In most cases, your CV will be the ‘first impression’ that a potential employer has of you and your talents. As such, it can set the tone for the rest of your recruitment process. This makes it your single most important document for getting your career started...
Unfortunately, your CV is probably also one of the most difficult and time-consuming documents to get right. But fear not: we’ve compiled the ultimate guide to help you put together the perfect graduate CV!
In a digital world where software is seemingly replacing everything, why do recruiters still insist on old-fashioned CVs? The answer is simple: recruiters can tell a lot from the way someone compiles their CV. Beyond just listing your experience and achievements, a CV can be seen as a snapshot of how you think. What does a messy, poorly-structured CV riddled with irrelevant information and grammatical errors say about you? It wouldn’t bode well. On the other hand, if you represent your own personal brand with a well-structured, concise and aesthetically-pleasing CV, it’s an important signal to the employer that you can represent their brand well too (in the work you can do for them).
Before you put pen to paper, keep in mind your that CV should ideally fit onto one A4 page, or two pages at the absolute max. Unless you’re Elon Musk, it’s unnecessary and self- indulgent to wax lyrical about your career milestones and achievements over a multi-page essay. Anything more than two pages is likely just to frustrate the recruiter. Keep in mind that they are probably reviewing your CV alongside hundreds of others that day!
Most graduate CVs can be organised into the following sections:
i. Heading & contact details
ii. Summary (optional)
iii. Education
iv. Experience
v. Additional optional sections, which can include:
Interests / Extracurricular activities
Awards & accomplishments
Skills & attributes
Let’s jump in and take a closer look at each section!
The main heading should simply be your name. You don’t need to include “CV” or “Resume”
- it’s safe to assume that the recruiter knows what they are reading!
Immediately under (or next to) your name, you should include the following essential contact details:
Remember to avoid ‘humorous’ email addresses, and make sure any phone voice messages on the number you provide are professional.
You may or may not wish to provide these optional details:
You do not need to include:
Sometimes called the ‘Profile’ or ‘Personal Profile’, ‘Overview’, ‘Career Objective’ or even ‘About me’ section, summary statements are either utterly essential or a waste of space, depending on who you ask!
Summary statements are typically used by experienced candidates to tie together years of (often disparate) professional experience into a common theme. Obviously, this means that it’s not something most graduates need to worry about.
As a graduate, it’s important to avoid relying on overused buzzwords in your summary statement. Vague, subjective terms like “detail-oriented”, “effective communicator” and “team player” usually come across as bland or generic, rarely adding value to your CV.
If you’re struggling to write a statement with substance, you’re probably better off giving it a miss and saving the space for additional bullet points later in your CV.
On the other hand, a well-crafted summary statement can be a useful way to introduce yourself as a graduate, particularly if you won’t be submitting your CV alongside a cover letter or application form.
If you do choose to include a summary at the start of your CV, keep it concise and try to make it relevant to the employer. For example:
In addition to your university degree, the ‘Education’ section can include other relevant training, licenses, or accreditations (for example, micro-credentials or industry certifications).
You can also choose to include your school results if you graduated recently (i.e. within the last 10 years), and your final ATAR results (if these are reflective of your academic success).
You should list your qualifications in order of their relevance and importance to the job you’re applying for. When applying for a graduate job, this will usually mean listing your degree at the top.
Where possible, for each qualification you should include information on:
The amount of information you include regarding the specifics of each qualification will depend on the role you are applying for. Generally, you should only delve into subject-level detail if it’s relevant to the job. For example, subjects that show numerical ability could be relevant for a range of jobs, including those in finance and engineering. If you have achieved good grades in relevant subjects, you can highlight this to strengthen your application.
If you choose to mention grades, remember that qualification standards vary between countries and institutions. It can be helpful to provide context with either an explanation of the grade or by providing the maximum achievable grade. For example:
As a graduate, your relevant experience may be limited, if you have any at all.
Fortunately, most graduate employers are aware of this and look favourably on achievements that have taken place outside of traditional work settings.
That’s why we recommend calling this section ‘Experience’, instead of just limiting yourself to ‘work experience’!
Examples worth mentioning include:
Again, you don’t need to list every experience you’ve had. Instead, focus on highlighting experience that is relevant to the position you’re applying for.
Generally, you should list your experience or employment in reverse chronological order (most recent first), and include:
In some instances, you may need to include a sentence or two that describes the organisation you worked for, particularly if the organisation’s name does not clearly indicate the work it does.
You should aim to include enough context that an uninformed reader (someone who doesn’t have prior knowledge of you, your area of study, or your industry) can grasp what you did and why it makes you qualified for the job.
