How to Write a Resume in 2026: Step-by-Step Guide with a Full Example

You have a job advert open, it asks for a CV, and half the advice you find online was written for American resumes. The two documents do the same job and most writing advice carries over. A handful of conventions do not, and those are the ones that make a CV look out of place to a UK recruiter.

This page covers the conventions first, then each section of the document, then a complete example CV with a note on why each part is there.

CV or resume: what changes for a UK application

UK employers ask for a CV. Prospects, the graduate careers service, notes that in the USA and Canada the equivalent is called a résumé and tends to be more concise. For a UK application, four things differ from typical American advice:

• Length. Prospects quotes the University of Chester careers team: "We recommend CVs are no longer than two A4 pages." If you have read that everything must fit on one page, that is not the UK guidance, and I would not squeeze a UK CV onto one page if the second page holds relevant experience.
• No photo. Prospects says you do not need a photograph unless you are applying for an acting or modelling job.
• Fewer personal details. The National Careers Service says not to include your age, your date of birth, your marital status or your nationality.
• British spelling: organised, programme, analysed. I would change any American spellings before sending a CV to a UK employer.

The personal-details rule lines up with the law. Section 4 of the Equality Act 2010 lists nine protected characteristics: age; disability; gender reassignment; marriage and civil partnership; pregnancy and maternity; race; religion or belief; sex; sexual orientation. Section 9 defines race as including colour, nationality, and ethnic or national origins. My position: nothing on your CV should reveal any of these unless you have chosen to raise it, because none of it tells an employer whether you can do the job.

Employers do need to know whether you can work in the UK. If you can, one line saying "Full right to work in the UK" answers that without stating your nationality.

Choose the format before you write

Use reverse chronological order: most recent job first, working backwards. Prospects recommends it so "the recruiter sees your work history and most recent achievements first".

I do not recommend a purely skills-based (functional) CV for online applications, where achievements sit under skill headings with no employer or dates attached. Parsing software is built around jobs with dates. Oracle's documentation for its Taleo recruiting system lists the work experience fields its resume parser extracts: start date, end date, employer, job function and responsibility. A functional CV gives those fields nothing to fill, and missing dates invite the question of what they hide.

If you are changing career, use a hybrid instead: a short profile and skills summary at the top, then an ordinary chronological work history. The career change resume guide goes through that layout, and the ATS-friendly resume format checklist covers the layout details parsing software struggles with.

What goes in each section

Name and contact details

Your name is the title. Prospects says not to head the page "curriculum vitae" or "CV", because it wastes space. Underneath, put your phone number, email address and a LinkedIn URL, which is the set the National Careers Service lists, plus the town you live in. Prospects warns against putting your home address on a CV you post online; a town is enough for an employer to judge the commute.

Personal profile

Three or four lines at the top: what you do, the evidence that you do it well, and the job you want next. Prospects calls it a personal statement that "picks out a few relevant achievements and skills, while expressing your career aims". Rewrite it for each application, because it is the part a recruiter reads first. The professional summary guide has examples by career stage.

Work experience

For each role, give the job title, employer, location and dates as month and year. Then three to six bullets for recent jobs and fewer for older ones. Each bullet should open with a verb, say what you did, and where possible say what came of it: a number, a scale, or something that changed because of you.

Write job titles in full and include the company suffix. Greenhouse, one of the larger applicant tracking systems, lists "Sr. Account Exec instead of Senior Account Executive" and company names without identifiers such as Ltd among the causes of an unsuccessful resume parse. For roles more than ten years old, one line each is usually enough; Prospects advises summarising old detail. The skills and action verbs guide has verbs by type of work and a bullet rewritten from weak to strong.

Education

Most recent first, with the qualification, subject, grade, institution and year. Prospects says education goes after work experience once you have plenty of relevant experience, and before it until then. Mention modules or a dissertation only if they relate to the job. Do not round a grade up: Prospects points out that changing a 2:2 to a 2:1 is classed as degree fraud.

Skills

A few lines grouped by type: software and tools, specialist knowledge, languages with a level. Take the wording from the job advert where it honestly describes you, and leave out anything you could not discuss in an interview. Words like "hardworking" and "team player" belong in your bullets as evidence, not in a list.

