It’s time to apply for your first internship/full-time experience. While going through the hiring process, you’ll often see employers seeking resumes and/ or CVs for fresh graduates. What’s the difference?
A CV, or Curriculum Vitae, is a document listing all of your academic background, work history, skills and other achievements. A typical CV for fresh graduates would be at least two pages long. It is useful to introduce your character and recommend you as a suitable candidate for the job position.
Meanwhile, a resume is a short summary of your work history, skills, and education. It is typically one to two pages long. Visit our article if you would like to know more about a resume and how to build one.
How to write a CV for fresh graduates?
1. Personal Information/Header
Start with a header and include your contact information. This section includes your full name, mobile number, professional email, and links to your LinkedIn profile and personal website/ blogs (if any).
Including URLs to your personal website or past projects are useful if you’d like to feature your portfolio for certain job applications. For example, showcase the blog that you’ve personally built, or the articles that you’ve published in the past. This will provide more advantages in your application, provided it is relevant to the job and role.
One piece of advice – please use a generic email address such as john.doe@gmail.com instead of doggyswagjohn@gmail.com. It reflects your professionalism as well.
2. Career Objective
Also called an objective statement, it is a short paragraph (two to three sentences long ) to introduce yourself, your latest education background and experience, your career goals and a value proposition for the job and organization you’re applying for.
Think of it as an elevator pitch. It serves as your formal opening statement and it helps employers to identify your skills and strengths immediately. It saves time and increases your chances of getting an interview opportunity.
Here’s our comprehensive guide on career objectives and now it is useful for you.
3. Education
Highlight your most recent academic qualification and the one before. For university graduates, include your degree and college foundation for example. No need to include your primary and kindergarten qualifications.
For each qualification, including the institution’s name and your degree title. Follow up with the year graduated and your major and minors (if applicable). Be proud and include your academic achievements (CGPA is the way to go in Malaysia). If you are active in clubs and societies, highlight your position in the club committees and talk about past projects.
4. Work Experience
A fresh graduate is not expected to have work experience right away. If you have any, however, here’s your chance to show it. Part-time positions, internships, and freelancing – are valuable real-world experiences that will differentiate you from others.
Here’s how to list them out. Start with your job title and the organisation name. Specify your working duration and timeline. Lastly, describe your role and achievements in bullet points (not more than five points). Similar to the education section, list the latest experience first.
5. Skills
Identify your skill sets. Skill sets refer to both hard skills and soft skills. Hard skills are known as technical knowledge, such as coding, SEO/SEM, Photoshop and more.
Soft skills are interpersonal skills such as critical thinking, leadership and communication skills. These skills can be applied to almost every job that you do and are extremely valuable to employers because they are harder to develop and measure.
If you’ve mastered a skill, you may include them under the work experience section, or create a separate section below it and list out five main hard or soft skills that are relevant to the job. Still don’t know how? We have a complete skills section guide for you.
6. Additional Sections
Finally, there are additional sections that you may include in a CV for fresh graduates. These sections include non-academic honours and achievements, social volunteering experiences, certifications for various courses and lastly your referees.
Referees are people willing to prove your character and abilities when employers are conducting your background check. No work experience? Your university lecturers and association leaders are great alternatives as well.
Final Tips on the CV for Fresh Graduate
It only takes less than 10 seconds for recruiters to disqualify your CV. Make sure the document has good readability. Avoid writing a fresh graduate CV that is too lengthy. Only include crucial and relevant details.
Personalise your CV by including the relevant skills, personality and experiences according to the job that you are applying for. This is important so that your CV has a higher chance of passing the Applicant Tracking System (ATS) for that particular job position.
Lastly, proofread your CV to eliminate any careless grammatical and spelling errors. Use spell check tools and ask your friends and family to go through your CV.
Conclusion
We hope that you’ve had a better understanding of what a CV is and how to write an effective CV for fresh graduates in just 6 easy steps. Remember to be professional and honest about your profile and content.
Need more help to kickstart your CV creation? DayJob provides comprehensive CV examples on various job positions and industries to be referenced while creating a CV for fresh graduates.
Read the Chinese version here: 撰写毕业生履历的6个简单步骤（带提示）
