How to write a CV without work experience?
- Useful information
- 20.11.2020
Actually, the beginning of our career path is not the easiest for most of us. We do not have professional experience, which is often one of the main requirements in advertisements issued by employers. After all, everyone started out once and it’s impossible to fill our application documents the first time. However, the question of how to write a CV without professional experience puzzles many of us. Do we have any chance of employment if we skip this part of the CV? How to build such a document? We suggest in the article!
How to write a CV without work experience?
Work experience is often at the center of a CV, is immediately visible to the recruiter and takes up a lot of space. But what if we don’t have such experience? Often times, it may seem to us that this strikes us out completely in the eyes of the recruiter and he or she will certainly not even look at our CV. However, the right layout or content can make it not the case. How to write a CV without professional experience ?
Highlight what is most important
If you do not have any professional experience, but have an education in the field of the position you are applying for and you have college or high school skills, emphasize that.
It happens that we do not have any professional experience in a given industry, but have already worked while studying. Then it is worth describing our professional experience, but much more emphasizing education and skills, for example by placing them higher in the document. Then the recruiter will start getting acquainted with our professional CV from what in our opinion is most important.
If we do not have any professional experience, it is not worth including this section in our CV and, for example, leave it blank – just skip it, the recruiter will surely guess why it is not there and get everything from the CV the most important things.
Remember that experience is not just a job
When we wonder how to write a CV without experience We often ignore the fact that our experience is not only full-time work or something that we do on a contract.
There are, after all, voluntary work, apprenticeships at school and other initiatives that we undertake while studying. All these elements create our experience and they should certainly be included in our CV.
Are they part of your work experience or maybe we should create separate sections for them? It is only our choice, but there is no problem with describing your activities as experience, adding that they were internships or volunteering.
Enter your achievements
It happens that although we have not worked in the profession so far, we have some achievements that may prove that we have experience and we are not a random person in a random place.
We can easily replace the “work experience” part in the CV with achievements. Thanks to this, the employer will know that although we have not been employed anywhere yet, we are doing well and we already have some practice.
Example 1.
Marta likes to read and express her opinions about books on her website. She reads a lot, therefore her reviews are always exhaustive, analyzing the book on many levels. Thanks to this, Marta is noticed by publishing houses that ask her to write blurbs, official reviews, and even invite her as a speaker at conferences. Marta is just finishing her studies and would love to work in the newspaper’s editorial office. She has no work experience, but she wrote down all the review achievements in her CV. Thanks to this, the recruiters invited her to the next stages of the recruitment process.
Don’t forget about the professional goal
How to write a CV without professional experience so that the recruiter would not give up reading it as soon as he noticed its lack? It is worth starting with the professional goal. This is a short, usually 3-4 sentence presentation of what we want to strive for and what steps we are taking.
This little resume element can make the recruiter interested in our application documents and will invite us for an interview.
Emphasize your skills and interests
Often, even if we do not have professional experience, we have the skills or interests that prepare us to perform a position in what we apply. Therefore, when we write a CV without experience, we need to emphasize what we already know – regardless of where and how we learned it.
Let’s also remember about soft skills, such as the ability to work on one’s own, good organization of time and work, openness, assertiveness, charisma, etc. Of course, let’s not repeat the clichés – let’s include in skills what is really we can do.
Don’t lie
Although we mention this at the end, it’s a basic rule: we don’t lie in the application documents. Lie has short legs. Sometimes we may be tempted to enter anything in the work experience section, as long as it is not empty. This is a bug. The recruiter can verify this quickly, already at the stage of reading the CV. And if our lie comes to light – the bad opinion may drag on for years, because remember that the industry is not a bottomless well and we can always come across someone who previously caught us cheating. It’s not even worth trying.
How to write a CV without professional experience ? By highlighting other important information that may be useful for the recruiter to invite us to further stages of the recruitment process. It is worth acquiring skills on your own so that they are our advantage at the very beginning of our professional path!
