts every time. Use the parts you can prove.

These are teaching patterns. Do not copy an example unless it matches work you genuinely completed.

Active verbs help a bullet start strongly:

• Analysed
• Built
• Coordinated
• Created
• Delivered
• Improved
• Introduced
• Negotiated
• Reduced
• Resolved
• Trained

The verb is not the evidence, though.

"Led a project" is still vague. State what the project did, who was involved, how you contributed, and what changed.

Do not invent numbers. Useful evidence can show:

• People, customers, or stakeholders supported
• Teams, sites, or regions covered
• Frequency or volume of work
• Deadlines met
• Quality standards reached
• Errors or risks reduced
• Decisions enabled
• Service or process improvements
• Complaints resolved
• Training delivered
• Access, clarity, or consistency improved

Check project plans, calendars, reports, invoices, performance reviews, service records, and feedback for facts you can defend.

A modest, accurate detail is stronger than an impressive claim you cannot explain.

Give more detail to the current or most relevant role and less to older work that does not support this application.

• Current or most relevant role: usually three to five strong bullets
• Other recent roles: two to four selected bullets
• Older or less relevant roles: job title, employer, and dates may be enough
• Promotions: show each title under the same employer
• Fixed-term, freelance, or contract work: label it
• Several short contracts: group them only when the grouping is accurate and still keeps dates understandable

Your education history should include:

• Qualification name
• Institution
• Dates or completion year
• Grade, modules, or dissertation only when relevant

Put education near the top when you are early in your career or the qualification is your strongest evidence. Put it after employment history when your recent professional experience is stronger.

You can add other sections when they add evidence for this job:

• Qualifications and certificates
• Online courses
• Personal projects
• Volunteering
• Professional memberships
• Publications
• Awards
• Foreign languages
• Technical portfolio
• Speaking or teaching

A first CV can look bare. It does not have to.

Use evidence from:

• University or school projects
• Work placements
• Volunteering
• Part-time work
• Caring responsibilities, when you choose to include them
• Sports, societies, or community roles
• Personal projects
• Online courses with practical work

The National Careers Service advises first-time applicants to use projects, work experience, and volunteering.

Write these entries like work evidence:

Personal Data Project | 2026

• Cleaned and analysed a public dataset in Excel, created a monthly reporting view, and wrote a short note explaining the findings and limits.

That gives the employer something to assess.

Keep an interest only when it adds useful evidence or a natural interview topic.

Strong uses may include:

• Running a community newsletter for a communications role
• Publishing code projects for a developer role
• Captaining a sports team when leadership and organisation matter
• Learning a foreign language for an international role

"Reading, music and socialising" usually add little unless the detail connects to the job. Almost everyone reads something.

Tailoring your CV means selecting and wording truthful evidence so the employer can see the match.

It does not mean copying the whole job advert.

Tailoring is an essential part of a strong application, and it is the step most people skip, because it costs real time. A master CV is what keeps it manageable.

Work through it like this:

Read only:

• Your name and target title
• Personal statement
• Key skills or highlights
• First part of your current or most relevant role

Could a stranger tell what job you want, your level, and why you may fit?

When the answer is no, resist adding more words. Reorder the proof you already have first.

Applicant tracking systems and recruiters may search for words used in the job advert. Use the exact term when it truthfully describes your experience.

If the advert says "stakeholder management", a vague phrase such as "worked with different people" makes the match harder to find.

Resist repeating a keyword in every section. Keyword stuffing makes the CV less readable, and it can expose weak evidence.

Check the company website, recent announcements, and the language used in the vacancy.

Look for:

• Customers or service users
• Products or services
• Sector rules
• Team structure
• Current priorities
• Tools and methods named in the advert

Use that research to choose evidence that potential employers can act on. Do not fill the CV with praise about the company.

Your CV proves you can do the work.

Your cover letter can draw attention to why this role, why this company, and how a career change, gap, or unusual move makes sense.

Do not copy the personal statement into the cover letter.

If you would rather not rebuild the file by hand for every application, the CVJury CV builder saves role-specific versions from one master CV. It will not invent your evidence, and it will not tell you which proof matters most for a given vacancy. That judgement stays with you.

An applicant tracking system, or ATS, helps employers collect, organise, search, and review applications during the recruitment process.

Different systems do different jobs. Some parse a CV into fields. Some let recruiters search or filter records. Some employers use an online application form with questions that can trigger configured auto-reject rules.

