1. The reframe: nobody starts with experience
You cannot have experience of a job you have never done, and the employer advertising it knows that. What an entry-level employer screens for is evidence you can be relied on: that you turn up when you say you will, finish what you start, work with other people, and can learn without being hand-held.
Every question on a first-job CV is one of those four in disguise. A Saturday job answers the first, a dissertation the second, a group project the third, a course you finished in your own time the fourth. Read the page that way and "what do I put on a CV with no experience?" stops being a question about having nothing.
One rule holds the rest together: every line must be true and checkable. A thin CV is forgiven; an invented one comes apart in the first ten minutes of the interview.
2. Where experience hides when you think you have none
Most people who say they have no experience are using a narrow definition of the word. Paid, full-time, relevant work is the smallest category of useful evidence, and the one you are least likely to have. Here are six places the rest hides.
| Where it hides | The bullet you can write |
|---|---|
| Coursework and dissertations | Researched and wrote a 12,000-word dissertation from 40 primary sources, planning two terms of reading to a fixed deadline. |
| Group projects | Coordinated a five-person group project through a mid-term collapse in attendance, redistributing the work and delivering on time. |
| Volunteering | Volunteered weekly at a charity shop for a year, running the till, pricing donated stock and training two new volunteers. |
| Part-time and casual work | Worked 15 hours a week behind a bar alongside a full course load, closing the venue unaided twice a week. |
| Family responsibilities | Ran the school run, meals and homework for a younger sibling during a parent's shift work, for two years. |
| Online courses you finished | Completed an eight-week data analysis course and built a working dashboard from a public dataset as the final project. |
Three more take the same shape. A side project becomes a line naming what you made and what it took. Sport and societies show commitment and work with other people. Freelance or unpaid work — a website for a relative's shop, a logo for a friend's business — sits with paid work, with the word "freelance" beside it.
Two cautions: do not inflate a one-week placement into a role, and never list an activity without saying what you did in it. "Member of the debating society" says nothing; "argued a motion in front of sixty people" is something a reader can picture.
3. The section order for a CV with no experience
Use a different order from the standard one:
- Education — course, institution, dates, and one line on anything relevant you did inside it.
- Projects — two or three pieces of work you can describe in detail.
- Work experience — every paid or unpaid job, including the ones that look unrelated.
- Skills — short, in the words the posting uses.
- Extras — languages, certificates, volunteering, anything that earns its line.
Education goes first because it is the most recent and most checkable thing you have, and where a reader looks first. Projects come second because a project is the closest thing to a job on the page: defined work with a start, an end and something to show. Work experience comes third, not first, because it is usually the least relevant part of your history — but it is never left out, because a hole in your timeline stands out more than an unrelated job.
Two adjustments. If the part-time job is directly relevant — two years in a shop applying for a customer service role — move Work experience above Projects. And if you are applying outside the UK, check which document is wanted: CV vs résumé explains why. With real work history, the standard order in how to write a CV serves you better.
4. What goes under "Work experience" when the work is unrelated
A supermarket, café or warehouse job is not a weaker version of the job you want. It is proof of the exact things an entry-level employer is trying to establish, and the only place a stranger has paid you to be reliable. Describe what you handled, not the employer's business.
Take a retail job: the left column is what most people write, the right is the same job written for a reader.
| Weak | Strong |
|---|---|
| Duties included working on the till and helping customers. | Handled around 200 transactions a day on a busy till, including refunds, and reconciled the float at close for eight months. |
| Dealt with customer complaints. | Resolved complaints at the counter, most without escalating to a manager, and logged recurring causes so the team could fix the process. |
| Worked under pressure during busy periods. | Kept the floor running through a Christmas week with two colleagues off sick, covering deliveries, tills and the queue at once. |
| Trained new staff members. | Trained six new starters on the till, the returns process and the opening routine, and wrote the checklist the store still uses. |
| Responsible for cashing up. | Reconciled daily takings of around £4,000 and traced the two discrepancies that appeared in six months to a mis-keyed supplier invoice. |
Each strong version names a specific situation, gives a number you could explain if asked, and says what changed or what you prevented. The Saturday night you calmed a difficult table persuades a reader faster than "excellent communication skills".
