A good UK CV is usually two pages long, written in reverse chronological order, and built around six main sections: your contact details, a short personal profile, your key skills, your employment history with achievements, your education and qualifications, and any relevant extras. Keep it clean and simple, back up what you say with facts and figures, and tailor it to every job you apply for. That’s the short answer. The rest of this guide explains how to do each part properly.
I’m John Logan. I served in the Royal Navy, then spent more than 40 years in senior management, running businesses and recruiting and interviewing more people than I could count. These days I write CVs for a living, and I’ve worked with over 500 clients, from school leavers to senior military officers and company directors. Everything below is what I look for when a CV lands on my desk, and what I do when I write one.
What a CV is actually for
Before you write a single word, it helps to be clear about the job your CV has to do.
A CV isn’t your life story, and it’s not a list of every task you have ever carried out. It has one purpose: to make the person reading it want to meet you. If it gets you an interview, it has done its job. You can tell the rest of the story in the room.
That changes how you write it. Every line should earn its place by giving the reader a reason to pick up the phone. If a line doesn’t do that, it probably doesn’t need to be there.
How to structure a CV in the UK
There’s no single legal format for a CV, but recruiters in the UK expect a fairly standard order. Stick to it. When information is where people expect to find it, they read it more quickly and they read more of it.
Contact details
Put these at the very top: your full name, phone number, a professional email address, your town or city, and a link to your LinkedIn profile if it’s up to date.
You don’t need your full home address. A town and county is enough. Make sure your email address looks professional. If yours is a nickname you set up years ago, create a new one based on your name.
Personal profile
Your personal profile (some people call it a professional summary) sits directly under your contact details. It’s four or five lines that tell the reader who you are, what you are good at and what you bring to the role.
A few rules I always follow:
- Write it last. By the time you have written the rest of your CV, you’ll have reminded yourself of everything you’ve achieved, and the profile becomes much easier to write.
- Don’t use “I”, “me” or “my”. Keep it crisp and factual.
- Match it to the job. A profile that has nothing to do with the role you’re applying for is one of the quickest ways to lose a reader.
I’ve written a full guide to writing a personal profile for your CV, with examples of what works and what doesn’t.
Key skills
Next comes a short section of key skills. On the CVs I write, I usually split these into management skills and technical competencies, with around eight of each.
These shouldn’t be generic. “Good communicator” and “team player” tell the reader nothing. Use the actual skills the employer has asked for in the advert, as long as you genuinely have them. This section is also where a lot of your keywords live, which matters for applicant tracking systems (more on those below).
Employment history
This is the heart of your CV. List your jobs in reverse chronological order, so your current or most recent role comes first. For each one, include:
- Your job title
- The employer’s name and location
- Your start and end dates (month and year is fine)
- A short line or two on the purpose of the role
- Bullet points showing what you achieved
That line on the purpose of the role is something I add to almost every CV I write, and I don’t see many others doing it. The person reading your CV may know nothing about your industry or your job. Two or three lines explaining why you were employed, what the business needed you to do, give them the context to understand everything that follows.
Give your most recent roles the most space. If you’ve been working for 25 years, the jobs from the early part of your career can be shortened to a title, employer and dates, or grouped together under a heading such as “Earlier career”.
Achievements
Achievements belong inside your employment history, as bullet points under each job. For senior candidates I sometimes add a short “Key achievements” section near the top as well, so the reader sees the headline results straight away.
This is where most CVs fall down, so I have given it a section of its own further down this guide.
Education and qualifications
List your highest or most relevant qualifications first. Degrees, professional qualifications and recent industry training all belong here.
How much detail you include depends on where you are in your career. If you left school last year, your GCSEs and A levels matter. If you left school 20 years ago, they probably don’t, and a single line will do. The same goes for licences and certificates. If a qualification has expired, or you wouldn’t be confident using it now, think carefully before including it.
Extras
Finally, you can add a short section for anything else that’s relevant to the job: languages, a full driving licence if the role needs one, security clearance, volunteering, professional memberships, or interests that genuinely say something about you.
