Graduate CV Example & Writing Guide

The full CV example

Read the dates before anything else. This example graduated in June, started work in October, and the four months in between are accounted for on the page rather than left to be guessed at.

Fictional example. Use your own name, city, email, phone and one profile link.

Why this CV works

Five things this example does that most graduate CVs do not:

• The dissertation is written up like a job

  Subject, data source, size, grade. A final-year project is usually the longest single piece of work a graduate has done and the only one they can discuss for an hour, which makes it the strongest interview material on the page. It deserves the detail a job would get.

• The job that is not the target job is used, not apologised for

  Customer support is not analytics, and the CV does not pretend otherwise. What it does is mine the role for analytical evidence: a SQL report that removed four hours of manual work, an analysis of 9,000 tickets that changed a product decision. The role stays honest and still argues for the next one.

• The gap is dated and accounted for in one line

  June to October 2025, a finished course and a piece of freelance work. Four months is not something a reader will forgive because it was left unexplained; it is something they will invent an explanation for. One line in the extras block removes the question entirely.

• The internship is described by what was handed over

  Eight weeks, 40,000 rows, seven documented rules, three dashboards and a handover note the next interns were given. Internships get written up as "gained exposure to" far too often. What was left behind at the end is the only part that proves the work existed.

• The summary states what kind of work is wanted

  "Measurement rather than reporting" is a preference that costs one clause and tells a hiring manager whether their vacancy fits. A graduate CV that is willing to be turned down for the wrong job gets read more carefully for the right one.

Professional summary examples

Entry level

Straight out of university, lead with the dissertation and the internship, and name the month you can start. The start date is a practical fact that a hiring manager needs before anything else.

Mid level

A year after graduating, the current job leads even when it is not the target job. Choose the two things in it that look most like the work you want.

Senior

A longer gap is stated plainly in the first clause, then followed by what is current. A reader worries about whether your skills are cold, so the recent work is the answer, not the apology.

Experience bullet examples

Twelve bullets in weak and strong form, drawn from where a graduate's evidence actually sits: the dissertation, an internship, a part-time or stop-gap job, and anything done since finishing. Every figure belongs to the fictional example, so use your own, including the ones from coursework.

Weak

Wrote a dissertation on pricing.

Stronger

Built a price elasticity model from two years of open transaction data for a 12,000-word dissertation, graded 8.7 of 10.

Why

Data source, size, output, grade. A dissertation summarised in five words is a line nobody will ask about; described properly it sets the interview agenda.

Weak

Completed an internship in analytics.

Stronger

Cleaned and joined 40,000 rows of client sales data across three sources during an eight-week internship, documenting the seven rules used to resolve conflicting product codes.

Why

The documentation is the detail that separates an intern who was supervised from one who could be left alone.

Weak

Gained experience with Power BI.

Stronger

Built three Power BI dashboards that replaced a monthly slide pack, and presented them to the client team in the final week of the internship.

Why

"Gained experience with" means nothing. What did the thing you built replace, and who saw it?

Weak

Worked in customer support after graduating.

Stronger

Handled around 60 tickets a day on billing and connection faults, holding first-contact resolution at 78 percent against a team average of 71.

Why

A stop-gap job still has numbers in it. Comparing yourself with the team average is fair when the average is published internally.

Weak

Used SQL in my current role.

Stronger

Rebuilt the team's weekly report in SQL against the ticket database, replacing a manual count that took a supervisor about four hours every Monday.

Why

Hours removed from someone else's week is the cleanest result a junior can claim, and it is usually available in a non-technical job.

Weak

Analysed data to find problems.

Stronger

Analysed 9,000 billing tickets, found three plan-change scenarios causing roughly a quarter of them, and two were fixed in the next billing release.

Why

The outcome you did not control is the proof. Say what happened after your analysis, even if someone else shipped it.

Weak

Helped train new team members.

Stronger

Trained six new agents on the billing system and wrote the fault decision tree now used in induction.

Why

A count of people and an artefact still in use. Both are reachable within a first year of work.

Weak

Took a course after graduating.

Stronger

Completed a 60-hour SQL course between June and October 2025 and used it on a freelance data clean for a local retailer.

Why

A course becomes evidence when it is attached to something you did with it. On its own it is a receipt.

Weak

Did some freelance work while job hunting.

Stronger

Cleaned and restructured three years of stock records for a local retailer as a freelance project, cutting their month-end count from two days to half a day.

Why

Small paid work is still work. Give the client type, the scope and the result, and write it as a role with dates.

Weak

Was part of a university project team.

Stronger

Led the data collection for a four-person econometrics project, running 120 survey responses through a regression model and writing the methodology section.

Why

Name your part. In a group project, the only interesting question is which piece you would have to defend.

Weak

Good with Excel and statistics.

Stronger

Built the Excel model behind a coursework forecast for grocery delivery demand, using regression output from Stata and a sensitivity table across three price scenarios.

Why

Two tools, one artefact, one decision the model was for. A skill claim with no artefact behind it gets discounted.

Weak

Volunteered at university.

Stronger

Ran the finances for a 40-member student economics society for a year, tracking a 1,800 EUR budget across six events.

Why

Keep one or two of these after graduating, and only the ones with a responsibility in them. Drop the rest as work experience accumulates.

Skills that belong on this CV

Education and certifications

In the first year or two after graduating, education stays near the top and carries real detail: award, institution, years, final grade if it helps you, and the dissertation or final project with its subject and size. Once you have two years of full-time work, cut it to three lines and move it below experience. Modules are worth listing only while they are the closest thing you have to the job, and only the three or four that match the advert. If you studied in one country and are applying in another, give the qualification its local name and one short equivalence line rather than a translated grade nobody can interpret.

Certifications

• A finished technical course in the tool your target roles name, such as SQL or a dashboard platform - Give the hours and the date. A finished 60-hour course with a project behind it is worth more than three unfinished ones.
• Professional body first-stage exams, where your field has them - Accounting, actuarial, marketing and HR routes all have a recognised first step. Say how many papers you have passed and when the next one is.
• Language certification at a stated level - Useful where the job is cross-border. Give the framework and the level rather than describing yourself as fluent.

A certificate cannot stand in for the experience you do not have yet, but it can explain what you did with the months since graduating, which is a question the CV has to answer anyway.

How an ATS reads this CV

Appliora's ATS Checker runs 14 checks against an uploaded file and shows you the text its parser extracted. Four of them decide most graduate outcomes, because graduate schemes almost always run through a portal.

• Consistent dates

  Months matter now. A CV that shows only years turns a four-month gap into an apparent year out, and a summer internship into a whole year of work. Write month and year at both ends of every entry, including the internship and anything freelance.

• Recognised sections

  Keep conventional headings. A graduate CV that opens with "My Story" and continues with "Where I Have Been" reads charmingly to a person and gives a parser nothing to anchor the experience section on.

• Length against experience

  One page for most graduates, and the check measures length against the experience you have declared. Two pages are defensible only when a placement year or a substantial internship record genuinely fills them.

• File hygiene

  Name the file with your own name and the role, not "CV final v3". The check also looks at document properties, which on a reused template can still carry someone else's name from whoever built it originally.

Templates that suit this role

• Swiss One Page

  Holds a graduate CV to one disciplined page while leaving room for the dissertation and an internship to be described properly.

• ATS Clean

  Single column and conventional headings, which is what graduate schemes and large employer portals handle most reliably.

• European

  For applications in markets where employers expect a structured personal details block, and where a photo may be conventional. Whether to include one depends on the country you are applying in.

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