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Build my resume Whether you attended a traditional 4-year university straight out of secondary school or completed an online programme, there’s no doubt your university experience was unique.
Hence, it’s safe to assume that your university graduate CV will also be unique, which is good because you want an employer to see what makes you a valuable candidate. That said, it can be difficult to outline your resume or work with an AI cover letter generator if your work experience is sparse or irrelevant.
That’s why we’ve taken the time to build 13 university graduate CV samples you can use as a springboard. With our examples and proven tips, we know you’ll be able to expertly draft a professional CV that encompasses your university activities, work history, and skills.
Why this CV works
- If you graduated from university not too long ago, you likely have work experience you can include in your recent graduate CV. While it’s beneficial if you can include work similar to your chosen field, don’t worry if this isn’t your experience. Employers understand that everyone has to start somewhere, so here are some ways to ensure you demonstrate competency for the job:
- Include relevant modules,
- Include a specific and honest list of skills,
- Include your degree classification (if you’re proud of it!),
- and include a CV objective.
- When writing bullet points for both your job and project descriptions, do your best to demonstrate how you took action.
- Use numbers where possible to demonstrate measurable impact.
- Begin with action verbs.
- Be specific, and avoid generalised statements that could be on any CV.
View more recent college graduate resumes >
Why this CV works
- Not everyone works through university, and that’s perfectly fine. While a CV usually outlines work history, this is your opportunity to focus on projects and activities you’ve been involved in during university.
- Emphasise projects relevant to your chosen field. List 2-4 bullet points detailing your contributions, responsibilities, and achievements. Remember to start with a strong action verb.
- It’s also appropriate to include other extracurricular activities on your university graduate CV. Seemingly irrelevant activities are important to include because they demonstrate you’re a well-rounded candidate.
- Make the most of the career objective by briefly summarising your diverse university projects, and be sure to explain how your experience better prepares you for the role.
- If you’re lacking typical work experience, avoid throwing a haphazard list of skills on your CV.
- Review the description of your desired job and include some of the skills mentioned that are relevant to you.
Why this CV works
- Being a graduate doesn’t mean you have absolutely no practical nursing experience. Yes, you’re keen to start a rewarding career with your dream company, but what the prospective employer is really looking for in your new graduate nurse CV is your ability to make a difference in the real world.
- A great approach here would be to describe your involvement in volunteering programmes, like Leo’s time at Beyond the Bedside and Health Habits, Healthy Lives. Go the extra mile to highlight the tangible difference your intervention made.
Why this CV works
- Let’s get straight to the point. You’re searching for a work placement and wondering how to stand out in this crowd of applicants. And the answer? It’s simple—make use of the power of a well-crafted objective statement.
- In just three sentences, just below the header of your new university graduate CV, share what motivates you to pursue this internship, then add a touch of your brilliant personality. And showcasing some of your skills and experiences? Certainly, there’s no harm in that.
Why this CV works
- Curious about perfectly tailoring your computer science graduate CV to a junior software engineer role? While you may not have as much professional experience compared to seasoned candidates, equally valuable are industry-relevant workshops and volunteer programmes you participated in.
- For each, it’s essential to highlight your application or mastery of skills or tools fundamental to computer science or software engineering (Think Python, Java, PostgreSQL, and C++).
Why this CV works
- Just graduated from university and ready to revolutionise the tech world? Let the career objective of your graduate IT CV reflect that same passion. Skip the lip service and focus on specifics.
- Start with your past achievements, even if it’s just a web development internship. Employers will be much more understanding since you’re only a recent graduate. Next, mention your best skills and how you aim to use them to develop outstanding IT solutions for your future company.
Why this CV works
- How about enhancing your university graduate graphic design CV to lead your narrative with purpose and personality? Welcome to the art of crafting a compelling career objective.
- In just 2-3 sentences at the top, highlight your preferred design tools (consider software like Bender, Figma, and Adobe Photoshop) and relevant university projects—perhaps a graphic design competition or when you assisted a local brand in discovering its visual identity. Then, conclude with a brief line about the type of creative flair or design influence you’re eager to bring to the role.
Why this CV works
- Want to get miles ahead of all other candidates? By using quantified metrics, demonstrate to potential employers that you’ve worked harder than the average graduate.
- No matter what field you’re in, quantify the impact of your work. For example, take a look at Aria’s CV as a recent university graduate and notice how she doesn’t just list skills, but includes results such as “increased design accuracy by 16%” to demonstrate to hiring managers that her impact is measurable and that she’s prepared to advance her career as solidly as a well-constructed bridge.