Interests, extras and references

Add certifications, languages or volunteer work when they relate to the job. Include interests only if they say something relevant; Prospects suggests leaving the section out otherwise. Leave referees off too. The National Careers Service says not to put someone else's contact details on your CV, and Prospects says most employers assume references are available on request, so that line can go as well.

A complete example CV, annotated

This is an invented example. Jordan Ellis, the employers and the figures are made up to show the structure. Jordan has four years in parcel logistics and is applying for an operations analyst role in Bristol. The numbers in square brackets refer to the notes below.

Jordan Ellis  [1]
Bristol | 07700 900123 | [email protected] | linkedin.com/in/jordanellis-example
Full right to work in the UK  [2]

PROFILE  [3]
Operations coordinator with four years in parcel logistics, moving into analysis. Builds the weekly performance reporting for a 60-person depot in Excel and Power BI, and used it to redesign the returns process, cutting average processing time from five working days to two. Looking for an Operations Analyst role where reporting drives decisions.

EXPERIENCE
Operations Coordinator, Kestrel Parcels Ltd, Bristol  [4]
March 2023 – Present  [5]
• Build the weekly depot performance report in Power BI, replacing three separate spreadsheets
• Redesigned the returns process with shift managers, cutting average processing time from five working days to two  [6]
• Trained 12 new starters on the warehouse management system and wrote the quick-reference guide the depot still uses
• Plan daily routes and cover for 18 drivers, including short-notice absence

Customer Service Adviser, Avonside Energy Ltd, Bristol
September 2021 – February 2023
• Resolved billing and meter queries by phone and webchat for residential customers
• Logged a recurring direct debit error in a shared tracker, which led to a correction in customer letters
• Acted as team contact for the move to a new CRM system during its first month

Retail Assistant (part-time), various employers, Bristol, 2018 – 2021  [7]

EDUCATION  [8]
BA (Hons) Geography, 2:1, University of the West of England, 2021
Dissertation: planning delivery routes with open road data

SKILLS
Data and reporting: Microsoft Excel (Power Query, PivotTables), Power BI, SQL (basic)
Operations: warehouse management systems, route planning, process mapping
Languages: English (native), Spanish (conversational)

1. Name as the heading, no "Curriculum Vitae" title. Town, not a full address. No photo, date of birth, nationality or marital status.
2. States the right to work without stating nationality, and heads off the sponsorship question.
3. Uses the job title from the advert, gives one result with a number, and names the tools the advert lists. Written without "I", which I think reads more naturally on a CV.
4. Full job title, employer with its "Ltd" suffix, and a location.
5. Month and year at both ends, in one format for every role.
6. Each bullet starts with a verb. The strongest result appears twice, in the profile and here, because a recruiter may read only one of them. The driver-planning bullet has no number, but it stays because the advert asks for scheduling experience.
7. Three years of part-time retail shrink to one line. They show continuous work but do not earn bullets on an analyst application.
8. Education sits below experience because Jordan now has relevant work history. No referees and no references line.

Formatted at 11 points with 2.5 cm margins, which follow Prospects' suggestions, this comes to well under two A4 pages. For a different role, Jordan would rewrite the profile and reorder the bullets, and leave the rest alone. Tailoring a CV to a job description covers that step.

If you have little or no work experience

The structure stays the same, with three changes. Education moves above experience. The profile says what you studied, what you can already do, and the kind of role you want. And "experience" widens to anything where you did real work for someone: part-time and holiday jobs, placements, volunteering, society committee roles, and projects you finished.

With little history, every line has to show something happening. Compare these invented bullets:

One page is fine at this stage. Cut anything that reads as a list of duties with no outcome, and do not pad the skills section to fill the page.

Before you send it

• The profile names the job you are applying for, and the skills use the advert's wording where it is true of you.
• Every recent bullet starts with a verb, and most say what came of the work.
• Dates use one format; job titles are in full; no photo or personal details.
• Fonts and margins follow Prospects' suggestions: Arial, Calibri or Times New Roman at 10 to 12 points, 2.5 cm margins.
• The file type is the one the advert asks for, and the file name identifies you.
• You have read it once on paper or in a changed font, which catches errors your eye skips on screen.

Frequently Asked Questions