Keep it short and relevant. “Reading, walking and socialising with friends” adds nothing. Coaching a junior football team or running marathons for charity might, because it says something about commitment and leadership.
What to include in a CV, and what to leave out
People often worry about what they should and shouldn’t put on a CV. Here is a straightforward guide.
Include
- Your name and contact details
- A personal profile tailored to the role
- Key skills that match the job advert
- Your employment history, in reverse chronological order, with achievements
- Education, qualifications and relevant training
- Anything else the employer specifically asks for
Leave out
- A photograph. In the UK, a photo isn’t expected on a CV, and it takes up space you could use far better.
- Your date of birth, age, marital status, nationality or religion. Employers don’t need these to decide whether to interview you.
- Your full home address
- The words “Curriculum Vitae” as a title. Your name is the title.
- “References available on request”. Employers will ask if they want them.
- Salary details, unless the advert asks for them
- Reasons for leaving each job. You can discuss those at interview.
- Anything that isn’t true. If it’s on your CV, you need to be happy to talk about it in an interview.
How long should a CV be in the UK?
For most people, two pages. It’s the length recruiters expect, and it’s enough room to show what you’ve done without rambling.
There are a few sensible exceptions:
- School and college leavers can usually fit everything onto one page.
- Graduates typically need between one and two pages. I generally write two, because there’s usually more worth saying than people realise. My guide to writing a graduate CV explains how to fill that space with part-time work, projects and achievements.
- Academics, surgeons, researchers and others with long lists of publications or specialist training may need more. Even then, I keep the main CV to two pages and add a separate page for publications or additional qualifications.
I’ve written CVs for senior military officers, police officers, company directors and politicians, and I have very rarely needed more than two pages. If yours is running to three or four, it almost always means there’s too much detail on older roles or too many duties and not enough results.
CV format and layout
Your CV doesn’t need to be clever. It needs to be easy to read. Whether someone gives it ten seconds or two minutes, they will form an opinion almost straight away, and an untidy CV makes life harder for you before they have read a word.
What works:
- A professional, easy-to-read font such as Calibri, Arial or Times New Roman
- A font size of 10 to 12 for the main text (Word allows half sizes such as 10.5, which can help)
- Clear headings, with a subtle colour if you like, such as dark grey or navy, and the rest of the text in black
- Consistent spacing, margins and date formats from top to bottom
- Bullet points for achievements, not long paragraphs
What doesn’t work:
- Decorative fonts and lots of colour
- Photos, graphs, charts, icons and “skill level” bars
- Text boxes, tables and columns, which some applicant tracking systems struggle to read
- Large areas of empty space, or the opposite, text crammed to the edges of the page
- Inconsistent formatting, which looks careless even if the content is good
On file type, I generally recommend sending your CV as a PDF because it keeps the formatting intact. If an employer asks for a Word document, send a Word document. Following instructions is part of the test.
For a sense of how a finished CV should look, have a look at my CV examples.
How to write achievements that get noticed
If there’s one section that decides whether you get an interview, it’s this one.
Most CVs read like job descriptions. They tell the reader what the person was responsible for, not what they actually achieved. A recruiter already knows roughly what a sales manager or an operations manager does. What they want to know is how well you did it.
Give the reader some scope
I regularly see lines like this:
“Managed a large team for an established company.”
What does that tell me? Not much. Is a large team five people, fifty or five hundred? Is an established company a family business or a multinational?
Compare it with this:
“Managed and developed a team of 15 within a multi-million-pound organisation, reducing staff turnover over two years.”
Now I understand the size of the role. Better still, if you can put a figure on that reduction, include it.
Use numbers wherever you can
Numbers give your CV credibility. Think about:
- Budgets you managed
- Revenue or sales you grew
- Costs you saved
- People you led, trained or recruited
- Projects you delivered, and whether they came in on time and on budget
- Customer satisfaction, complaints or response times you improved
Not every job has neat figures, and that’s fine. Every profession has its own measures of success. For a nurse it might be patient outcomes or audits passed. For a teacher, results or responsibilities taken on. For someone in the forces, the size and value of the equipment or people you were responsible for. Find the measures that matter in your world and use them.
