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CV UK21 min read

How to Write a CV in the UK: The Definitive Guide (2026)

Every year, millions of job applications land on recruiters' desks across the United Kingdom. The average corporate vacancy attracts roughly 250 applicants,…

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Your CV is your ticket to the interview. Not the job — the interview. That distinction matters more than most people realise, because it changes everything about how you should write one.

Every year, millions of job applications land on recruiters' desks across the United Kingdom. The average corporate vacancy attracts roughly 250 applicants, and recruiters spend between six and eight seconds on their initial scan of each CV. In that narrow window, yours needs to do one thing brilliantly: convince a stranger that you are worth a proper conversation.

This guide draws on official guidance from the National Careers Service, the careers services of Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh and Manchester, as well as professional bodies such as the CIPD and leading UK job boards including Prospects and Indeed UK. It is, quite deliberately, the most comprehensive and practical CV writing resource you will find anywhere online.

Let us get started.

Table of Contents

What Is a CV, and Why Does It Matter?

CV stands for curriculum vitae, a Latin phrase meaning "course of life." In the UK, the term CV is used universally — whether you are applying for a Saturday job in a shop, a graduate scheme at a City bank, or a directorship at a FTSE 100 company. Unlike the United States, where "resume" is the standard term for most applications, British employers expect a CV for virtually every role.

A well-crafted CV is a concise, targeted document — typically no longer than two A4 pages — that presents your skills, experience and qualifications in a way that directly addresses what the employer is looking for. It is not a life story. It is not a list of everything you have ever done. It is a curated argument for why you deserve an interview.

Format and Layout: Getting the Foundations Right

Before you type a single word about your career, you need to make decisions about structure. The wrong layout can sink even the most impressive experience.

Length

Two pages of A4. This is the standard in the UK and has been for decades. One page is acceptable for school leavers or those with very limited experience, and academic CVs can run considerably longer, but for the vast majority of applicants, two pages is the target. Anything beyond that and you are asking recruiters to do work they will not do.

Font and Size

Stick to professional, widely available typefaces: Arial, Calibri or Times New Roman at 10.5 to 12 point. The National Careers Service recommends a minimum of size 11. Avoid decorative or unusual fonts — they look unprofessional and can cause rendering problems when your CV is opened on a different machine.

Margins and Spacing

Maintain margins of at least 2cm on all sides. Use consistent spacing between sections — 6pt to 12pt after each heading works well. Your CV should have enough white space that a recruiter can scan it comfortably at arm's length. If the page looks cramped or dense, you have included too much.

File Format

Save and send your CV as a PDF unless the employer specifically requests a Word document (.docx). PDFs preserve your formatting across every device and operating system. If you are uploading to an online application system, check whether they accept PDF — some older Applicant Tracking Systems parse .docx files more reliably, so keep both versions to hand.

Structure

The reverse-chronological format is the gold standard in the UK. This means listing your most recent role or qualification first and working backwards. It is what recruiters expect, and it is what Applicant Tracking Systems are designed to read. Skills-based or functional CVs have their place — particularly for career changers — but they can raise suspicions that you are trying to hide gaps or a lack of relevant experience.

Section by Section: What to Include and How to Write It

Before we walk through each section in detail, here is what a well-structured UK CV actually looks like in practice. This annotated example shows how all the sections fit together — with blue badges explaining what each part does and why it matters.

1. Contact Details

This is your header — clean, prominent and professional. Include the following:

  • Full name — bold and in a slightly larger font size (14-16pt)
  • Phone number — a UK mobile number you actually answer
  • Email address — a professional one ([email protected], not [email protected])
  • Location — your city or town and county is sufficient (e.g. "Manchester, Greater Manchester")
  • LinkedIn profile — optional but increasingly expected, particularly for professional and corporate roles

Do not include: your full home address (a city is enough at application stage), your date of birth, your age, your nationality, your marital status, your National Insurance number, or a photograph. We shall explain precisely why in the section on the Equality Act below.

Example:

Eleanor Whitfield 07700 900 123 | [email protected] | Manchester, Greater Manchester linkedin.com/in/eleanorwhitfield

2. Personal Statement (Profile)

This is a short paragraph — three to five lines at most — that sits directly beneath your contact details. Think of it as your elevator pitch: who you are, what you bring, and what you are looking for. It should be tailored to every single job you apply for. A generic personal statement is worse than no personal statement at all.