Why this CV works
- Opting for a one-column layout for your criminal justice university graduate CV is a solid start, but let’s take it a step further. Why not showcase your practical experience with relevant software, whether it’s case management tools, data entry platforms, or anything in between, to demonstrate you’re ready to get started straight away?
- If the job listing mentions tools like Odyssey Case Manager, Spillman Flex CAD, and Mark43 RMS, don’t just mention them. Demonstrate the impact. Did you match call duration with reported stress levels to flag escalation risks? Or did you prioritise urgent calls? Connect each tool to the results you achieved, and you’ll stand out.
Why this CV works
- What you lack in accounting experience can be offset by your practical projects on staff audit assurance and business cost reduction. Highlighting the most relevant outcomes from your experiments would be favoured by many recruiters.
- It’s a masterstroke for your accounting university graduate CV to highlight your analytical skills, cost-cutting measures, process automation, and risk mitigation through experimental projects that can be realised in the real business world.
Why this CV works
- Your engineering university graduate CV should highlight your abilities as well as your creativity—regardless of whether you have work experience.
- Something you “just did for fun” might actually be a project worth mentioning. If you developed an app for personal use and preference, this is an excellent project to include that will detail your skills, project outcome, and creativity.
- If you don’t have work experience to include on your CV, place greater emphasis on your education by listing:
- awards, achievements, recognition, or organisations/societies you were involved in;
- strong grades;
- and relevant course modules.
- Including a CV objective will also go a long way in demonstrating your offerings and career goals.
- Ensure you tailor your CV objective for each job you apply for. Otherwise, it’s better not to include one.
Why this CV works
- While every CV ought to be eye-catching, your human resources university graduate CV must outshine them all. Since your responsibilities will include hiring employees, it’s imperative that your own CV and career documents are top-notch.
- Select a professional yet creative template, and make use of our free resume checker which will assist you with various tasks, including using active verbs, avoiding passive voice, and ensuring punctuation consistency.
- Include internships, work experience, and any projects that will demonstrate your ability to manage staff and streamline operations.
- No matter what you include in your CV, write job description bullet points that will demonstrate genuine care for the people you work with as well as your ability to assist and enhance the experiences of those individuals.
- Hint: If you can quantify your experiences with figures, statistics, percentages, or money, do so—metrics speak louder than vague statements.
Why this CV works
- As a university student who didn’t graduate, it’s easy to lack confidence. But keep your head held high—a project showcasing your results-driven mindset and other handy skills could be your moment in the spotlight.
- Perhaps, think about that time you transformed an online page into a success with your SEO expertise as a business owner or those bespoke logos and promotional videos you created during your time as a graphic designer. Highlight them in your CV, even if you attended university but didn’t graduate, and no excuses. And those volunteering roles? Include them to demonstrate your teamwork and community involvement.
Why this CV works
- Internships are extremely valuable to your marketing university graduate CV. Not everyone secures an internship before entering the workforce, so including an internship will demonstrate initiative, real-world experience, and industry knowledge.
- In a field such as marketing, don’t gloss over the projects you’ve undertaken throughout university.
- Whether you’ve increased traffic to your personal blog or volunteered to create campaigns for a local organisation, those efforts are very important because employers will, once more, recognise your initiative as well as how you utilise your skills when you’re not on the clock.
- Trying to fit all the pieces of your university years onto one page is a challenge, so choose a template that will allow you to rearrange and organise sections in a logical way.
Why this CV works
- Your lack of clinical experience should not diminish your hopes of securing an entry-level nursing position. Your volunteer patient care experience is an excellent angle to pursue and demonstrate your capabilities to potential employers.
- All you need to do in your nursing university graduate CV is to highlight your achievements in patient care, reducing waiting times, and improving overall outcomes.
Related CV guides
How to Write a University Graduate CV
Considering that you’re a recent graduate looking to start your working life, it may not be easy to write a resume that impresses recruiters. However, if you plan everything carefully and follow the tips in this guide, you may secure your first job quickly.
So, what should a university graduate CV include? We’ll cover everything you need to know in this section:
Create an attention-grabbing header
Make your contact information stand out because it’s the first thing recruiters will see. Create a CV header section to make it easy for hiring teams and applicant tracking systems (ATS) to find it. Ensure you use a professional and relatively larger font than the rest of the other sections.
