UK CV Format

The National Careers Service and most UK recruiters expect roughly this order:

1. 1.Name and contact details — town or city, mobile, email, LinkedIn. No full address is needed.
2. 2.Personal statement — three or four lines at the top (see below).
3. 3.Key skills — six to ten, taken from the job advert.
4. 4.Employment history — most recent first, with month and year. Achievements, not duties.
5. 5.Education — degree, university, classification and year; A-levels or equivalent only if you are early in your career.
6. 6.Additional sections — certifications, languages, volunteering, and interests only if they add something.

Length: two A4 pages is standard for anyone with work experience. One page is fine for school leavers and some graduates. A third page is almost never needed outside academic and medical CVs.

Layout: one column, clear headings, a readable font at 10–12 pt, margins of about 2 cm. Save as PDF unless the employer asks for Word.

The personal statement — sometimes called a profile — is the part UK recruiters read first, and the part most often wasted on adjectives. Write it in three moves:

1. 1.Who you are professionally: role, level and years. “Chartered accountant with six years in audit and financial planning.”
2. 2.Your strongest evidence: one concrete achievement or scope. “Led statutory audits for three FTSE 250 clients and built the team's first automated variance report.”
3. 3.What you want next: the kind of role and sector. “Looking for a senior finance role in a fintech or payments business.”

Third person (“A motivated professional who…”) and first person without the pronoun (“Motivated professional who…”) are both common; pick one and keep it consistent. Avoid stacking soft skills — “hard-working, passionate team player” tells the reader nothing they can check. Tailor the final sentence to each application; it is the cheapest way to show you read the advert.

UK employers are used to seeing a degree classification: First, Upper Second (2:1), Lower Second (2:2) or Third. Many graduate schemes set a 2:1 as a minimum, so state yours if it is a First or a 2:1. For a master's, give the outcome (Distinction, Merit or Pass).

If your degree is from outside the UK, write it exactly as awarded — degree title, university and year, with your grade as the university expresses it (for example “CGPA 8.4/10”). Do not convert it into a UK classification yourself. If an employer needs to know how it compares, UK ENIC, the national agency for recognising international qualifications, issues statements of comparability; one line such as “UK ENIC: comparable to a British bachelor's degree” is enough on a CV.

Professional qualifications — ACCA, CIMA, CIPD, chartered engineering status — belong in their own section with the awarding body and year.

International students on a Student visa studying at degree level can generally work up to 20 hours a week in term time; check the exact limit on your own visa before you list availability. After graduating, the Graduate route allows work without sponsorship — currently two years, three for PhD graduates, and 18 months for applications made from 1 January 2027. Say which route you are on and when it ends. If you are applying from outside the UK, the CV format is the same; the differences are the right-to-work line and targeting employers on the public register of licensed sponsors. See the international students guide for a cross-country comparison and the Indian resume to UK CV guide for a field-by-field conversion.

UK employers must check every new hire's right to work before employment starts, usually online with a share code, so your CV line is a courtesy, not proof. It still saves a screening call, especially if your education is from abroad. Use the one that is true:

• British citizen or Irish citizen — usually left off unless your history is mostly overseas.
• Settled status (EU Settlement Scheme) or Indefinite leave to remain
• Graduate visa, valid until September 2027
• Skilled Worker visa (current employer); a new employer would need to assign a Certificate of Sponsorship
• Will require visa sponsorship (Skilled Worker route)

The Skilled Worker line matters because the visa is tied to a sponsoring employer: moving job means the new employer, who must hold a sponsor licence, assigns a new Certificate of Sponsorship and you make a new application. Salary and occupation rules for the route are amended frequently — check GOV.UK, not a CV guide. The visa status guide compares this wording with the US, Canada and Australia.

Two of the largest UK employers do not primarily read CVs.

NHS Jobs applications are largely an online form plus a supporting statement written against the job's person specification. Your CV still matters for agency and private roles, but for NHS posts the supporting statement should take each essential criterion in turn and give evidence for it.

Civil Service Jobs uses the Success Profiles framework: an advert says which elements it will assess — behaviours, strengths, ability, experience and technical — and may ask for a CV, a personal statement, behaviour examples, or several of these. Follow the advert exactly; word limits are enforced and the STAR shape (situation, task, action, result) is the expected structure for behaviour examples.

Large private employers — banks, consultancies, retailers — mostly run Workday, Oracle Taleo, SAP SuccessFactors or iCIMS. They parse a single-column CV well and a two-column template badly. Check yours with the UK ATS CV checker before you apply.

Do not list referees on the CV and do not write “references available on request” — it is assumed. Employers usually ask for two referees after an offer, one of them your most recent employer. Many UK employers will only confirm dates and job title as a matter of policy, so a detailed reference from a former manager is a bonus, not a given. Tell your referees in advance and send them the job description.

The usual mistakes moving to the UK: cutting a strong career to one page (US habit) or keeping a declaration, photo and father's name (Indian habit).