The Oxford Careers Service advises structuring this around three questions: What is your professional identity? What are your key strengths? What are you looking for next?

Indeed UK recommends keeping it to three or four sentences focused on your title, years of experience, sector expertise and core skills — with impact demonstrated through numbers and outcomes rather than vague claims.

Good example:

Chartered accountant (ACA) with seven years' post-qualification experience in financial services audit. Track record of managing audit engagements valued at up to £4 million and leading teams of up to twelve. Currently seeking a senior manager position within a mid-tier or Big Four firm where I can apply my sector expertise and client management skills.

Weak example:

I am a hard-working, motivated individual who is looking for a new challenge. I have experience in various roles and am a good team player. I am keen to develop my career in a fast-paced environment.

The second example says nothing specific. It could apply to anyone, in any industry, at any level. Recruiters see hundreds of these and they make absolutely no impression.

Want to see how personal statements look in practice across different career stages? Here are three examples — graduate, mid-career, and career change — each shown at the top of a real CV layout.

3. Work Experience

For most applicants, this is the most important section of the CV. The University of Cambridge Careers Service confirms that employers generally consider work experience the weightiest section — which is why it should come before education for anyone with meaningful professional history.

For each role, include:

  • Job title — bold
  • Employer name — with a brief descriptor if the company is not well known (e.g. "Meridian Solutions, a mid-market IT consultancy")
  • Dates of employment — month and year for both start and end dates (e.g. "September 2021 - Present")
  • Key responsibilities and achievements — presented as bullet points

This is where you make or break your CV. Do not simply list duties. Describe what you achieved, how you contributed and what impact you had. The Oxford Careers Service recommends the CAR approach:

  • Context — the situation or challenge
  • Action — what you specifically did
  • Result — the measurable outcome

Strong bullet point:

Led the migration of the company's CRM system to Salesforce, training 45 staff members across three departments and reducing data entry errors by 32% within the first quarter.

Weak bullet point:

Responsible for CRM system.

Every bullet should begin with a strong action verb: managed, delivered, designed, negotiated, implemented, reduced, increased, launched. Avoid starting with "Responsible for" — it describes a job description, not your contribution.

Quantify wherever possible. Numbers are the currency of a good CV. Revenue generated, costs saved, team sizes, percentage improvements, project budgets, customer satisfaction scores — anything that puts a concrete figure on your impact.

How far back should you go? Include the last ten to fifteen years of employment in detail. Earlier roles can be summarised in a single line (e.g. "Earlier career includes roles in retail management at Tesco and Boots, 2008-2013"). There is no need to account for every Saturday job you held as a teenager.

4. Education and Qualifications

Where this section sits depends on your career stage. The National Careers Service advises placing education directly after your personal statement if you are a recent graduate or have limited work experience. For experienced professionals, it belongs after work experience.

Include:

  • Qualification name and grade — e.g. "BSc (Hons) Computer Science, 2:1"
  • Institution — full name of the university, college or school
  • Dates — years attended (e.g. "2017-2020")
  • Relevant modules, projects or dissertation titles — only if they are directly relevant to the role

For GCSEs, you do not need to list every subject. A summary is sufficient: "10 GCSEs including Mathematics (7) and English Language (6)." A-levels should be listed individually with grades.

Professional qualifications deserve prominence. If you hold chartered status, industry certifications (PRINCE2, ITIL, CIMA, ACCA, CIPD) or trade qualifications, list them clearly — they can be more valuable to employers than your degree.

Example:

BSc (Hons) Mechanical Engineering, First Class — University of Sheffield, 2018-2021 Dissertation: "Computational Fluid Dynamics Modelling of Wind Turbine Blade Geometry"

A-Levels: Mathematics (A*), Physics (A), Design & Technology (A) — Greenfield Sixth Form, 2016-2018

5. Skills

A dedicated skills section is most valuable when it highlights competencies that are not already obvious from your work experience. Do not pad this section with generic claims like "excellent communication skills" or "proficient in Microsoft Office" — these are expected of virtually every professional and add nothing.