For each experience, include a high-level overview of your role and responsibilities. You can also include a few bullet points that cover specifically what you accomplished, learned or contributed. You may find the “STAR” framework (Situation, Task, Action, Result) helpful for teasing out these details:
Most graduates find this to be the most challenging part of writing their CV, so here are a few tips to help you along the way:
Here are some examples to help put all this into practice:
Instead of this… | Try this... |
---|---|
❌ Data entry and analysis in excel. | ✅ Modelled 25 years of historical financial data in excel to determine relationship between commodity prices and profitability. |
❌ Bar work including waiting tables, working the bar & hosting wine tastings. | ✅ Managed 200 person capacity bar, requiring exceptional customer service, dispute resolution, and time management. |
❌ Chair of soccer club social committee. | ✅ Chaired social committee of 8 and organised events throughout the year attended by 200-300 members. |
❌ Tutored Year 12 commerce students. | ✅ Developed tutorial content, marketing, pricing, and time management strategies to establish a successful small business tutoring Year 12 commerce students. |
❌ Launched internal team productivity reporting dashboard. | ✅ Liaised with senior leadership and sought team feedback to develop a productivity reporting dashboard that cut weekly team task allocation time by approximately 50%. |
❌ Organized the college’s tutorial program and headed up the academic team. | ✅ Planned and led a year-long academic program for 230 students across 8 faculty areas, resulting in a 98% pass rate. |
❌ Edited articles submitted by student journalists. | ✅ Reviewed 20-25 articles per week to evaluate their suitability for publication, selecting and editing up to 5 per week for publication. |
❌ Researched CRM SAS options. | ✅ Collaborated on a team of 4 to evaluate alternative software platforms to drive sales team productivity, ultimately saving an estimated $600,000 per year. |
As a graduate, you’ll often find that your work experience is limited and your education pedigree is similar to other applicants, many of whom will have completed near-identical degrees at equivalent institutions.
As such, it’s often the things other than education and work experience that end up setting you apart and getting you through to that crucial interview stage.
In this section of your CV, we aim to capture what differentiates you from the crowd!
Three common subheadings that you can adopt in this section are:
It’s worth noting that these sections are completely optional, and it may work better for you to consolidate them under one or, at max, two subheadings (depending on available space and how many items you have to list).
In many cases, you may find it easier to list awards under the other relevant sections (for example, by placing academic awards under the education section and so on). However, a standalone section for awards and accomplishments can be helpful if your trophy cabinet is particularly full!
You shouldn’t assume the reader knows anything about the award (no matter how prestigious or well known it may be), so take the time to include a short description of each one (eg, ‘for leadership and service’, or ‘for academic excellence’).
List the awards and accomplishments that are most relevant to the job you are applying for first. Where relevant, include the issuing institution and date of issue.
This section gives you the opportunity to list all of your skills that are related to a position. If you’re lucky enough to have lots of skills, you can break them out under subheadings. For example, you might add separate subheadings below your ‘Skills’ section for “Leadership”, “Foreign Languages” and “Software Skills”. The idea is to group your skills into themes and make it easy to skim them.
Graduates often ask whether or not they should include things like independent overseas travel on their CV. The answer is yes, if you can tie it back to the attributes the employer is looking for. To give an example, large global professional services firms are often looking to hire candidates with a ‘global outlook’. In this case, you may choose to mention your overseas experience, particularly if it’s supported by a broader theme, such as having gone on an exchange, speaking another language, or growing up in a different location.
Oh, and don’t mention skills that everyone is expected to have, like email or Microsoft Word. This is taken as a given these days, and listing them on your CV will actually make you seem less technologically savvy.
Similar to Summary or Profile statements, this section is another grey area when it comes to CV writing.
Unique and varied side projects, such as sports, volunteering, travel, hobbies and interests can demonstrate that you have a certain depth of character and are more than just ‘book smart’. Done well, this section can give recruiters the sense that they just have to meet you! On the other hand, if your interests consist of socialising with friends and ‘Netflix’, it’s probably best that you skip this section.
When it comes to the design and layout of your CV, there's no 'perfect' format—every individual and role is different. You should feel free to experiment and express your personality.
However, regardless of the format you choose, your main consideration should be readability for the recruiter.
Here are some overarching guidelines to consider.
If you’re still unsure of how to format your CV, check out these 25 free templates for inspiration!
No. It adds no value, and some recruiters will explicitly request that candidates NOT share pictures, so as to avoid any risk of unconscious bias.
Unless directed otherwise, always submit your CV in PDF format. Why? The hint is in the name - ‘Portable Document Format’. This format will display your document in the same way regardless of the software, hardware or operating system that recruiters use to view your CV. This effectively ‘freezes’ your desired formatting in place and helps avoid issues when recruiters view your CV on a different device.
No. Most reference checks will only be done at the end of the recruitment process (after interviews), and recruiters often complete them using an online workflow, so there’s no benefit to taking up valuable space on your CV with references.
The only exception to this is if you have a particularly influential referee and you feel it will help your case to ’name drop’ them on your CV.
Don’t bother including a line about “references available on request”, since it goes without saying that you would provide references if an employer asked for them.
No. The stories of automated CV-scanning programs rejecting strong candidates are a persistent urban legend. While resume-parsing technology exists, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to effectively use keyword-based screening for most graduate roles. We’ve not yet heard of an employer taking this approach.