First-job CV: show your potential without inventing experience

You can write a useful CV before your first paid job. Give the employer evidence from education, projects, placements and volunteering, and label each experience honestly.

Quick answer: choose a clear layout, include contact details, explain the role you want and show a few relevant tasks you have actually completed. A blank employment history is better than a fictional employer.

Build your first CV with writing prompts → Create and preview free; clean PDF download is a one-time $4.99, with no subscription.

What counts as experience?

A school project with a real task, contribution and result.
A work placement, internship or part-time role, clearly labelled.
Volunteering, including organising activities or helping with records.
A personal project relevant to the vacancy, such as a small website or portfolio.

Choose evidence that fits the job. List software, languages and practical skills only at a level you can demonstrate. You do not need to fill the page with every hobby or course.

A short first-job CV example

Original fictional teaching example. This is not a real applicant, a guarantee of an interview or text that will be automatically inserted into your CV.

Alex Morgan — Entry-level office assistant

City, country · [email protected] · your phone number

Profile

Recent school leaver seeking an entry-level office role. Practised spreadsheet record keeping and document preparation in a school project, and helped coordinate visitors during a community event.

Education

Example School — school qualification, 2024–2026

Relevant project: organised a small class event and maintained its task list and budget spreadsheet.

Volunteer experience

Event helper — Example Community Group, May 2026

Checked visitors against an attendance list and directed questions to the coordinator.
Prepared printed information and helped keep the reception area organised.

Skills

Basic spreadsheets · Document formatting · Visitor communication · Task organisation

How to put this into the IQResume editor

Choose a layout, then enter your own contact details.
Select “First job / little paid experience” in the writing helper.
Enter a real placement or volunteer role in Experience and keep its label clear. If there is none, leave the empty job entry blank.
Add qualifications and a relevant school project in Education notes. Other projects can go in Additional information.
Run the optional content checks and inspect the saved preview. The live outline is not the final PDF layout, and choosing this guide does not change the template's section order.

What should you leave out?

Do not invent work dates, grades, qualifications or numerical results. Do not include another person's contact details without their permission. For UK applications, the National Careers Service advises against including age, date of birth, marital status and nationality. Other markets and employers may have different instructions.

Questions before your first application

Do I have to include paid work?

No. Relevant learning, projects and accurately labelled volunteering can provide evidence of your skills.

Will the editor write my experience for me?

The helper offers skills to consider and a sentence scaffold using your own words. You choose what to insert; it does not generate employers or achievements.

Is the final PDF free?

The editor and preview are free. The standard clean PDF download costs a one-time $4.99. Review any applicable offer and the total before paying.

Create and preview your own first-job CV →

Useful next steps

Editorial responsibility: IQResume Editorial Team. Published and reviewed 2 October 2026. General structure cross-checked against National Careers Service CV guidance; the fictional example and product instructions are our own.