How to write a CV in the UK: a practical guide

A good CV does one job: it gets you an interview. Recruiters often spend less than a minute on a first read, so the aim is to make your most relevant experience easy to find. Here's how to do that for UK employers.

Keep it to two pages

Two sides of A4 is the usual length in the UK. If you're early in your career, one page is fine. Senior and academic CVs can run longer, but every extra page should be earning its place.

Put your details at the top, and only the ones that matter

Include your name, phone number, email address, the town or city you live in, and a LinkedIn profile if you have one. You don't need your full address.

UK CVs normally leave out your date of birth, marital status, nationality and a photo. Employers aren't allowed to make hiring decisions on most of these, so including them doesn't help and can work against you.

Start with a short personal statement

Three or four lines under your name that say who you are, what you're good at and what you're looking for. Tailor it to the job:

Customer service team leader with five years' experience in busy contact centres. Known for calm handling of escalated complaints and for coaching new starters. Looking to move into a customer experience manager role.

List experience in reverse order, with achievements

Start with your most recent job and work backwards. For each role, give the job title, employer, location and dates (month and year), then three to six bullet points.

Make the bullet points about what you achieved, not just what you were responsible for:

• Instead of "Responsible for stock control", try "Kept stock records accurate across two stores, reducing missing items at audit"
• Add numbers where you genuinely have them: team sizes, budgets, targets, time saved

Never add figures you can't back up. An interviewer may ask about any of them.

Education, skills and the rest

List your qualifications with the most recent first. If you have a degree, you can usually summarise GCSEs in one line. Add a skills section with the tools and abilities the job asks for, and include certifications, languages or volunteering where they're relevant.

You don't need to write "References available on request". Employers will ask when they need them.

Tailor it for every application

Read the job advert and make sure the skills and experience it asks for are easy to spot on your CV, using the same wording where it's true for you. Many employers use applicant tracking systems that search for these terms.

Check it before you send it

Use British English spelling, keep formatting consistent, and save it as a PDF unless the employer asks for Word. Then ask someone you trust to read it, or run it through our ATS score checker.

Ready to start? Build your CV with one of our templates. It's free.