How to write a CV with no experience

Every employer hiring for an entry-level role knows applicants will have little or no formal experience. They are not comparing you with someone who has five years; they are comparing you with other graduates and school leavers. The question they want answered is simple: can this person learn quickly, show up reliably and do the basics well?

Your CV answers that question with evidence from study, projects, part-time work and life, presented as clearly as a professional's job history.

Keep it to one page and use this order:

1. Contact details: name, phone, email, city, LinkedIn.
2. Objective: one or two sentences naming the role. See CV objective examples.
3. Education: your strongest section right now, so put it first.
4. Projects: academic, personal or freelance.
5. Experience: internships, part-time jobs, volunteering, family business.
6. Skills: technical skills, software and languages.
7. Activities and achievements: societies, competitions, sports leadership, awards.

Many people with "no experience" actually have plenty; they just do not count it. All of these belong on your CV:

• Internships, paid or unpaid, even two-week ones.
• Part-time jobs: tutoring, retail, food delivery, call centre shifts, freelance design or writing.
• Family business work: helping in a shop, keeping accounts, handling suppliers or customers. Describe it as a real role: "Sales assistant, Khan General Store, Multan."
• Volunteering: blood drives, flood relief, NGO teaching, mosque or community events.
• University societies: treasurer, event organiser, media lead.
• Freelance platforms: Fiverr or Upwork projects, with the number of orders and ratings.
• Competitions and hackathons: what you built and how you placed.

The trick is to use the same structure as a professional CV: a title, an organisation, dates and bullet points that start with action verbs and include numbers.

Weak

"Member of the debating society."

Strong

"Events coordinator, FAST Debating Society (Sep 2024 – Jun 2025)"

• "Organised an inter-university tournament for 24 teams and 150 guests."
• "Raised PKR 300,000 in sponsorship from four local businesses."

Weak

"Final year project on an attendance system."

Strong

"Face-recognition attendance system (final-year project)"

• "Built a Python and OpenCV app that marks attendance for a class of 60 in under 10 seconds."
• "Tested it for four weeks in two classrooms, reaching 96% accuracy."

Because education is your main section, give it more than a single line:

• Degree, university, city, start and end year.
• CGPA if it is 3.0 or higher (or a first division / A grades).
• Relevant courses: "Financial Accounting, Taxation, Business Statistics".
• Scholarships, dean's list, merit positions.
• Thesis or capstone title with a one-line result.

For matric and intermediate, a single line each is enough once you have a degree.

Freshers often list "MS Office, communication, hard-working". Instead, name what you can actually do: "Excel (VLOOKUP, pivot tables, charts)", "Canva", "Typing 50 wpm", "Python (basic)", "English (fluent), Urdu (native), Punjabi (native)". If you took a free online course on Coursera, Google Digital Garage or DigiSkills.pk, list the certificate. Our skills guide has lists for common jobs.

If you are not sure what to aim for, these roles hire many people without experience and value the skills above: customer service and call centres, retail cashier and sales assistant, receptionist and front desk, admin assistant, management trainee programmes at banks and FMCG companies, teaching assistant, and junior developer or QA roles for IT graduates.

Our customer service, cashier and receptionist CV examples show how entry-level bullets are written. Remove the numbers that do not apply to you and add your own.

Here is how a school leaver or fresh graduate might lay out the page, top to bottom:

• Header: Hamza Ali · +92 300 1234567 · hamza.ali@email.com · Rawalpindi, Pakistan · linkedin.com/in/hamzaali
• Objective: "BBA graduate with strong Excel skills and a summer internship in a bank's operations team, seeking a customer service officer role where I can resolve account queries quickly and accurately."
• Education: BBA (Hons), Bahria University, Islamabad, 2022–2026, CGPA 3.4. Relevant courses: Financial Accounting, Banking Operations, Business Communication.
• Experience: Operations intern, a commercial bank, Rawalpindi (Jun–Aug 2025), with three bullets on account opening support, data entry accuracy and customer queries handled per day.
• Projects: a market survey of 200 customers for a final-year project, with the main finding in one line.
• Skills: Excel (pivot tables, XLOOKUP), MS Word, typing 50 wpm, English (fluent), Urdu (native).
• Activities: treasurer of the business society, managing a PKR 400,000 events budget.

Everything fits on one page with comfortable spacing, and every line gives the recruiter a reason to call.

• Padding to two pages with school results, hobbies and personal details. One strong page is better.
• Listing "References available on request" or your father's occupation.
• Using a casual email address. Create a simple firstname.lastname one.
• Sending the same CV to every job. Change the objective and the order of skills each time.
• Leaving out the city: many employers filter by location.

CVLumo walks you through each section with suggestions for your job title, and its free ATS check flags missing dates and weak bullet points before you download.