Start each bullet with a strong verb
Begin every bullet point with an action word: led, delivered, managed, developed, introduced, reduced, increased, improved, negotiated, established. It keeps your CV active and focused on what you did.
And make each bullet add something new. If you’ve had two similar jobs, don’t copy the same bullet points across. Show how you developed and what was different about the second role.
There are more examples, and the mistakes I see most often, in my guide to key achievements on a CV.
Tailoring your CV to the job advert
Very few people tailor their CV for each application, and in my experience it’s one of the biggest reasons they don’t get interviews.
You don’t need to rewrite your whole CV every time. Concentrate on three areas:
- Your personal profile
- Your management skills
- Your technical competencies
That’s where most of the keywords belong.
When you read a job advert, think of it in sections. There’s usually an introduction to the company, a description of the role and its responsibilities, and then a section setting out the skills, experience and qualifications the employer wants. That last section is the one that matters most. Those are your keywords.
Use the employer’s own wording wherever it accurately describes your experience. If the advert asks for “stakeholder management”, don’t write “relationship management” because you prefer the sound of it. To you they may mean the same thing. To the software, and sometimes to the recruiter, they don’t.
You only need to use each keyword naturally, once or twice. Repeating the same phrase over and over doesn’t help, and it makes your CV hard to read.
The same principle applies to your cover letter. If you’re not sure whether you need one, my guide on the difference between a CV and a cover letter explains how the two work together, and how to write a cover letter walks you through writing one.
ATS basics: how applicant tracking systems read your CV
An applicant tracking system, or ATS, is recruitment software that employers and agencies use to store, sort and search applications. A lot of people believe ATS exists to reject CVs automatically. It doesn’t work like that.
An ATS is closer to an electronic filing system. Recruiters use it to search for candidates with particular skills, qualifications or experience. People still decide who is interviewed. But if your CV doesn’t contain the words they search for, or the software can’t read it properly, you may never appear on their shortlist.
To give yourself the best chance:
- Use a simple layout with standard headings such as “Employment history” and “Education”
- Avoid tables, text boxes, columns, headers and footers for important information
- Use the keywords from the advert, where they are true for you
- Spell out abbreviations at least once, for example “Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD)”
- Send the file type the employer asks for
I’d also be wary of websites that score your CV for ATS. A tool that hasn’t seen the job advert can’t tell you how well your CV matches it. ATS isn’t something to beat or trick. Once you understand how it works, it becomes your friend rather than your enemy. My full guide to writing an ATS-friendly CV covers this in more depth.
Common CV mistakes to avoid
These are the mistakes I see most often. Several of them on one CV is usually enough to keep it off a shortlist.
- Sending the same CV to every job. A CV that isn’t tailored rarely stands out.
- Writing duties instead of achievements. Tell the reader what you achieved, not just what you were responsible for.
- Spelling, grammar and punctuation errors. Use a spellchecker, then read it again out loud, then ask someone else to read it.
- Dates that don’t add up. Check every date, and explain any significant gaps briefly and honestly.
- Going on too long. Three or four pages usually means too much detail on older roles.
- Clichés with nothing behind them. “Hard-working, motivated team player” could describe anyone.
- Too much design. Colours, graphics and photos distract from what you’ve done and can confuse ATS.
- Jargon and acronyms. This is a particular problem for people leaving the armed forces or the police. Translate your experience into language a civilian employer will understand. I cover this in my guides to writing a CV after leaving the army and CVs for police officers.
- Leaving AI to do it all. Tools like ChatGPT can produce something that looks impressive, but they only know what you tell them. The result often reads like a polished job description rather than a CV that sells you.
If you’ve been sending out applications and hearing nothing back, my guide on why your CV keeps getting rejected may help you work out what’s going wrong.
