My top 5 CV hacks – The Graduate Edition

If you’ve recently finished university or are about to graduate and you’re trying to land your first professional role, here are my top 5 CV hacks that might just re-fresh your thinking when it comes to building, updating or tweaking your CV.

1. Put time and effort into your personal profile for every application

This section sits at the top of your CV and although it’s not a pre-requisite for a graduate CV, it offers a brilliant opportunity to show employers who you are and what you can offer.

For it to be most effective, load it with keywords from the job description and use it to describe yourself as a motivated graduate who has the potential to contribute to the organisation. If you don’t yet have much professional experience, focus on your degree, transferable skills, and any relevant projects, internships or voluntary work.

Finish with a sentence about your career ambitions that link directly to the organisation and role.

2. Insert a Core Skills section

For a graduate CV, I’d put this directly below your Education and is perfect for covering off even more of the all-important keywords.
Make sure you are reflecting the language used in the job description and change the order of skills for each application based on the order they appear.

For graduates, examples of key skills might include: teamwork, communication, data analysis, digital literacy, problem solving, adaptability and research.

Don’t waste space on bullet points, do this:

3. Consider using a Hybrid or Skills-based CV

I’m a huge fan of this CV structure and here’s why:

• You can spotlight all your key achievements on Page 1

• It allows you to group your achievements under relevant headings

• It’s super easy to tweak, edit and re-order to tailor to a specific job

It works particularly brilliantly for graduates, as it lets you emphasise your university projects, internships, part-time jobs and extracurricular activities that demonstrate the skills employers are looking for

Tip: Try headings like Teamwork and Collaboration, Communication and Leadership, Analytical Skills, or Customer Service Experience.

4. Don’t include everything you’ve ever done

It’s tempting to list every part-time job, club and activity, but it’s vital to put yourself in the hiring manager’s shoes. Think about what’s relevant to them – they want to know what skills and experiences you can bring to their team, even if they were gained outside a traditional office environment.

Include a short section called ‘Additional Experience’ for roles that aren’t directly related to your chosen field but still show responsibility, reliability or transferable skills.

Keep your CV to one page if possible, two maximum.

5. Showcase experience beyond the classroom

As a graduate, you might not have years of professional experience, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have plenty to talk about. Employers value evidence of initiative, teamwork, and responsibility - and those can come from university projects, volunteering, internships, part-time jobs or even hobbies.

Think broadly about what demonstrates your skills:

• Led a group project? That’s project management and collaboration.

• Worked in retail or hospitality? That’s customer service, resilience and communication.

• Volunteered or played team sports? That’s leadership and teamwork.

The key is to connect your experience to the skills the employer is asking for - not just list what you did.

Bonus hack!

Here’s one more for luck! Remember AI is your friend. Whilst I’m not advocating you ask AI to write your whole CV from scratch, it can be a brilliant partner to help you with phrasing, impact and keywords.

Ask AI to help you translate your university projects or extracurricular work into professional language that fits a job description.

If you are interested in exploring this more, I’ve written a Beginners Guide to AI to Land Your Dream Role, which you can download here for FREE.

If you’ve found these hacks useful, why not come along to my free live masterclass on How to Create a Brilliant CV. I run these several times a year and you can find out the next date here.