Your CV is your first impression to many potential employers, so it must grab their attention, highlight your professional experience, describe your technical and soft skills, and include other important information like your contact information, educational background, and broader interests. Here’s some CV writing guidance. Follow these CV tips to impress recruiters and prove you’re the best candidate for the role that you are applying for.

Tips for writing graduate technical CV

Clear Structure

CV’s shouldn’t exceed two pages especially for graduate level roles. Start with the most recent experiences and go backward when listing points. You choose the segments and titles since they best demonstrate your suitability for the position. If the job requires excellent interpersonal skills, don’t hide your client support engineer internship!

Even if you prioritize technical experience, your CV can nevertheless showcase other experiences. If you have a lot of part-time retail or hospitality experience but at least three pieces of technical job experience, you could separate them into “Technical work experience” and “Non-technical work experience” categories.

Include a brief personal statement

Start your graduation CV with a brief personal statement to introduce yourself. When you put your personal statement at the top of your CV, employers will see it first. Employers often skim CV, so a powerful introduction paragraph will catch their attention. It needs three things:

• What you provide
• Career goals
• Technical skills briefly (make sure you bold this for the relevant role, such as specific coding skills like python)

Also, tailor your statement to the job you want. Include job or company details to show the employer you’ve done the research and want to work for them.

Focus on Education

Since you graduated, you probably don’t have much work experience. Your graduation CV should emphasize education. Your CV should begin with your education. In reverse chronological order, list your schools. List any courses related to the job you’re applying for and your grades (if you got the relevant grades for the role you are applying for). Include skills and accomplishments from each related course or degree.

Include Experience

Even with little work experience, you may have some. Mention it even if it doesn’t apply to the position. To keep it brief, provide your job title, dates, and duties. Better if you can relate these tasks to the job you want. In a sales application, you might include your public speaking skills as a substitute teacher for example.

Keep it simple

Graduation CVs should be simple. Don’t list every skill or accomplishment. Instead, list highlights. Employers don’t have much time to review CV’s, so keep yours to one page, maximum two.

References

Although not mandatory you can add references, if you wish to include these try to incorporate at least two—one from the academic world and the other from the world of employment. If you don’t want to put their phone number or email on your CV—perhaps because you’re still working there—just put “available upon request.”

Template

Structure

• [Full Name]
• [Address]
• [Phone Number]
• [Email]

Personal Statement

As a motivated and technically capable graduate, I want a demanding technology job where I can help the firm grow. I have experience and education in [insert area] & possess the following skills [insert skills]

Technical skills

If the role requires a level of technical expertise you can bullet point projects that you have been involved in whether that’s university or your spare time and list these according to your experience / knowledge.

Education

• [Major], [Degree], [University], [Graduation Date]
• Relevant coursework: [list of relevant courses]
• Result: [if applicable]

Experience

[Job Title], [Company], [Employment Dates]

• [Responsibility/Task 1]
• [Responsibility/Task 2]
• [Responsibility/Task 3]

[Job Title], [Company], [Employment Dates]

• [Responsibility/Task 1]
• [Responsibility/Task 2]
• [Responsibility/Task 3]

Skills [You can list your general skills here and list the priority technical skills at the top of your CV]

• [Skill 1]
• [Skill 2]
• [Skill 3]
• [Skill 4]

References

[Name], [Relationship], [Company]

[Phone Number], [Email]

[Name], [Relationship], [Company]

[Phone Number], [Email]