What is a CV?
A Curriculum Vitae (CV) is a short document that gives you a chance to show a prospective employer the best of what you’ve got. It sells your skills, experience, and shows them you’re the right person for the position you’re applying for. This could be a job, scholarship, internship or even a program to help you transition from College to Career.
All in all, a CV is a great way to communicate your skills, experiences, and your uniqueness to potential employers, schools, and organisations.
Why You Need a Great CV
A standard CV highlights your educational background, work experience, interests, skills, and achievements. For most companies, submitting a CV or resumé is a requirement to complete the job application process. And of course, work experience is one major section they look out for!
But, what if you do not have any formal work experience? Does it mean you won’t get the opportunity to work with the company of your dream? The answer to this depends on your ability to write your CV. In this article, you will learn how to craft a stunning CV even without work experience.
A CV with no Work experience?
One of the biggest challenges Nigerian fresh graduates face in securing jobs is the lack of work experience in their CVs.
The problem is: You need work experience to get a job, but you need a job to get work experience in the first place!
It’s just like the Chicken and Egg puzzle, where one wonders which came first…
So, how do you go about that?
The short answer is: Capitalize on your other experiences and achievements which show your capability to get things done efficiently. You can also include internships, volunteering work, projects (individual or group), fundraising, and other social impact activities. After all, assessing your capacity to handle and discharge responsibilities is the primary reason why work experience is required.
How to Structure your CV even without Work Experience
In this article, we will explore how to structure your CV in a way that enables you to get the opportunities you seek. With these tips, you will be able to impress your employers even without prior experience working in a structured workplace.
Building a CV when you have no solid work experience forces you to think outside the conventional box and capitalize on other important, but often disregarded areas. These include volunteer experiences, skills you have built up over time, your achievements (from school, and competitions), your hobbies and interests, etc.
General checklist for CV writing
1) Have a clear structure and format for your CV:
Font, spacing, and style should be consistent throughout the CV. It shows your organizing and structuring skills. Don’t play around with fonts and designs. Reserve them for something else, not your CV. Ensure your CV is well-formatted, clear, and easy to read.
2) CV Length:
Your CV shouldn’t be more than a page (Max, a page and a half) if you do not have work experience. Do not make it unnecessarily too long. It can be tempting to add long details of your volunteer experiences or an activity you engaged in, but the best is to keep things straight to the point.
3) Bolden the headings, and ensure they are all aligned:
Headlines should be bolded, and the fonts should be slightly bigger than the body.
4) Keep/save your CV in PDF format:
The universally acceptable format for a CV is PDF. PDF keeps all your structures and formatting in place. The structure is maintained when it is viewed on desktops, personal computers, tablets, or phones.
5) Review Your CV Regularly:
Reviewing your CV is important to ensure you keep it up to date with your latest progress. Review and add new relevant information to your CV regularly. The tip here is to duplicate your CV before adding new information, to ensure you still have your original (unedited) copy at hand.
How to write your CV: What to include
Here is a detailed guide on how to write your CV with no experience
- Personal details:
Name, address (city and country), email, number, LinkedIn link, or your online portfolio (if you have any)
- Profile section:
This is a summary space that describes you professionally. It’s like your elevator pitch. It gives the reader/reviewer an overview of who you are, your strengths, what you can do and how you might add value to them, and maybe your career goals.
- Education section:
It is recommended to show both your higher institution (university/polytechnic/College of Education) and secondary school education. Show the year of study and most relevant courses you studied, and maybe your GPA at the top (if you think that can give you an edge)
- Volunteer experience:
This is the space to share your ability to take up responsibilities and deliver. Experiences ranging from volunteering in setting up a school event, taking the lead role in a task, volunteering/fundraising for a charity to hospital visits with an organization are all great experiences to carefully craft and share in this space. Share what you have done, and the impact that was made and also include the timing (month, year). Your internship and SIWES can also be included here! (structure them well).
- Past achievements and awards:
Share personal, volunteer, and school achievements that you have acquired over time. Awards you have received, maybe you won an essay/poetry competition, received an award from the organization you volunteered with, positions you held while in school etc. The goal of this is to show the employer/reviewer your past successes, which can sometimes show that you are capable of achieving more in the future. While writing this section, it is important to include the name of the award, the organization that gave you the award or where you won the essay etc. and maybe the date (Year)… It is recommended to select the top and most relevant 2-3 achievements.
- Additional Skills:
Share some skills that you have learned/developed over time that can be useful to the organization. Like graphic designing, video editing, writing, project planning, sharing the apps and software that you can use etc. You can also share the languages you know here. Knowing more than one language is almost always a plus for you. Show your level of proficiency in each language.
- Hobbies and interests:
For someone with little to no work experience, including a list of your relevant hobbies and interests can help elevate your CV. Your hobbies and interest provide a more human view of you to the recruiter; They give them an understanding of who you are outside of work and what you spend your time doing. You can learn more about adding hobbies to your CV here.
Sample of a CV with no Work Experience
Build Your CV Now!
Now is the best time to craft your own CV! Note that you may have to review and restructure your CV to suit different applications. You can also update it after bagging new achievements.
Thankfully, our web-based automatic CV generator saves you the stress of continuously restructuring your CV. You also don’t have to worry about grid lines and text boxes for your CV. With Smartbukites CV generator, all you need to do is input your details and select a template to get a CV done in less than 5 minutes!
Check out: Instant CV Generator by Smartbukites.
Free Downloadable CV Templates
You can also download a free template which you can edit offline anywhere, anytime. Make your choice and wow those recruiters. At Smartbukites, we’ll keep cheering you loudly!