Writing your first CV

1. Your name, phone number, email and county. A professional-looking email address.
2. Two or three lines saying what you are looking for and what you bring.
3. Skills — the ones the advert asks for that you genuinely have, in the advert's own words.
4. Experience — attachment, internships, part-time work, volunteering, projects. Most recent first.
5. Education — institution, course, and the year you finished or will finish.
6. Referees, or “available on request”.

For each role, write two to four lines about what you did and what came of it. “Reconciled the petty cash weekly for a 15-person office” says far more than “handled finances”.

Numbers help when they are true: how many, how often, how much.

• Your ID number, date of birth, marital status, religion or tribe. None of it is needed to judge your work, and it should not be used to.
• A photo, unless the advert asks for one.
• Skills you could not demonstrate if asked.
• Long paragraphs. Use short lines.

1. Read it aloud once. You will catch mistakes you cannot see.
2. Save it as a PDF named with your name, so it looks the same everywhere.
3. Change the summary and skills to match each advert. One CV sent unchanged to every employer is easy to spot.