Instead, focus on:

  • Technical skills — specific software, programming languages, tools, machinery or methodologies (e.g. "Python, SQL, Tableau, JIRA, Agile/Scrum")
  • Language skills — with proficiency levels (e.g. "French — professional working proficiency; Mandarin — conversational")
  • Specialist qualifications — first aid, forklift licence, DBS check, SIA licence, health and safety certifications

If the job advert lists specific skills in its requirements, make certain those exact terms appear in your CV — both for the human reader and for Applicant Tracking Systems.

6. Additional Sections

Depending on your circumstances, you may wish to include:

Voluntary work and extracurricular activities — particularly valuable for graduates and career changers. Running a university society, volunteering for a charity, coaching a sports team — these all demonstrate leadership, commitment and organisational skills.

Publications, presentations and research — essential for academic CVs, useful for anyone in a knowledge-intensive field.

Interests and hobbies — this is optional, and opinions differ. The Prospects guide makes a fair point: "socialising" and "reading" will not catch anyone's attention, but running marathons, editing a community newsletter or competing in coding hackathons can provide useful talking points at interview and evidence of transferable skills.

7. References

The convention in the UK has shifted significantly over the past decade. You no longer need to include your referees' names and contact details on your CV. The standard practice, endorsed by the National Careers Service and virtually every university careers service, is to write "References available on request" — or simply to omit the references section altogether. Employers will ask for references at the offer stage, not at application.

If you are a recent graduate or school leaver with limited work history, having a reference from a tutor or lecturer can be reassuring for employers. But even then, provide the details separately when asked — not on the CV itself.

What NOT to Include: The Equality Act and UK Hiring Law

The Equality Act 2010 is the cornerstone of anti-discrimination legislation in England, Scotland and Wales. It protects applicants from discrimination on nine "protected characteristics": age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation.

While the Act does not explicitly dictate what you must or must not put on a CV, its implications are clear, and every reputable careers service in the UK — from gov.uk to Oxford to the CIPD — advises against including information that could invite unconscious bias. Specifically:

  • No photograph. This is perhaps the starkest difference between a UK CV and those used in many European countries. Including a photo opens the door to bias based on race, age, sex, disability and more. It is considered unprofessional in UK hiring.
  • No date of birth or age. There is no legitimate reason for an employer to know your age at application stage.
  • No marital status. Whether you are single, married, in a civil partnership or divorced is irrelevant to your ability to do the job.
  • No nationality or immigration status. If relevant, employers will ask about your right to work in the UK at a later stage. The only exception is if a role specifically requires a particular nationality (which is extremely rare and must be legally justified).
  • No religion or political affiliation.
  • No gender or sexual orientation.
  • No National Insurance number.
  • No full home address. A city or region is sufficient and safer.

Including any of this information does not help your application. At best, it wastes space. At worst, it introduces biases — conscious or otherwise — that work against you. Keep your CV focused on what matters: your ability to do the job.

UK vs US vs French CV: The Key Differences

If you have worked internationally, or if you are moving to or from the UK, understanding the conventions of different countries is essential. Submitting an American-style resume to a British employer — or a British CV to a French one — signals that you have not done your homework.

Terminology

In the UK, the document is always called a CV, regardless of the role or industry. In the US, the standard document is a "resume" — the word "CV" is reserved almost exclusively for academic and medical positions and tends to be much longer. In France, the term is CV (borrowed from the English), though the format and conventions differ considerably.

Length

A UK CV should be two pages. A US resume is strictly one page for early-career candidates and one to two pages for experienced professionals. A French CV is traditionally one page of A4 — shorter than even the American standard for most roles.

Photographs

UK: Never include a photo. It is considered inappropriate and can raise discrimination concerns. US: Same as the UK — no photos. France: A photo is still widely expected and commonly included, typically a professional headshot in the top corner.

Personal Information

UK: Name, phone, email, city. Nothing else. US: Same as the UK. France: Expects considerably more — name, address, phone, email, date of birth, nationality, and often marital status and number of children. The Connexion France guide notes that French employers are accustomed to this level of personal detail.

Tone

UK: Professional and achievement-oriented. Quantifying your impact is expected and encouraged. US: Similar to the UK but often more assertive in self-promotion, particularly for senior roles. France: More restrained. The French convention, according to Connexion France, discourages overt boasting — understated confidence is preferred.