Greenhouse states that its auto-reject feature can reject an applicant based on an answer to a configured job-post question, such as holding a mandatory licence. Its parsing guide also says a CV can remain attached when parsing fails, with details then entered manually. That is why claims such as "most CVs are rejected by ATS" or "one font beats the system" are too broad.

These are the ATS tips with documentation behind them:

UK JobHelp advises applicants to use relevant job-ad keywords, bullet points, standard headings, and a layout without pictures, tables, or diagrams. Greenhouse lists images, columns, text boxes, and some header or footer content among common parsing risks.

If you want to check the match before you apply, the CVJury CV scanner compares your draft against the job description and shows which requirements are not yet evidenced. It reports coverage; it does not decide which proof matters most.

Use the file type named in the job advert or application instructions.

When no type is given:

JobHelp says DOCX is usually best for ATS reading. Greenhouse accepts DOC, DOCX, PDF, RTF, and TXT uploads. This shows why one file rule cannot cover every employer.

A quick test: open the file and copy several lines into a plain-text editor. If the text cannot be selected or appears in the wrong order, simplify the document.

Use a simple CV format that keeps the text easy to find.

Official and university careers guidance both favour clear fonts, headings, bullet points, consistent styling, and careful spelling checks. [1] [2]

Read as text, a completed CV runs in this order:

Interests are optional. Keep one only when it adds evidence or a natural interview topic. For full layouts and templates, see the CV format guide.

A skills-based layout can help some career changers or people with little conventional work experience. It can also make dates and employers harder to follow, which is the trade you are making.

For most applicants, keep a visible reverse-chronological work history. Add a short skills or highlights section near the top when you need to frame transferable evidence.

Employment gaps are common. Employers understand that candidates have lives beyond work.

If a gap is visible, give it dates and a brief, truthful label. You do not need to disclose private detail.

Useful entries include:

• Career break for family care | 2024 to 2025
• Professional development break: completed project management training and sector research | 2025
• Relocation and job search | January to June 2024
• Medical career break | 2023 to 2024

Add online courses, volunteering, freelance work, or personal projects when they are genuine and connected to the job.

The National Careers Service recommends being open and honest, briefly explaining the gap, and focusing on transferable skills or learning gained during it. It also states that gaps in work history are normal.

Do not force bereavement, illness, or caring duties into an achievement story. A neutral explanation is enough.

About this review: The source record did not publish a count for each type of issue. The examples below show issues the team found, not how common those issues were across all 86 CVs or all job seekers. The 15 records below are all the candidates included in the three original tables. Not every CV was recorded against every field, so a blank means the issue was not noted, not that it was absent. First names are real and published with documented consent that covers this republication.

The three tables below preserve the wording recorded during the original May 2023 review. Follow the current advice in this guide where the earlier notes differ.

Seventeen of the 86 candidates held first-class degrees. Their CVs carried the same problems as the rest of the batch, which is a reminder that strong academic results do not, by themselves, produce a well-targeted CV.

One small formatting fault will not automatically end an application. The bigger problem appears when several small faults make your value hard to find.

Yes, but use it as a drafting aid, not as a substitute for your own evidence. Knowing how to write a CV still matters, because the tips below only work when the judgement behind them is yours.

Prospects advises using AI for research, early drafts, and proofreading, while checking employer rules and keeping the submitted CV accurate and your own.

One final test:

Does the finished CV accurately reflect your experience, and can you explain and defend every line without help from the tool?

When the answer is no, rewrite or remove it.

• United Kingdom: Use "CV" for most job applications. Two A4 pages is a common target. Leave out a photo, age, and date of birth in normal applications.
• United States and Canada: Use "resume" for most non-academic jobs. "CV" usually refers to a longer academic document.
• Academia, medicine, and research: Follow the field's required order and length. Publications, teaching, grants, research, and clinical work may need their own sections.
• UK Civil Service: Read the advert before using your normal CV. Some roles ask for a CV, a personal statement, or both, and some ask for an anonymised CV without your name or other identifying details. Your evidence is assessed against the requirements stated in the advert.
• Other countries: Check local careers guidance and the employer's instructions before adding a photograph, personal data, or a market-specific section.

Do not copy a country rule from one market into another application.

You now know how to write a CV. These handy tips form the final check. Before you submit, check that:

The National Careers Service recommends consistent styling, headings, bullets, spelling and grammar checks, plus tailoring and up-to-date contact information.

External guidance and product documentation were checked on 30 July 2026. The 86-CV observations come from CVJury's internal review record and the three original review tables shown on this page.