The Graduate resume template

The order

Education, then projects, then relevant coursework, then internships, then skills, then activities, then any unrelated employment.

That last point is the one people get wrong. A summer in retail is not a headline when you are applying to a lab or an agency, but it is not worthless either — at the bottom it quietly says you have held a job and turned up. Put it there, keep it to one line, and do not give it three bullets.

Making a thin history look substantial

You have less material than an experienced applicant. The answer is specificity, not padding.

Give your dissertation a result. Not "wrote a dissertation on urban transport policy" but "analysed 12 years of bus punctuality data across 4 UK cities; found timetable padding accounted for 60% of reported improvement". That is a research finding, and it reads like professional work.

Turn coursework into projects. A group assignment where you built something is a project. Name it, say what it did, say what you contributed.

Quantify anything you can. Cohort rank, grade average if it is strong, a society you grew from 12 to 60 members, a fundraiser total, a shift you scheduled for nine people. Numbers are what turn "was involved in" into evidence.

Include the near-misses. A hackathon you did not win, a competition shortlist, a paper accepted at a student conference. They are real.

What to leave out

• "References available on request." Everyone knows. It wastes a line.
• Secondary school results, once you have a degree — unless applying somewhere that asks specifically.
• A skills section listing Microsoft Word. It reads as filler.
• An objective statement saying you are seeking a challenging role in a dynamic organisation. If you use the summary, make it say something only you could write.
• Hobbies with no relevance. "Reading, music, socialising" is worse than the whitespace it replaces.

Grades

Include your average if it is strong — roughly 3.5 out of 4, or a UK 2:1 and above. Leave it off otherwise; nobody will ask why it is missing.

Often better than an average: a cohort rank ("top 5% of 240"), or a specific module grade that is relevant to the job ("Econometrics: 82%").

One page

For a first application, one page. Not because of a rule, but because two pages of undergraduate material means padding, and padding is visible.

The editor shows page breaks live, so you can see immediately when you have gone over and cut rather than shrink the font.

When to pick something else

• Student if you want a friendlier, more contemporary look — rounded cards with colour-coded sections. Same content, warmer feel.
• Chronological or ATS Friendly for graduate-scheme portals, which are usually automated and high-volume.
• Professional once you have a year or two of real work, at which point experience should move above education.

There is a fuller walkthrough in how to write a resume with no experience.