CV Examples for Students + Comprehensive Guide

Student CV Examples

Among the following student CV examples you can find a recent-graduate looking for a summer job related with electronics, an BA student looking for an internship, a nurse student CV, a student teacher CV, a grad school resume, and an economics college student looking for a position in the academic job market. Easily browse these sample resumes in PDF format by clicking the "Download CV button"

High School Student about to start Vocational School with a no-experience resume

University student - Senior year CV example

College student without experience outside academia

Student Teacher CV example

Student Nurse CV example

How to write a great CV as a Student

Many people tend to think that crafting a great Cv as a student is more complicated than usual, since students tend to have a shorter work history or no work history at all. In this article we debunk some myths, include real-life samples, and challenge you to do some introspective work to be able to come up with the best possible version of your CV. Shifting the focus to sections like the personal statement, the skills section, the education section, etc. without forgetting about the work history, that even though it won't probably be the most important section on your CV, it can definitely help you build a stronger application. Let's dive in!

Grammar mistakes are a huge red flag for recruiters, not because they expect candidates to have excellent written skills but because they mean that you didn't pay attention to the details, and in a competitive job-market this is a basic and very important skill that they will find in other candidates. Grammar mistakes in your Student CV are very easy to fix: Make sure you use a grammar checking tool when writing your CV.

Things to consider before Starting your Student CV

Before kickstarting your student CV writing process, we highly encourage you to stop for a second and understand why you need a CV. The most likely scenario is that you need it to apply to a specific role or set of roles. In this case we encourage you to identify what skills are necessary for these target roles or singlerole. Some of the skills can be easily found in the role's job description; others require a little bit of industry knowledge and common sense. Checking the business' physical or online presence can also help.

The next step will be to spot specific examples within your experiences (if you have them), academic background, academic achievements, experiences, volunteering, free-time activities or hobbies, etc. that proof you have acquired and/or practiced those skills, and are ready to apply them in the role/roles you are applying to. Use the recommended CV sections that you will find below to make sure you cover them all.

This exercise of identifying these skills will give you a huge advantage, and the next step will be to write a "master CV" that you will be able to use as a base to create new variations for many target roles if you want to do so.

The perfect student CV format & useful tips

Like usual, there isn't a one-size-fits-all format. The best format for a student CV will depend on the amount of work history and information you have. Students with lots of relevant work history and academic background will pick CV templates with larger room for these types of sections, while students with fewer professional history will pick a template that can fill up a page with fewer content. It also depends if you are also attaching cover letters or not.

In addition to the template/ design, the format of a student CV is determined by the structure and order of its sections, that we will cover in the next segment. Depending on the structure and sections you pick, it will be considered a skill-based CV or a Chronological CV,but don't get too messed up with these terms, since hint: it doesn't really matter how your CV format is called.

Skill-based CVs tend to be more common among students, since this format highlights your abilities and qualifications over heavily focusing on your work history like the reverse-chronological CV does.

One important tip is that no matter what you turn your CV in as a PDF, even if you use a Miscrosoft Word CV template to make it. The reason is because turning your CV otherwise can very easily alter its format and content, and you want to avoid this at all costs. Of course, this rule doesn't apply if the job application form specifically requests a file other than a PDF, then turn it in the specifically requested format. But otherwise, even if it isn't specified, always turn in a PDF CV. Find here PDF CV templates.

Student CV Layout

The general rule says that you should be able to fit your CV in one page; this is especially easy in the case of students. Remember that if your CV is longer than that, you can always use an online CV like the one you can see below, or a portfolio type of website to present extended information. That being said, teaching and research positions in academia tend to accept and actually prefer long CVs with all the candidate's information; in these cases CVs can be 2 pages or even more.

The layout of your student CV will depend on the importance you want to give to the work history section. In order to decide this, check out this segment. If you have relevant experience, we recommend you to go with the first layout, if you have a work history but most of the transferable skills are in other parts of your CV like your interests, your academic background, personal statement, the skills section, etc. then go with the second one, and if you have no experience at all then go with the third one.

