Writing a graduate CV when you have no experience
Updated 2 September 2026 · 6 min read
'No experience' almost always means 'no job title in this field'. You usually have more relevant evidence than you are giving yourself credit for — it just is not organised as experience yet.
What counts as evidence
- Substantial coursework and your dissertation: the method, the tools, the result.
- Personal or group projects, especially anything other people used.
- Part-time and seasonal work: reliability, customer handling, cash accuracy, working under pressure.
- Societies, sports and volunteering, where you organised or led something.
- Certifications and completed courses, with the date.
Order the page for the reader
Lead with a short summary naming the role you want, then Education, then Projects, then Experience, then Skills. Once you have a year of relevant work, Experience moves above Education permanently.
Write bullets that survive scrutiny
Use action, method, outcome. 'Built a Python script to clean 40,000 survey responses, cutting a two-day manual task to twenty minutes' says more about your employability than any adjective, and it is entirely checkable.