A graduate CV is a short record of your education, experience and skills, written to show one employer that you fit one job. Careers services agree on the core: contact details, education, experience and skills, most recent first, tailored to the advert. They differ, by country, on length, names, file formats and photos. EdCitation publishes this guide, and every rule in it comes from careers services at St Andrews, LSE, Imperial, Harvard, MIT, Pittsburgh and Sydney, and from official sources in the UK, Canada and the EU, all read in September 2026.
A CV cannot secure an interview or a job on its own, and this guide promises neither. It can meet every requirement the employer set. EdCitation's free Check your paper reads an advert's application instructions (page limit, required headings, font, margins) into a checklist, each rule shown beside the sentence it came from. That is where its part ends: EdCitation never writes, rewrites or edits any part of a CV, so every line an employer reads is yours.
What goes on a graduate CV?
A graduate CV has five parts: contact details, a short introduction, education, experience and references, in the UK government's own list (National Careers Service, n.d.). Careers services add sections for skills, responsibilities and achievements.
Contact details and profile
Put your name, phone number and a professional email address at the top, with a LinkedIn link if you have one. The University of Sydney tells you to use your name as the heading, without the word "resume" or "CV" (University of Sydney Careers Centre, n.d.). A profile of a few lines follows. St Andrews caps it at 50 words and says it can go if space is short (University of St Andrews Careers Centre, n.d.). Sydney calls the same thing a career objective and wants it brief and realistic.
Education, experience and the rest
St Andrews gives a common order: contact details, profile, education, work experience, positions of responsibility, achievements, skills, interests and referees. Harvard's undergraduate template runs education, experience, leadership and activities, then skills and interests (Harvard FAS Mignone Center for Career Success, 2026b). Under each job, give the title, the organisation, the dates and what you did. The National Careers Service suggests two to three lines using the STAR method (situation, task, action, result). Sydney and Canada's Job Bank both ask for numbers where you have them: how many people you supervised, by how much something grew.
How long should a graduate CV be, and in what order?
One or two A4 pages is the usual guideline for a UK graduate job, according to St Andrews, which adds that you should always check the job description first. Sources elsewhere set different ranges, and the advert overrides them all.
| Document | What it is for | Length the source gives | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| UK graduate CV | Graduate jobs, internships, work experience | One or two A4 pages | St Andrews |
| US resume | Industry and other non-academic jobs | One page preferred, one to two typical (Pitt); two for PhDs (MIT) | Pitt Career Central (2025); MIT CAPD |
| Australian resume | Any job; "resume" and "CV" used for the same thing | One to three pages for most industries | University of Sydney |
| Academic CV | Teaching, research, fellowships, grants | Two to four pages early in a career | MIT CAPD |
| The job you are applying for | Whatever its advert says | Whatever its advert says | Read into a checklist by EdCitation's Check your paper |
Harvard's resume guide gives no page count on the page we read, so none is quoted here.
Within each section, list entries most recent first. Each source allows an exception. The National Careers Service puts education straight after the introduction for someone early in their career, and work history first for someone with a lot of it. St Andrews says to put your most relevant experience at the top when it is not your most recent. Sydney suggests splitting experience into "Relevant Experience" and "Other Experience" when you have both.
CV vs resume: what is the difference?
In the United States, a resume is the short document for industry jobs and a CV is the full academic record; in the UK, "CV" covers both. MIT's careers office says the US uses "resume" for industry and other non-academic positions and "CV" for teaching, research, fellowships and grants, and that some countries use "CV" for everything (MIT Career Advising & Professional Development, 2026). Sydney treats the two words as one. Whatever it is called, write it for the job type, as MIT advises.
What goes on an academic CV?
An academic CV puts research, publications, teaching, grants and memberships at the centre. St Andrews says it can run to several pages and needs at least one academic among the referees. MIT says completeness matters more than brevity, research comes first for a research post and teaching first for a teaching post, and publications go most recent first with your name in bold, split into categories such as book chapters and works in press. Pitt Career Central (2025) expects standard sections headed "Publications", "Conferences", "Research" and "Teaching Experience".
Sydney says to list papers and conferences in the format your discipline uses. That is a reference list, and it can be built the same way: Cite a source builds each entry from its DOI in APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago 18 author-date, Harvard, IEEE or Vancouver, and Verify references checks a pasted list against the publishers' records before a hiring committee reads it.
How do you write a CV with no experience?
Write it from what you have done at university and around it: projects, placements, volunteering, societies and part-time work all count. The National Careers Service says a first-time applicant can focus on skills learned through projects, work experience or volunteering, and can add hobbies that show a skill, such as captaining a team. Civil Service Careers (n.d.-b) names school and college experience, hobbies and clubs, for example organising a trip or a charity event.
St Andrews points to transferable skills such as communication, commercial awareness and adaptability, drawn from your degree, work and activities. Sydney treats placements, voluntary work and extracurricular roles as experience in their own right, laid out like a job. Harvard asks you to avoid gaps such as a missing summer; the National Careers Service says gaps are normal when life events happen.
