7 CV Examples for Recent Graduates That Get Noticed

Last updated: 26 October 2026

Table of Contents

• What a Strong Graduate CV Looks Like
• Graduate CV Examples for Different Roles
  • Example: Marketing Assistant
  • Example: Data Analyst
  • Example: Customer Service and Operations
• A Graduate CV Template You Can Copy
• Graduate CV Personal Statement Examples
• How to Tailor a CV to a Job Description
• Common Mistakes on a First Graduate CV
• Check Your Graduate CV Before You Apply
• Frequently Asked Questions

What a Strong Graduate CV Looks Like

A strong graduate CV fits on one page, leads with evidence rather than adjectives, and answers the advert line by line. This guide covers CV examples for recent graduates, so you can see what that looks like before you write your own.

Three things separate a CV that gets read from one that gets skipped.

First, it is built around the job advert. A hiring manager scans for the requirements they listed. If your CV does not mirror those, it reads as generic.

Second, it gives proof. "Team player" means nothing. "Ran the society's weekly newsletter for 200 members" means something.

Third, it is honest. Employers check qualifications and references. A CV you can defend in an interview beats one that sounds impressive on paper.

The National Careers Service guide to CVs sets out the basics UK employers expect: contact details, a personal statement, education, work history and references. Start there, then use the examples below to shape the content.

Graduate CV Examples for Different Roles

No two graduate CVs should look the same. The structure stays consistent, but what you put first changes with the role. Below are three worked examples showing what to lead with. The personal statements and figures in them are made up, so swap in your own evidence and numbers.

Example: Marketing Assistant

Personal statement: "English graduate with two years of running social media for a student society. Grew the account from 300 to 1,200 followers by posting three times a week and running two campus campaigns. Looking for a first marketing role where writing and audience research matter."

What to highlight: Campaign work, writing samples, analytics you have touched, any CMS or scheduling tool you have used.

What to leave out: A list of every module you studied. Pick the two that relate to the job.

Example: Data Analyst

Personal statement: "Mathematics graduate who built a dashboard in Power BI to track attendance across four university sports clubs. Comfortable with SQL, Excel and Python for cleaning and reporting data. Seeking a junior analyst role with a focus on clear reporting."

What to highlight: The question you answered, the size of the data, and the decision that followed. "Analysed 18 months of sales data to find which products drove returns" beats "used Excel."

A common mistake is listing tools without saying what you did with them. If you have listed SQL, Excel and Power BI, add the question you answered with each one.

Example: Customer Service and Operations

Personal statement: "History graduate with three years of part-time retail experience, including training new staff and handling complaints. Calm under pressure and used to working to daily targets. Looking for an operations role where process and people skills both count."

What to highlight: Numbers where you have them (till accuracy, queue times, team size), plus any rota, stock or complaint-handling responsibility.

Part-time work counts. Do not hide it at the bottom.

A Graduate CV Template You Can Copy

Use this order for a first graduate CV. Adjust the headings to match the advert's language.

Section	What to include	Length
Contact details	Name, phone, email, city, LinkedIn	2 lines
Personal statement	Role, evidence, what you want	3 to 4 lines
Education	Degree, university, dates, grade, relevant modules	3 to 5 lines
Experience	Jobs, placements, volunteering, societies	4 to 8 lines
Skills	Tools, languages, technical skills with proof	3 to 5 lines
References	Available on request	1 line

Keep the whole document to one page so it can be read quickly.

Graduate CV Personal Statement Examples

A personal statement is three or four lines at the top of your CV that say who you are, what you have done, and what role you want. It is not a summary of your life. It is an argument for reading the rest of the page.

Here are two more made-up openings you can adapt.

For a finance trainee role: "Economics graduate with a placement year in a finance team, where I reconciled monthly accounts and built a spreadsheet that cut a weekly task from two hours to twenty minutes. Looking for a graduate finance role with a focus on reporting."

For a teaching assistant role: "Psychology graduate with two years of volunteering in a primary school, supporting small reading groups and running after-school clubs. Patient, organised and used to working with teachers on lesson plans."

Notice the pattern: qualification, evidence, target role. Every line earns its place.

If you want more openings to work from, the guide to writing a CV summary or personal profile has UK examples and explains how long yours should be.

How to Tailor a CV to a Job Description

Tailoring means showing the employer that you meet the requirements in their advert, in their words where those words are true.

Here is the method.

1. Print the advert and highlight every requirement.
2. Split them into "must have" and "nice to have."
3. For each must-have, write one line of real evidence next to it. If you have none, note it honestly.
4. Rewrite your personal statement so it names the role and the top two requirements.
5. Reorder your experience so the most relevant item comes first.
6. Use the advert's own words where they are true. If they say "stakeholder communication," and you did that, use their phrase.

Do not invent experience to fill a gap. Interviewers ask follow-up questions, and a fabricated line collapses fast.

The step-by-step guide to tailoring your CV to a job description walks through this with worked examples.

Common Mistakes on a First Graduate CV

Most first CVs fail for boring reasons, not big ones. Watch out for these.

• No evidence. Adjectives without proof read as filler.
• Wrong qualifications format. UK employers expect GCSEs and A-levels listed with grades and dates. The guide to listing GCSEs and A-levels on a UK CV covers resits and qualifications from outside the UK.
• One CV for every job. A generic CV gets generic results.
• Typos. Read it aloud, then get someone else to read it.
• Dense paragraphs. Use short bullets. Nobody reads a wall of text on a first pass.

Sending the same CV to every employer feels efficient, but a generic CV rarely answers what a particular advert asks for.

Check Your Graduate CV Before You Apply

Before you hit send, run a simple check. Does your CV have clear headings? Are dates consistent? Are your contact details at the top? Does every claim have evidence behind it?

These sound obvious. They are also the things that get missed at 11pm the night before a deadline.

Evident has a free CV checker that runs basic checks in your browser with no sign-up. It does not compare your CV with a job description, so read it against the advert yourself.

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The hard part of a graduate CV is not writing it. It is proving it. Start with one advert, one page and one line of real evidence per requirement.

If you want help tailoring, Evident can produce a tailored Word CV built only from your own evidence, as a one-off payment rather than a subscription.

Frequently Asked Questions