Different careers need different CVs
The structure above works for almost everyone, but the emphasis changes depending on where you are in your career and what sector you work in.
- Graduates and school leavers need to make the most of education, part-time work, volunteering and projects. See my graduate CV guide, or my graduate CV writing service.
- Senior managers and executives need a CV that shows leadership, strategy and commercial results at the right level. My senior-level CV guide explains what changes, and my executive CV writing service is where most of my clients start.
- Service leavers need to translate military experience for civilian employers. As a Royal Navy veteran, this is work I care about a great deal. Have a look at my ex-military CV service.
- Police officers moving into other careers face a similar challenge with language and culture. See my police officer CV service.
- Some sectors have their own expectations. I’ve written specific guides for a social work CV and a media CV.
A quick CV checklist
Before you send your CV, run through this list:
- Your name, phone number, email and town are at the top and correct
- Your personal profile is written for this particular job
- Your key skills use the wording from the job advert
- Your jobs are in reverse chronological order, with your recent roles given the most space
- Each job has achievements, with numbers where possible, not just duties
- Every bullet point starts with a strong action word
- All dates are accurate and consistent
- It’s no more than two pages (unless you have a good reason)
- The layout is clean, consistent and free of tables, photos and graphics
- You have checked spelling and grammar, and someone else has read it too
- Everything on it’s true, and you’re happy to talk about any of it at interview
- It’s saved as a PDF (or Word, if the employer asks) with a sensible file name, such as your name and “CV”
Frequently asked questions
How do I write a CV with no experience?
Focus on what you do have: your education, part-time or holiday jobs, volunteering, school or university projects, clubs and responsibilities. Treat these the same way you would treat paid work, by showing what you did and what you achieved. My graduate CV guide has plenty of ideas.
Should I include a photo on my CV in the UK?
No. A photo isn’t expected on a UK CV, and it takes up space that’s better used for your skills and achievements. The exception is if you work in an industry such as acting or modelling, where the employer specifically asks for one.
How far back should my CV go?
As a rule of thumb, give the most detail to the last 10 to 15 years. Older roles can be shortened to a job title, employer and dates, or grouped together under a heading such as “Earlier career”. Recruiters are most interested in what you’ve done recently.
Should I send my CV as a PDF or a Word document?
Unless the employer says otherwise, a PDF is usually best because it keeps your formatting intact. If the application asks for a Word document, follow the instructions.
Do I need a different CV for every job?
You need a strong master CV, and then a tailored version for each application. Usually that means adjusting your personal profile and key skills to match the advert, rather than rewriting the whole thing.
Is it worth paying a professional CV writer?
It depends on how confident you’re and how much is riding on the move. Plenty of people write good CVs themselves using advice like this. Where a professional helps most is in drawing out achievements you have forgotten, and in presenting your experience for a new sector or a more senior role. If you’re not sure, a free CV review is a good place to start.
Want a second opinion on your CV?
Writing about yourself is hard, and most people undersell what they have done. If you would like an honest view of your CV, send it to me for a free CV review and I’ll tell you what’s working and what isn’t.
If you would rather talk it through, you can book a free consultation. There are no questionnaires and no time limit on how I work. I start with a conversation, ask a lot of questions, and build your CV from scratch around what you have actually achieved. You can read more about how I work and my CV writing services.
I’ve worked with over 500 clients, and so far none of them has come back to tell me they didn’t get an interview. I can’t promise you a job (nobody honestly can), but I can make sure your CV gives you the best possible chance of getting in front of the right people.
About the author
John Logan is a professional CV writer based in Portsmouth, working with clients across the UK. He served in the Royal Navy, including aboard HMS Fearless during the 1982 Falklands Conflict, then spent more than 40 years in senior management, running his own businesses and leading a multi-million-pound retail operation with a team of over 500. Along the way he has recruited and interviewed hundreds, probably thousands, of people. He has appeared on regional television as a CV expert, has written career guidance for US military transition readers and has worked with over 500 clients, from school leavers to senior military officers and company directors.