How to tailor a CV to a job advert
Tailoring means matching the evidence on your CV to what the advert asks for, every time. This procedure combines the sources' advice:
- Keep a master CV. St Andrews recommends one long document you add to after every course, job or role; MIT calls it an authoritative CV. Each application draws from it.
- Read the application instructions into a checklist. Paste them into EdCitation's Check your paper to list the page limit, headings and formatting the employer set, each with its source sentence.
- Mark the words the advert repeats. The skills it names most often are the ones the employer is prioritising, and Thompson-Addo (2026) advises using the employer's exact phrasing.
- Move the most relevant entries up. MIT notes that what comes early in a CV stands out more.
- Turn duties into evidence. One action, one result, a number where you have one. Job Bank says a job title already implies the duties.
- Copy qualifications exactly. St Andrews says to list a required qualification exactly as the job description words it; LSE says to spell out an acronym once.
- Proofread and get a second reader. The National Careers Service, Sydney and Job Bank all say so.
Applicant tracking systems: what careers services say
An applicant tracking system (ATS) is software that some employers use to read, sort and rank CVs before a person sees them; St Andrews says they are increasingly common among large graduate employers. Thompson-Addo (2026), a careers consultant writing for LSE Careers, describes four stages: screening questions that can knock an application out, parsing the CV into fields, scoring it against the job description, and a recruiter reading the top-ranked ones. An ATS, the post says, "supports human recruiters, it does not replace them".
Their formatting advice is consistent: one column, standard headings, a common font, and no tables, text boxes, graphics or icons. Sydney says to keep any more visual version for direct applications, not ATS portals.
Where the careers services disagree
- Word or PDF. St Andrews says submit a Word document, not a PDF, unless you are told a PDF is allowed. LSE accepts either and calls Word the safer choice. Pitt says save as PDF (not print to PDF). The advert decides; when it is silent, follow the country's own careers service.
- Headers and footers. St Andrews, LSE and Pitt say to keep key information out of them. Sydney says to put your name and the page number in a footer from page 2. Both can be done: keep contact details in the body, and treat a footer as extra.
- ATS checkers. LSE says simulation tools cannot replicate every employer's system and are not a pass or fail. No careers service we read claims any CV will get past every system.
What to leave off a CV: photo, date of birth and other details
Leave off a photo and your date of birth in the UK, the US, Canada and Australia; the EU's Europass tips suggest a photograph. What each source says:
| Country | What the source says to leave out | Source |
|---|---|---|
| UK | Age, date of birth, marital status, nationality; a photo unless asked for | National Careers Service; St Andrews |
| US | A picture, age or gender, references | Harvard |
| Canada | Age, weight, height, marital status, religion, political views; never a Social Insurance Number; a photo is "not the norm" | Job Bank (2024) |
| Australia | Date of birth, photo, nationality; visa status and work rights may help international students | University of Sydney |
| European Union | The Europass tips say to add a professional photograph | European Union (n.d.) |
Civil Service Careers may ask for an anonymised CV without your name, age or gender. On referees the sources split: "available on request" (National Careers Service), none at all (Harvard), a final section of two or three (Sydney), or a separate sheet until asked (Job Bank).
Can I use AI to write my CV?
Careers services allow AI as an assistant and draw the line at authorship and invention. Harvard says generative AI "should not be the primary author", partly because its output is likely to be generic, and that you should be able to speak to every line at interview (Harvard FAS Mignone Center for Career Success, 2026a). Imperial College London Careers Service (n.d.) warns that an AI tool does not know you well enough, may invent an internship you never did, and should not be given sensitive personal data.
The UK Civil Service allows AI for refining ideas, research and checking spelling and grammar, forbids it for inflating or inventing skills or pasting generic answers, and may reject an application where it was used inappropriately (Civil Service Careers, n.d.-a). A university application is stricter still: Cambridge says "AI must not be used when writing personal statements and CVs", including for help with English (University of Cambridge, n.d.). For the admissions side, see how to write a personal statement, and for wording a declaration, should you disclose AI use, and how.
A graduate CV template for students
This template is EdCitation's own, built on the section order St Andrews and the National Careers Service give. Replace every bracket with your own facts and delete what you cannot fill honestly.
[FULL NAME]
[Town or city] | [phone] | [professional email] | [LinkedIn, if you have one]
PROFILE (optional, up to 50 words)
[Degree and subject, the role you want, and two strengths from the advert
that the sections below prove.]