5. A worked example: Alex Morgan, recent graduate
Alex has just finished a history degree and is applying for an entry-level marketing assistant job, with no marketing experience. The details are invented; the shape is the point.
Alex Morgan
Sheffield · [email protected] · 07700 900123 · linkedin.com/in/alexmorgan
Education
BA History, University of Sheffield — September 2022 to June 2025, upper second-class honours. Dissertation built from 40 primary sources held in two archives.
Projects
- Sheffield venue guide, 2025 — researched and wrote a 30-entry guide to independent music venues and published it as a website; it reached about 2,000 readers in its first month.
- Society Instagram account, 2024–25 — ran social media for a 200-member student society: a weekly posting schedule, the captions, and replies to people wanting to join.
Work experience
- Sales assistant, Oxfam, Sheffield — October 2023 to June 2025, part time. Served around 60 customers a day, priced donated stock, and trained three new volunteers on the till.
- Bar staff, The Rutland Arms, Sheffield — June to September 2024. Worked closing shifts through the summer, handling the till and the last-hour queue alone twice a week.
Skills
Writing and editing · Instagram and Canva · spreadsheets, including formulas · customer service and cash handling.
Extras
Volunteer at a local food bank, one Saturday a month since January 2024. Full clean driving licence. References available on request.
Notice what is missing: no "hard-working team player", no profile built from adjectives, no referee details. Every line could survive a follow-up question, the only test that matters. The document fits on one page — a courtesy to a reader with 300 of these to get through. The layout rules that keep it parseable are in CV format.
6. How to explain a gap on your CV
A gap is any stretch of time a reader cannot account for. Employers ask because a blank invites a guess, and the guess is usually worse than the truth. A gap described in one line is smaller than one left open.
How to present it
Give it a heading, dates, and one line in the same format as everything else. "Career break — March to September 2024" plus a sentence is complete. You do not owe anyone the detail, and a calm, factual line reads as confidence, not evasion.
Caring, illness, travel and unfinished study
- Caring responsibilities. Name the work, because it is work: "Full-time carer for a parent, 2024–2025 — appointments, benefits paperwork and a care rota shared with two siblings." That is coordination and reliability.
- Illness. Disclose only what you choose to. "Health treatment and recovery, four months, now fully recovered" is complete and truthful. You need not name a diagnosis, and anything you write is a topic you have agreed to discuss.
- Travel. Say what it was rather than dressing it up: "Travelled in Vietnam and Cambodia for five months after graduating" is fine. If you worked while you were away, say so.
- Study that did not finish. Name the course and institution, then give one neutral reason: "Started a BSc in Computer Science at Leeds, withdrew after the first year for family reasons." Never list a qualification you did not receive.
What not to do
Do not stretch dates to cover a gap: dates are the first thing a reference check confirms, and a discrepancy is a bigger problem than the gap was. Do not write "various" or "sabbatical" and hope. Prepare two sentences before the interview: what the gap was, and what you are doing now.
7. What to leave off
The test for any line: if a reader asked you about it, would the answer help you? If not, cut it.
- Hobbies that signal nothing. "Reading, socialising, travel" could describe most of the population. Keep an interest only where it shows something: a sport you compete in, a commitment you kept.
- Skills you cannot demonstrate. Every skill is an invitation to be tested on it. "Excel — advanced" is a question coming in the first ten minutes; "spreadsheets, including formulas and pivot tables" is a claim you can stand behind.
- References. Omit them, or write "references available on request" and nothing more. Never put a referee's contact details on a CV you send to strangers — ask them first.
- Anything that invites a question you do not want. Date of birth, marital status, a photograph, a half-finished certificate, an interest that quietly says you are unavailable at weekends. Each line is a topic you have agreed to discuss.
- School qualifications once you have a degree, unless the employer asks.
One more thing worth cutting is the second page. Write everything down first, then delete until only evidence is left. For what is changing around CVs this year, see CV trends 2026.
Where Merit fits
If the hard part is remembering the specifics — the shifts you covered, the numbers you hit, the thing you fixed — Merit interviews you about your work history, keeps the facts you confirm in a private vault, and drafts a CV from that record. You confirm every fact before it is used, and you can export or delete your data. One interview and one CV are free; after that it is $20 a month.