See how to talk about work experience on your CV to show employers your initiative, enthusiasm and skills.
When it comes to landing a job, your CV is one of the most important tools you have available to you. This document outlines your experience, skills, and education to show an employer why they should hire you for a specific role.
Employers typically receive many CVs for each open position and most will review each CV for less than a minute. This means that making a great first impression quickly is vital if you want to be successful.
Work experience is tremendously valuable in increasing your employability and making you more attractive to prospective employers. Read on to learn how to list work experience on your CV.
What is Work Experience?
Work experience is a general term that refers to any kind of professional experience outside of the context of holding a permanent job. Many young people do work experience at school or as part of their courses at college or university, though it is also possible to arrange your own work experience.
Some examples of the different types of work experience you can do include:
- Work experience placements offered through your school or college
- Work experience placements that form a part of your college or university course (e.g. industry placements or sandwich years)
- Work experience placements that you have organised yourself
- Internships
- Job shadowing
- Virtual work experience
- Work experience days
Most work experience is unpaid, but there are exceptions. Both paid and unpaid work experience count in exactly the same way.
How to Talk About Work Experience on Your CV
Work experience can be a great boost to your CV, especially when you are early in your career or just starting out. Here are a few of our top tips to help you talk about work experience on your CV effectively.
Create a Work Experience Section
If you have held an ongoing paid job (such as a part-time or summer job, or even a full-time role), this should be listed first in a “Professional Experience” section. Underneath this, create a separate section on your CV for work experience. List your work experience placements with the most recent first, and then move backwards chronologically.
Format Your Work Experience Placements Neatly
There is no universal standard for how to format a CV. However, it is important to make sure that each of your work experience entries is concise, scannable, and easy to read while including all of the important information.
At a minimum, you should include the role title, company or organisation, approximate dates (month/year), and a brief summary of your responsibilities, tasks, and achievements. Here are a couple of examples to get you started:
Marketing Work Experience Placement
Big Business, Inc. (London office)
April 2023
- Wrote and edited content to be published on the business’s website
- Took over the company social media channels for a day achieving a 10% increase in engagement
- Supported the head of marketing with a range of general and administrative tasks including arranging meetings, taking minutes, and answering customer emails
Web Development Summer Work Experience Placement
Important Tech Company, PLC (Birmingham)
June-September 2023
- Shadowed senior team members to learn more about the world of B2B web design
- Attended client onboarding, progress report, and offboarding meetings
- Wrote Python and PHP code which was used in client projects
- Supported clients in person and on the telephone with website troubleshooting
You can summarise your job duties in sentences rather than bullet points if you prefer, but keep it concise. 3-5 bullet points or 2-3 lines of 12pt text is ideal.
Tailor Your Work Experience and Connect Your Skills to the Job
Do you know the biggest job hunting mistake that you’re probably making? Creating one CV and then using it every time you apply for a job. Though your basic CV template will remain the same, it’s incredibly important to tailor your CV for each job you’re applying for. This ensures that the right skills, attributes, and experience will stand out.
When you’re deciding what work experience to include on your CV, study the job description and person specification to decide what will be most relevant.
For example, if you are a graduate applying for a job in journalism, the work experience week you spent working at a coffee shop when you were 16 probably isn’t very relevant, but your summer internship working for your town’s magazine will greatly enhance your application. On the other hand, that coffee shop placement will be an asset if you are applying for a job in hospitality and catering.
Tailor your CV when you talk about the specific duties you performed and skills you used in each of your placements, too. For example, if you are applying for a job that requires great customer service skills, you might want to emphasise elements of your work experience placement that involved working with the public.
Include Achievements as Well as Duties
It’s important to tell your prospective employer about what you did on your work experience placement. However, it’s also important to tell them about any particular achievements that you accomplished during your time in the role.
Consider our examples above. For the marketing position, the “10% increase in engagement” quantifies an accomplishment with a number. And for the web development position, the use of code in a client’s project is an impressive achievement for an intern.
Ask Your Manager or Supervisor to Be a Referee
When you apply for jobs, you will need to provide referees: people who know you professionally and can speak to your work quality, work ethic, skills, reliability, and so on. If you have successfully completed a work experience placement, consider asking your manager, supervisor, or placement leader to be a referee for you in the future.
It’s a good idea to indicate where your referees know you from. For example, you might format a work placement referee something like this:
Sarah Smith (Senior Marketing Manager, Big Business Inc.)
[Phone number]
[Email address]
Always ask permission before listing someone as a referee, and if they said they would but it’s been a while, reach out again to check before you send off your CV.