Spelling

This seems obvious but catches people out. A UK CV must use British English throughout: "organised" not "organized," "centre" not "center," "programme" not "program" (unless referring to a computer program). Using American spellings on a UK CV suggests carelessness at best and cultural ignorance at worst.

Beating the Bots: How to Make Your CV ATS-Friendly

An Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is software used by employers to manage, filter and rank job applications. Industry estimates suggest around 70-75% of larger UK employers use ATS in their recruitment process (JobSpace AI). If your CV cannot be parsed correctly by these systems, it may never reach human eyes — regardless of how qualified you are.

Here is how to ensure your CV passes the digital gatekeeper:

What does the difference between an ATS-friendly CV and one that gets filtered out actually look like? Here is the same candidate presented two ways — and the scoring gap is dramatic.

Use a Clean, Simple Layout

Avoid tables, text boxes, columns, headers, footers, graphics, icons and images. ATS software reads your document from top to bottom, left to right. Complex layouts confuse it, resulting in garbled or incomplete data extraction. A single-column layout with clear section headings is safest.

Mirror the Language of the Job Advert

ATS systems compare your CV against the job description and assign a relevance score based on keyword matches. If the advert asks for "project management," use that exact phrase — not "managing projects" or "PM." If it lists specific qualifications or software, include those terms verbatim.

Use Standard Section Headings

Stick to headings that ATS systems recognise: "Work Experience," "Education," "Skills," "Personal Statement." Creative alternatives like "Where I've Made My Mark" or "My Story So Far" may confuse the parser.

Be Consistent with Date Formats

Choose one format — either "January 2023" or "01/2023" — and use it consistently throughout. Inconsistent formatting can cause ATS systems to misread your employment dates or flag gaps that do not exist.

Avoid Keyword Stuffing

Modern ATS platforms, particularly those deployed in 2025 and 2026, increasingly use large language models to understand context and meaning — not just individual keywords. Hiding white-text keywords in your footer or repeating terms unnaturally will not work and may actively penalise your application.

Test Your CV

Before submitting, open your PDF and try to highlight and copy the text. If you cannot select the text cleanly, the ATS cannot read it either. Tools like SpeedCV can help you build a clean, ATS-optimised CV quickly, without worrying about formatting pitfalls — the structure is handled for you, so you can focus on content.

Common Mistakes: What Recruiters Actually Complain About

Having spoken to recruiters and reviewed guidance from every major UK careers service, these are the errors that appear most frequently — and that do the most damage.

1. Sending the Same CV for Every Job

This is the single most common mistake and the easiest to fix. The University of Edinburgh Careers Service puts it plainly: make it easy for the employer to see the link between what you have done and what they need. Read the job advert carefully, identify the key requirements and tailor your CV to address each one. It takes twenty minutes and doubles your chances.

2. Listing Duties Instead of Achievements

"Responsible for managing a team" tells a recruiter nothing. "Managed a team of eight, delivering a £2.3 million project two weeks ahead of schedule" tells them everything. Always answer the question: so what?

3. Including a Photograph

As discussed, this is inappropriate in the UK and will mark your CV as either foreign or uninformed. Neither impression helps.

4. Typos and Grammatical Errors

The Oxford Careers Service is unequivocal: recruiters routinely reject CVs with spelling or grammar mistakes. Proofread your CV multiple times, then have someone else read it. Pay particular attention to the company name and job title — getting either of those wrong is fatal.

5. Using an Unprofessional Email Address

[email protected] or [email protected] belong nowhere near a job application. Create a simple, professional email address using your name. It costs nothing and takes two minutes.

6. Including Irrelevant Information

Your GCSE in Art is not relevant to a senior finance role. Your weekend job at a chip shop fifteen years ago does not need three bullet points. Be ruthless about relevance. Every line on your CV should earn its place.

7. Writing in the Third Person

"John is a dedicated professional who prides himself on delivering results." No. Write in the first person (implied — you do not actually use "I" in your bullet points, but the perspective should be first person). "Delivered a 15% increase in quarterly revenue through targeted client outreach" is direct and powerful.