EDUCATION
[Degree, subject, result or expected result] [Month year to month year]
[University, town]
- [Module, project or dissertation relevant to this job, and what it produced]
[School or college, main qualifications, if recent] [Years]
RELEVANT EXPERIENCE
[Job title], [organisation], [town] [Month year to month year]
- [Action verb, what you did, the result, a number if you have one]
- [Two or three lines per role; placements and volunteering count]
POSITIONS OF RESPONSIBILITY
[Role], [society, team or project] [Years]
- [What you organised or led, and what came of it]
SKILLS
[Software, languages with level, technical methods: named as the advert names them]
INTERESTS (optional)
[Only those that show a skill the job asks for]
REFERENCES
[Available on request, unless the advert asks for names]
For a US resume, drop the references line (Harvard) and aim for one page (Pitt). For an academic CV, add research, publications, presentations, teaching and grants, ordered by the post.
How EdCitation's Check your paper reads a job's application requirements
Check your paper is the best first step for an application with written instructions: it reads the requirements, quotes the sentence behind each one, and never touches your CV. It is free on EdCitation with no account: paste the instructions or upload the file.
What our test returned
Our test input was an invented Graduate Analyst Programme: eight lines of how-to-apply instructions that we wrote ourselves, belonging to no real employer. Seven rules came back, every one beside the sentence it was read from: Font, "Arial"; Font size, "11 pt"; Line spacing, "1 ×"; Margins, "0.79 in" (read from "2 cm margins"); Page count, "No more than 2 pages"; Word limit · Answer to "Why do you want to join this programme?", "No more than 300 words"; Required headings, "Education, Work experience, Skills".
Under "What it asks you to do, which no rule can test", it set aside four lines: "Graduate Analyst Programme: how to apply"; "Submit the CV as a Word document (.docx)."; "Do not include a photograph or your date of birth."; and "List two referees, one of them from your university."
The 300-word limit was tied to the programme question, not to the CV, with the whole sentence as its source. Read each source sentence to see which part a limit governs. The first set-aside line was our heading, not an instruction.
Quick questions
How long should a graduate CV be?
One or two A4 pages in the UK, says St Andrews. US careers services prefer a one-page resume, and Sydney gives one to three pages for most Australian industries.
What is the difference between a CV and a resume?
In the US, a resume is the short industry document and a CV the full academic record. In the UK "CV" covers both, and in Australia the words are used interchangeably.
Should I put a photo on my CV?
Not in the UK, the US, Canada or Australia, according to their careers services and Job Bank. The EU's Europass tips say to add a professional photograph.
Can I use ChatGPT to write my CV?
Careers services say AI may help you edit but must not author the CV or invent experience. Cambridge bars AI from CVs in its postgraduate applications.
Can EdCitation check an application's requirements?
Yes. EdCitation's free Check your paper reads an advert's instructions into a checklist of page limits, headings and formatting, each quoted from its sentence. It never writes or edits a CV.
References
- Civil Service Careers. (n.d.-a). Artificial intelligence and recruitment. https://www.civil-service-careers.gov.uk/artificial-intelligence-and-recruitment/
- Civil Service Careers. (n.d.-b). How to write your CV. https://www.civil-service-careers.gov.uk/how-to-write-your-cv/
- European Union. (n.d.). Create your Europass CV. Europass. https://europass.europa.eu/en/create-europass-cv
- Government of Canada. (2024, May 30). How to write a good resume. Job Bank. https://www.jobbank.gc.ca/findajob/resources/write-good-resume
- Harvard FAS Mignone Center for Career Success. (2026a, July 10). AI for resumes and cover letters. https://careerservices.fas.harvard.edu/ai-resumes-and-cover-letters/
- Harvard FAS Mignone Center for Career Success. (2026b, July 13). Harvard College guide to creating a strong resume. https://careerservices.fas.harvard.edu/resources/create-a-strong-resume/
- Imperial College London Careers Service. (n.d.). Generative AI. https://www.imperial.ac.uk/careers/applications-and-interviews/generative-ai/
- MIT Career Advising & Professional Development. (2026, February 13). Curricula vitae (CVs). https://capd.mit.edu/resources/cvs/
- National Careers Service. (n.d.). How to write a CV. https://nationalcareers.service.gov.uk/careers-advice/cv-sections
- Pitt Career Central. (2025, February 12). Resume and CV writing tips: Applicant tracking systems (ATS). University of Pittsburgh. https://careercentral.pitt.edu/blog/2025/02/12/resume-and-cv-writing-tips-applicant-tracking-systems-ats/
- Thompson-Addo, D. (2026, July 7). Your guide to applicant tracking systems (ATS): What they are and how to stand out. LSE Careers Blog. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/careers/2026/07/07/your-guide-to-applicant-tracking-systems-ats-what-they-are-and-how-to-stand-out/
- University of Cambridge. (n.d.). Using AI in your application. Postgraduate Study. https://www.postgraduate.study.cam.ac.uk/apply/how/ai-postgraduate-applications
- University of St Andrews Careers Centre. (n.d.). CV. https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/careers/how-to-apply/cv/
- University of Sydney Careers Centre. (n.d.). How to write a resume. https://www.sydney.edu.au/careers/students/applying-for-jobs/how-to-write-a-resume.html