Your first CV, when you have no work experience yet

What counts as experience

Before you write anything, list what you actually have. Most people underestimate this:

• Studies. Your degree or track, relevant courses, a final project, a strong thesis or grade if it helps.
• Projects. Anything you built or organised: code, a design, an event, a small business, a research paper.
• Volunteering. Real responsibility counts, especially leading people or running something end to end.
• Military or national service. Roles, teams, systems, and scope, described in civilian terms.
• Part-time and informal work. Tutoring, a summer job, a family business, freelance gigs.

How to structure a first CV

With no job history, lead with what is strongest, not with a chronology that starts empty:

• Open with a short summary of who you are and what you are aiming for.
• Put education near the top, since it is your main evidence right now.
• Follow with projects and volunteering as their own sections, written like experience.
• Keep skills concrete and honest, and list languages, which matter in the Israeli market.

Writing a summary with no jobs to point to

A first-CV summary points forward, not back. State your field, your strengths, and what you want to do, without pretending to a track record you do not have.

• Weak: Recent graduate looking for any opportunity to gain experience and grow professionally.
• Stronger: Computer science graduate focused on data. Built a churn-prediction model as a final project and taught intro programming to 20 students. Looking for a junior data role.

Studies, projects, and volunteering as evidence

Write a project the way you would write a job: what it was, what you did, and what came of it.

• Name the project and your role in one line, then two bullets on what you built and the result.
• Quantify wherever it is honest: users, downloads, event attendance, a grade, a competition placement.
• Link it if it can be seen: a repository, a live site, a published paper, a portfolio.
• Group coursework only if it is directly relevant; skip the generic module list.

Common first-CV mistakes

A first CV rarely fails because the person has done too little. It fails on presentation:

• Padding with adjectives instead of evidence. Show one real thing you did over three claims about your character.
• Hiding the strongest material at the bottom. Lead with it.
• Leaving projects and volunteering off because they were not paid. Paid is not the same as real.
• Writing 'no experience' anywhere on the page. Describe what you have; never apologise for what you do not.

How SuitedCV does this for you

SuitedCV gives a first CV the same structure a senior one gets, with sections for projects and volunteering that read like experience, and templates that stay clean when the page is not yet full. You keep one master version and tailor it to each opening.

For each application, the tool suggests wording that maps your studies and projects to what the job asks for, field by field, so a first CV still speaks the language of the role, with nothing invented.

Common questions