8. Using Jargon and Acronyms Without Explanation

Your CV may be screened by an HR professional or recruiter who does not share your technical specialism. If you use acronyms, define them on first use — or use the full term if the job advert does. The exception is industry-standard terms that any reader of that particular job advert would recognise (e.g., "SQL" in a data analyst role).

9. Leaving Unexplained Gaps

If you have a period of unemployment, a career break, or time spent travelling, address it briefly. "Career break to care for a family member (2022-2023)" or "Travelled independently through Southeast Asia, developing language skills and cultural awareness (2021)" is far better than a mysterious two-year hole that invites speculation.

10. Making It Too Long — or Too Short

Two pages. Not one paragraph. Not four pages. Two pages, well-structured and properly formatted, with enough white space that a recruiter can scan it quickly. If you are struggling to fill two pages, you may need to reconsider what experience, voluntary work or skills you are overlooking. If you are exceeding two pages, you need to edit more aggressively.

Tailoring Your CV to Your Career Stage

School Leavers and College Students

You may not have much — or any — work experience yet, and that is perfectly fine. Lead with your education, and give detail about relevant subjects, projects, coursework and grades. Include any part-time work, volunteering, work experience placements, Duke of Edinburgh awards, Young Enterprise participation, or positions of responsibility (prefect, team captain, society chair). These all demonstrate transferable skills.

Graduates and Postgraduates

Education should still feature prominently, especially if your degree is recent and relevant. Include your dissertation title if it relates to the role. Below that, list internships, placements, part-time work and extracurricular activities. The University of Manchester Careers Service stresses the importance of demonstrating skills through involvement — do not just list your activities, describe what you achieved and what you learnt.

Experienced Professionals

Work experience takes centre stage. Education can be condensed — there is no need to list A-level grades if you have fifteen years of professional experience. Focus on the last decade of your career in detail, with earlier roles summarised. Highlight progression, leadership and measurable impact.

Career Changers

Consider a hybrid format that leads with a strong personal statement emphasising transferable skills, followed by a brief skills section, then work experience. The University of Edinburgh notes that a skills-based CV can work well when you want to draw attention to capabilities rather than job titles.

Here is what a skills-based career change CV looks like in practice — a Royal Navy veteran repositioning his experience for civilian project management roles.

A Note on AI and CV Writing

It would be disingenuous not to address this. AI writing tools are now widely available, and many job seekers are using them. Several UK university careers services caution that AI-generated CVs tend to be generic and unconvincing — they can provide a reasonable basic structure to build upon, but the output is unlikely to be tailored enough to impress employers.

The advice is sound. Use AI as a starting point if you like — to generate a first draft, to suggest phrasing, to check structure. But you must edit the result thoroughly to make it yours. Recruiters can spot AI-generated content, and a CV that reads like it was written by a chatbot will not get you an interview.

Tools like SpeedCV take a smarter approach: rather than generating generic text, they give you a structured framework and help you present your own experience clearly and professionally — so the content is yours, but the formatting and structure are taken care of.

The Final Checklist

Before you send your CV anywhere, run through this list:

  1. Is it two pages? No more, no less (unless you are a school leaver or academic).
  2. Is every section tailored to this specific job? Especially the personal statement and skills.
  3. Have you used strong action verbs? Led, managed, delivered, designed, increased, reduced, launched.
  4. Are your achievements quantified? Numbers, percentages, values, timeframes.
  5. Have you removed all personal information that is not required? No photo, no date of birth, no marital status.
  6. Is it free of typos and grammatical errors? Read it aloud, then have someone else check it.
  7. Is the formatting clean and consistent? Same font, same spacing, same date format throughout.
  8. Does it use standard section headings? For ATS compatibility.
  9. Is it saved as a PDF? Unless the employer specifically requests .docx.
  10. Would you want to interview this person? Read your CV as if you were the hiring manager. Does it make a compelling case?

Sources and Further Reading

This guide was compiled using the following sources, all of which are freely available and highly recommended:

Writing a strong CV does not need to take days. With the right structure and clear, honest content, you can build a document that opens doors. If you want a head start, SpeedCV helps you create a professionally formatted, ATS-friendly UK CV in minutes — so you can spend less time wrestling with layout and more time preparing for the interview.

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