The No-experience CV: How to Land Your First Job

Your first CV can feel like an impossible task: every job requires experience, but you need a job to get that experience. The good news is that employers don’t expect a recent graduate or first-time job seeker to have a long list of professional roles. What they want to see is evidence that you can use the skills the job requires.

If you’re wondering how to make a CV for your first job, start with the experience you do have. Coursework, internships, part-time jobs, voluntary work, and personal projects can all give you something useful to show an employer. Choose the examples that have the strongest connection to the job you’re applying for and explain what you actually did.

That’s especially important for entry-level tech roles. If you’re applying for your first software, IT, or other technical position, a project, GitHub profile, or relevant certification can give an employer something specific to evaluate, even if you haven’t worked in the field yet.

What to Put on a CV With No Experience

You don’t need to force everything into a traditional work experience section. When you’re building your first CV, start with the experiences that give you the strongest evidence for the job you’re targeting.

The table below breaks down where each type of experience fits and what it can replace.

You don’t need to make any of these experiences sound like something they’re not. A class project is still a class project and not a full-time job. The important part is showing what you built, researched, organised, or improved, and what you learned from doing it.

That approach also reflects where hiring is at right now. NACE’s 2026 research found that 70% of surveyed employers use skills-based hiring, with screening one of the stages where it’s most commonly used. The same research highlights internships, other hands-on experience, and the ability to connect coursework and extracurricular activities to professional skills.

How to Structure a CV for Your First Job

For most entry-level CVs, a simple structure is the safest choice:

• Contact information: Name, location, phone, email, and relevant LinkedIn or portfolio links.
• CV summary (optional): A brief introduction highlighting your field of study, strongest skills, and relevant projects or experience.
• Education: Degree or current programme, school, graduation date, and relevant coursework where useful.
• Skills: Technical and practical skills that match the role.
• Projects or relevant experience: Include the most relevant details you have for the specific job.
• Certifications and additional experience: Include certifications, voluntary work, leadership, or other relevant experience when they strengthen the application.

You don’t have to use this exact order. For example, if you have a strong project or internship, it may deserve more attention than a long list of coursework. Your main goal is to make the most relevant evidence easy to find. If you’d rather start with a template than build your CV from scratch, Toptal CV can help you organise these sections and tailor the content to the role you’re targeting.

Entry-level CV Example: Computer Science Student

The example below is for a computer science student applying for a first job in tech without a previous internship or paid role in the field.

It uses the standard CV sections, but puts more weight on projects and technical skills because they give the employer the clearest picture of what the candidate can do. The CV also includes a GitHub link, which gives the hiring team a chance to look at the candidate’s actual work.

This approach is particularly useful when you’re building an entry-level tech CV. If you don’t have professional experience in the field yet, projects, coursework, and technical work can give an employer something concrete to evaluate.

Here's what works well in this CV example:

• The introduction gives the reader useful information. Instead of an objective focused on what the candidate is looking for, the summary highlights their education, technical skills, and project experience.
• The GitHub profile backs up the skills section. Listing Python or JavaScript is a good start, but giving an employer a way to see the code you’ve written is much more useful.
• Projects are treated like traditional work experience. Each project is included like an experience entry, with the project name, tools used, and details about what the candidate built or contributed.
• Part-time work counts. A campus job or retail position may not be directly related to tech, but it still shows how the applicant handled responsibility, worked with others, and managed priorities.

This same principle applies in other industries. A writing portfolio can support a communications application, design work can support a creative role, and voluntary projects can show planning or leadership experience. Start with whatever gives the employer the clearest picture of what you can contribute to the role.

Opening a CV With No Experience

You’ll still find older CV advice recommending objectives for entry-level candidates, but that advice hasn’t kept up with how CVs are read today. We recommend skipping the objective statement, as most of them don’t say much more than “seeking an opportunity to grow and learn.” They tell the recruiter what you want without giving them much reason to keep reading.

Objectives still have a place on some CVs. For example, they can help when there’s a gap between your previous experience and the role you’re applying for, such as a career change, a military-to-civilian transition, or a return to work after a long absence. In those cases, a short explanation can give the recruiter useful context.

If you want to include an introduction at the top of your CV, a short summary is usually the best choice. Use it to explain what you know and what you can do, such as your field of study, your strongest skills, and the kind of work you’re ready to take on.

You can also leave the introduction out altogether. There’s no requirement to fill that space just because it appears on a CV template. If you don’t have anything specific to say, let the recruiter get straight to your education, projects, skills, and other experience.

If you do include a summary, keep it short and specific. For example: “Computer science graduate with project experience in Python, JavaScript, and SQL, including an independently built and deployed full-stack web application.” That gives the reader something concrete to work with instead of describing what the candidate hopes to find. For a full breakdown of when a summary works better than an objective, and when it’s fine to skip both, see our CV objective vs. summary guide.

How to Build an Entry-level Tech CV

If you’re applying for your first job in tech, your projects and technical work deserve particular attention. You don’t need a professional software engineering job to demonstrate technical ability. A final-year project, coding assignment, personal application, data analysis project, website, or contribution to an open-source project can all give you something to discuss.

For each project, include:

• What you built or worked on
• The tools or technologies you used
• Your specific contribution
• The result, where you have one
• A link to the finished work, when appropriate

For example, “Built a Python application for a class project” doesn’t tell the reader much. A stronger entry might explain what the application did, which libraries or technologies you used, and how you tested or improved it. The same idea applies to an entry-level IT CV. Instead of listing “networking” or “troubleshooting” as skills with no context, point to the lab work, certification, personal project, or other experience where you used them.

How to Use Part-time Jobs and Other Unrelated Experience

Don’t leave a part-time job off your CV just because it isn’t directly related to the position you’re applying for. For example, a retail job might show that you resolved customer issues, trained new employees, or worked towards sales targets. A campus job might involve scheduling, admin work, or managing requests. Tutoring can demonstrate communication, planning, and the ability to explain complex information clearly. All of these represent transferable skills that can be useful for your next role.

You don’t need to pretend these were technical roles. Instead, describe the responsibilities that demonstrate skills you can bring to the next job. The same applies to voluntary work and student organisations. If you organised an event, managed a budget, led a team, raised money, or coordinated volunteers, that’s experience worth including.

Common Mistakes on a No-experience CV

• Filling the CV with irrelevant details. Listing every class, hobby, or minor task you’ve completed makes it harder to see the experience that's actually relevant for your application.
• Apologising for having little experience. You don’t need to explain that you’re inexperienced. Use the space to show what you’ve learned, built, contributed to, or taken responsibility for.
• Leaving the experience section empty. If you don’t have traditional employment to add, include your projects, internships, volunteering experience, or other relevant activities instead.
• Listing skills without showing where you used them. A list of “Python, teamwork, communication” is much less useful than showing how those skills were used in a project, job, or course.
• Using the same CV for every application. Your first CV may be short, but that doesn’t mean it should stay identical. Adjust the summary, project selection, and skills emphasis to match the role.

Ready to Build Your First CV?

You don't need years of work experience to build a strong first CV. What matters is giving the reader enough evidence to understand what you can do and where you've applied those skills. Toptal CV can help you organise your education, projects, skills, and other experience into a clear structure, with AI-assisted suggestions you can adapt to the role you're targeting.