These are just proposed layouts; the final ideal section structure will have to be decided on a case-to-case basis, depending both on the student's profile and the skills required in the target roles.

In terms of your CV format, it is important to make sure that it can be properly read by ATS applicant tracking software. And in terms of its content, it's equally crucial to follow this article's guidelines to ensure your student CV covers the minimum requirements for the role. If your CV can't be read by these softwares or you haven't include the right keywords , there is a big chance your CV won't get to the eyes of a human.

CV Header for students

This is a comprehensive list of action verbs you should be using on your cabin crew CV:

Often overlooked, the CV header is inevitably the segment that will be first noticed on your CV, therefore it is smart to make good use of it. In addition to your full name, your cabin crew CV header should contain:

• A valid and professional and valid email address. High school students and other students should avoid using emails with nicknames and other addresses created just for fun. Ideally use an email that uses your name and surname. If you don't want to change your email address with these characteristics, just create a new one and forward incoming email to your old email address.
• A valid phone number
• A professional CV headline, also known as Job title , is a one-liner of your most relevant / prominent skills. Here you have a whole article that will help you craft the best CV headline. Check out the CV headline examples for students.
• Often candidates add these elements to their CV's contact information section:
  • Location or desired location
  • Social media profile links
  • Personal website links
  • Availability

Even though it is very obvious, it's important to mention that both email address and phone number should be yours, don't use email addresses or phone numbers that belong to other people.

CV headline for students - Great examples

Do you notice the difference? It's not that these last CV headlines are completely wrong; definitely better to add these rather than not adding a CV Headline at all; however, they are missing an opportunity to mention key skills that define you and that ideally align with the target role.

CV Personal Statement

Also known as "professional summary", "executive summary", "about me", etc. this is the section for you to shine as a highly motivated and capable student. This section is a brief summary of your skills and experience, where you will explain at a glance: who you are and what you have done over the years. After reading the job description as described here, you want this summary to detail why you are the ideal candidate for the position. This means that ideally, the personal statement should be rewritten for each position you apply to. If you are applying to very similar positions and come up with a summary, that is good for all of them, that is also a good way to go about it.

Be as concise as you can be: the ideal length of the professional summary on a student CV is one or two paragraphs, with no more than 200 words.

As you can see in the following example, the personal statement, can also include your career goal or CV objective, since lately there has been voices against including this in a specific section on your CV. This goal shouldn't be vague and must be totally aligned with the company's goals.

CV personal statement student examples

Student CV key skills section

Skills are commonly divided into two categories: Hard and soft-skills. The hard skills are those skills that can be measured more easily, like languages or technical skills. You can say that you are proficient in the usage of Adobe Photoshop or fluent in Spanish and there isn't much room for interpretation: we are going to assume you can use photoshop like a pro and hold a conversation in Spanish understanding that you could make mistakes but these won't affect communication. These type of skills can be listed and included in your CV by quantifying them whether with proficiency descriptions or with scale charts:

Soft skills, on the other hand, are inter-personal and behaviorial skills, very hard to quantify and highly subject to interpretation. Therefore, it isn't generally a good idea to use lists to include soft-skills in a CV; instead candidates should use other sections to include them, as described here.

However, skill-based CVs are an exception to this norm, particularly in the case of students with a no-experience resume where the skills section becomes one of the most important sections. So, when it makes sense, it is totally fine to list your soft-skills in. But you should still avoid including bullet points in descriptionless lists. Instead, as shown in the examples below, you should include examples of how you have used those skills, alternatively mentioning how you acquired them.

When it comes to including the skills section in a Student CV there is many possibilities, here are three smart ways to go about it:

• A Skills / Skills summary section combining all your hard and soft skills, with subsections.
• Many sections grouping skills in categories.
• A dedicated section for each relevant skill.

