Job hunting with little or no experience

What's going on

• Entry-level roles are crowded. UK graduate employers received an average of 140 applications per vacancy in 2025, against 38 in 2002/3 ^[1]. Many school-leaver and apprenticeship roles are just as busy.
• "Entry level" doesn't always mean no experience. Adverts often ask for a year or two of experience. Read that as a wish list. If you meet most of the essentials through study, projects or part-time work, it's usually worth applying.
• Experience isn't only paid work. Careers advisers routinely suggest including volunteering, school or university projects, part-time jobs and hobbies where they show relevant skills ^[2].

Keep your CV short

With little work history, one page is usually enough, and a tight page reads better than two thin ones. A clear order helps:

1. Name and contact details. Phone, email, town or city, and a LinkedIn link if you have one. No full address needed.
2. A two or three line profile. What you're looking for and what you bring. "Recent A level student looking for a first role in customer service. Two years of weekend retail work and used to busy shifts."
3. Education. Put it near the top while it's your strongest section. Include relevant modules, coursework or a final project.
4. Experience. Paid, unpaid and voluntary, most recent first. You can call the section "Experience" rather than "Work experience" so it covers everything honestly.
5. Skills. Specific tools and languages, not a list of adjectives.
6. Interests, if they add something. Captain of a five-a-side team says more than "socialising".

What counts as experience

More than you might think. Each of these can show an employer something real:

• Education. Group projects, presentations, a dissertation, lab work, a placement year.
• Your own projects. A website you built, a podcast, a small online shop, a coding project on GitHub, a society newsletter you edited.
• Volunteering. Charity shops, food banks, sports coaching, helping at events. It counts as experience, and some organisations offer structured roles with training ^[4].
• Part-time and casual work. Retail, hospitality, deliveries, tutoring, babysitting. These jobs teach reliability, customer handling and working under pressure.
• Caring responsibilities. Looking after a parent, sibling or child takes organisation, patience and judgement. You can include it in a line, and you decide how much to share.
• Clubs and societies. Treasurer, team captain, event organiser, member of a band or a choir.

Show skills with real examples

"Good communicator" and "team player" appear on almost every CV, so they tell a reader very little. A short example with a result does the work instead. Try the pattern: what you did, how, and what happened.

• Instead of "Good with customers", try "Served around 80 customers per Saturday shift at a busy bakery and handled complaints calmly."
• Instead of "Organised", try "Planned the drama society's spring show: booked the hall, kept a budget of £600 and sold 140 tickets."
• Instead of "Reliable", try "Cared for my younger brother after school for three years while finishing my exams."

Only use numbers you can stand behind. An honest estimate ("around 80") is fine. A guess dressed up as a fact isn't.

Tailor each application

1. Underline the essentials in the advert. Usually there are five to eight.
2. Find one piece of evidence for each. From any part of your life, not only work.
3. Reorder and reword. Put the most relevant examples at the top and use the advert's words where they're true for you.
4. Write a short cover letter if one is asked for. Say why this role, why this employer, and give one example that proves you'd do it well.

Stay honest

It's tempting to stretch things when the page looks thin. Don't. Calling a school project a "consultancy engagement" or adding a skill you haven't used is easy to spot in an interview and can cost you the job later. A plain, true example beats an impressive one you can't explain.

Gaps are normal at this stage too. Exams, illness, caring or simply looking for work don't need long explanations. One line is enough if you want to add context.

UK and Germany do things differently

• UK: no photo, no date of birth and no marital status. One page is fine early in your career. References are usually requested later, so you don't need to list them. Apprenticeships are a recognised route in, with paid training ^[3].
• Germany: the Lebenslauf is usually a clear table with dates, often with a short Anschreiben. A photo is still common, but it's optional, and employers mustn't treat you differently because of age, gender or origin under the General Equal Treatment Act (AGG) ^[6]. Praktika, Werkstudent jobs, Minijobs and a voluntary year (FSJ or BFD) all count as experience.
• Applying across borders: the Europass CV is a free, widely recognised format in the EU, though many employers still prefer a local layout ^[7].

Free steps you can take this week

1. List everything you've done in the last three years. Study, jobs, volunteering, caring, clubs. Then circle the examples that show a skill employers ask for.
2. Write your one-page CV from that list. Keep a master version and tailor a copy for each role.
3. Get free advice. In England, the National Careers Service offers free CV help from careers advisers ^[2]. In Germany, the Berufsberatung of the Bundesagentur für Arbeit is free, including for school leavers and students ^[5].
4. Fill a gap with volunteering or a small project. A few hours a week gives you recent, real examples to talk about ^[4].
5. Look beyond the big job boards. Apprenticeships, traineeships, Praktika and the careers pages of local employers often get fewer applications.
6. Talk to people. Ask friends, family, teachers or former managers what their work is like. See Getting in front of a person.