Here’s what you should include
- First and surname
- Job title you’re applying for
- Professional email with your first and surname
- Current phone number
- Town and county
- LinkedIn profile, if relevant to the role
Review the details once more and ensure that everything is correct. Potential employers will need this information to contact you if they consider you an ideal fit for the role.
Example of a standout university graduate CV header
Add a compelling career objective
Offer potential employers something that makes you stand out, and they will consider you for the vacancy. Use the career objective to summarise your ambitions, academic experience, and why you’re suitable for the role.
Example of a university graduate CV objective
Motivated computer science graduate eager to contribute to Google’s engineering team by building scalable, user-focused solutions and developing through impactful, real-world experience.
Showcase your educational background
Your educational background is essential for a new graduate CV to help recruiters see the practical knowledge you would bring once hired. To make this section convincing, include the following:
- Name of your college or university
- Town and county
- Month and year of your graduation
- Your degree subject and subsidiary subject
- Include your grade point average only if it’s 3.5 or above
As you lack direct work experience, like many other recent graduates, you should include all the relevant educational details. Choosing the right university graduate CV template will give you enough space to add all the important details.
Your coursework would also be a good addition to show employers your solid foundation in the particular industry and demonstrate your alignment with job expectations.
Example of an education section for a university graduate’s CV
Emphasise your experience with relevant skills
You’re a recent graduate, and nobody expects you to have much direct work experience in the industry you want to work in. In that case, turn to your placements, academic projects, and volunteer activities to show employers what you can do. As you do so, generate bullet points highlighting the skills you gained that can be useful in a real work setting.
For anything that is not direct work experience, only include examples directly related to the position you’re applying for.
Examples of relevant experiences for a university graduate
- Practical projects
- Work Placements
- Charity work
- Part-time work
- Coursework
- Relevant extracurricular activities
Example of how to write your university graduate work experience
Showcase a diverse skillset
Just because you’ve not held a proper job in your profession doesn’t mean you have no skills to demonstrate. In fact, from your academic activities as an intern or undertaking a practical module, you have so much more to showcase and prove that you’re ready to make an impact in the job market with a set of relevant and transferable skills as below:
Technical skills
- Google Workspace
- GitHub
- TCP/IP
- JavaScript
- Python
- SQL
- Excel
Interpersonal skills
- Critical thinking and problem-solving
- Interpersonal and communication skills
- Teamwork
- Time management
- Ease of adaptation
A combination of technical and soft skills informs recruiters of your ability to excel and adhere to all the industry standards. Even without work experience, you’ll present a strong case by demonstrating what you can do.
Don’t just stop at listing the skills; incorporate them into your job descriptions. Also, use active verbs to start your bullet points and demonstrate the impact you made in previous roles.
Use the right template for your university graduate CV
From our resume templates, choose one that presents you as the best candidate for the job. You need a layout that highlights essential sections, is easy to edit and read, and is suitable for a recent university graduate. Most importantly, your CV design must be ATS-friendly and one that will stand out to recruiters.
University Graduate CV FAQs
It’s an entry-level CV you write to showcase your education, transferable skills, and relevant work experience to convince potential employers of your potential to make an impact. Since you lack direct work experience as a recent graduate, you would want to add a strong education section and relevant experiences from projects and work placements.
Yes. A strong university graduate CV will compensate for your lack of experience and highlight your strengths to recruiters. Demonstrating your abilities through skills and achievements from relevant roles would make your application convincing.
Yes. Having a CV as a university graduate helps you present your transferable skills to employers and convince them of your abilities. It also highlights your strengths for a specific industry, even when you have little to no work experience.
Choose a CV template and start editing now. Fill in the essential details, including information to help employers see why they should hire you. An editable template gives you a head start and ensures you get it right.
We recommend you use the reverse-chronological CV format. Why? If you treat academic and personal projects, volunteer work, and school extracurricular activities as valid experience (which you should), you won’t be at a loss as to what to include in your “work experience” section on your CV. Employers and recruiters are most familiar with the reverse-chronological format anyway, and you won’t raise any concerns with a CV based primarily on skills.
Consider including your grade point average (GPA) if it’s higher than 3.5, as it can demonstrate your strong work ethic, commitment, and perseverance, all while managing multiple projects and tasks. Once you’ve gained several years of work experience, it’s advisable to remove your GPA, as your work experience will be more prominent than past academic grades.
Your CV should be one page long. It must be concise and without any unnecessary details. Include only the most essential information and tailor it to the job.