Adding one or more skills sections to your CV doesn't mean you can't include examples showing off your skills in other CV sections. You should still use your achievements, responsibilites, executive summary etc. to emphasize what you are most talented at.

Great examples of student CV skills usage

In the following example, we can see how a student has done a great use of her personal profile to describe some of the skills required for the job, even though she has a no-experience resume:

Experience or no-experience, that is the question

Even though you might think that you don't have a work history, or that the experience you have doesn't relate to your targeted role, in most cases it is a better idea to include it in your student CV than to leave it out. The key is to take these informal or apparently unrelated experiences, and write a work description focusing on the transferable skills used in these kinds of experiences.

Let's take the case of the university student that is looking for an internship at a marketing or creative agency. He's never had a formal marketing job; however, he's been working on his personal brand for more than 3 years now with a blog with thousands of monthly visitors and a Youtube channel with more than 1K subscribers, the tasks he's performed to build those audiences will be very valuable on his next marketing job. Therefore he must mention these in his student CV, and even though they can be added in a separate section, including it as a work experience, it is a perfectly fine option to showcase his responsibilities and achievements.

Related experience example

Non related work experience example

Likewise, his work history includes a retail weekend work at an electronics store for more than a year, even though at first it could seem that this experience is completely irrelevant for the job application at hand, it really isn't, since working in a retail position has most likely developed his customer service and teamwork, both very transferable skills to most positions at a marketing/creative agency. Therefore, when including this experience, his focus has been on responsibilities and achievements that showcase these skills. Next, you can see an example showing how to include a non-related work experience in your student CV:

Non related experience example

No-experience resume / CV for students

Now, we understand if your response to our question is that you are a high school student genuinely has no experience, not even in sporadic garden or lown mowing. This is then the only case where you should write a 100% no-experience CV, which is totally fine; you will then relay on other sections to showcase your skills, like the Education, Hobbies Interests or Volunteering sections.

Qualifications or Academic background section

If there is a case where the education or qualifications section is more relevant than ever is in the case of students and recent graduates. Take advantage of this section to highlight any awards, honors you have obtained over your academic background.

Include only your higher education diplomas, avoid including lower education if you have obtained higher education diplomas afterwards. High school student resumes, should also only include their current studies with the predicted year of graduation. College students, vocational students or university students should include their A-Levels, GCSEs and the current degree they are studying including their estimated time of graduation.

Following, we attach an example of how to successfully maximize the use of the education section on a student resume example:

Qualifications example for students

The power of additional sections on a student CV

Even though we have set a layout framework for student CV sections, there is no limit when it comes to the number or nature of sections. There are typical additional sections that can be very useful on a student's CV to showcase skills:

• Language skills
• Honors & awards
• Interests or hobbies
• Volunteering experience
• Complementary education
• Extracurricular activities
• References

But then, as you can see in this high school student resume, where she has added a section under the name "Highlighted products" or another one to explain a specific project she is currently working on, the possibilities are endless, and will depend on the position and the with a list of interesting projects she's done over her academic years and free time, and the candidate.

Is it necessary to add student cover letters to your applications?

As you probably guessed, the answer to this question is that it depends. If the application process has a field for it, then you definitely have to include one, and as it happens with the CV you should target it as much as you can to the targeted role.

On the other hand, if the job application doesn't offer the possibility to add one, don't add one. Your personal statement will act as a sort of brief cover letter targeted to the role.

Finally, students that are sending a spontaneous application, should evaluate the convenience of adding a covering letter on a case-per case basis. There is actually three recommended options:

• Send an email attaching your cover letter and CV
• Send an email with the cover letter as the email content with the CV attached
• Send a brief email attaching the CV that includes a targeted personal statement where the candidate clearly aligns his/her goals with those of the role and company

Once again, make sure to use a grammar checking tool when crafting your application email, linkedin message or cover letter.

Montse Lorente

Coach & recruiter @kaelon.co and co-founder @cvonline.me

Montse Lorente

Coach & recruiter @kaelon.co and co-founder @cvonline.me