CV format UK: the shape British employers expect

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UK employers expect a shape, not just content. Most of the rules are unwritten, which is why applicants from outside get the content right and the shape subtly wrong.

UK employers expect a shape, not just content. Most of the rules are unwritten, which is why applicants from outside the UK get the content right and the shape subtly wrong. Below is the shape, section by section, plus the three habits that mark a CV as written for a different market.

The section order a UK employer expects

Name and contact, personal statement, work experience, education, skills, then anything else. Education moves above experience only while you are a student or within about a year of graduating. Once you have real experience, that is what a reader opens the document for.

• No photo, no date of birth, no marital status. All three are liabilities.
• Two pages is the norm. One is fine early on and three needs a reason.
• Reverse chronological within each section, most recent first.
• Dates as MM.YYYY, consistently, including for education.
• British spelling throughout: organised, programme, specialise.

What belongs on page one

A UK reader decides on page one and confirms on page two. That is not a rule anyone publishes, but it is how the document is actually read, and it tells you what may be moved down.

Photo, date of birth and the market you learned in

On this one question the UK follows the American convention rather than the continental one, and that surprises almost every applicant arriving from Germany, Austria or Switzerland. Age is a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010, so a CV that volunteers a date of birth hands the employer a problem they did not ask for. Some employers strip the photo before a hiring manager sees the file; others simply move on to the next candidate.

The same CV cannot be correct in London and in Munich. The content travels; the conventions around it do not.

Working rule behind the market table above

The personal statement, in three or four lines

The UK personal statement is the one section with no continental equivalent, which is why it is usually either missing or four times too long. It is not a cover letter and it is not a mission statement.

• What you are, with the number of years: a supply chain analyst with six years in FMCG.
• What you have actually done that this employer needs.
• What you are looking for, in one clause, matching the advert.
• No adjectives you cannot evidence lower down the page.
• Rewrite the last clause for each application. The rest can stand.

Where non-UK applicants give themselves away

A photo, a date of birth and a one-page American summary are the three tells, and each one is a habit from a market where it is correct. None of them is a mistake at home, which is exactly why they survive the move.

• Continental Europe: drop the photo and the date of birth for the UK.
• United States: expand to two pages and add a personal statement.
• Everywhere: British spelling, organised rather than organized.
• Grades: give the UK equivalent where you are confident, or name the system used.
• References: omit them, or write available on request.

The format rules that are not British at all

One column, real text, standard headings: those are parser rules and they apply in every country. We measured a two-column CV at 4 of 9 parser checks against 9 of 9 for the same content in a single column, and the failures were not cosmetic: the name was not read as the name and sidebar fragments landed inside the work history. See what actually parses.

What does the UK government's own CV advice say to leave out?

The National Careers Service says to leave out your age, your date of birth, whether you are married and your nationality. It lists the sections a CV should have: contact details, an introduction, education history, work history and references.

• Contact details: name, phone number, email address and a link to a professional network profile if you have one.
• Font: a clear one such as Arial, Times New Roman or Calibri, in size 11 or bigger.
• Work history: most recent first, with employer, job title and dates.
• References: do not put someone else's contact details on the CV. Write that references are available on request.

Do you have to show your right to work on a UK CV?

No: a UK employer must check that an applicant is allowed to work in the UK before employing them, so you prove it with documents or a share code at that stage, not on the CV. GOV.UK tells employers to check the original documents or the online share code, and says British and Irish citizens cannot get a share code, so their passport or passport card is checked instead.

GOV.UK also says employers must not discriminate against anyone because of where they are from. That is one more reason to leave nationality off the page. If the advert asks about your status, answer in one line and only if it is true, and keep the papers ready for the check.

How do you describe each job in two or three lines?

Write two or three lines per job, built on the STAR method: the situation, the task, your action and the result. The National Careers Service gives exactly that guidance for the work history section.

• Situation and task in one clause: what you were responsible for and why it mattered.
• Action in one verb you really used: what you did yourself.
• Result in plain words: what changed, with a number only if you have the real one.
• Cut every adjective that none of the three above can support.

Before you send it

• Two pages, one column, no text boxes and no sidebar.
• No photo, no date of birth, no marital status, no full street address.
• MM.YYYY dates everywhere, including education.
• British spelling, checked once by eye and not only by a spellchecker set to US.
• A personal statement whose last clause names this employer's problem.
• Saved as PDF, with the text still selectable when you open it.

Sources

Every source here was fetched and checked before it was linked. Our own parser numbers are reproducible: render the same CV in both layouts and extract it.

• National Careers Service, the sections a UK CV is expected to carry
• Prospects, UK example CVs and the conventional order
• Acas, age discrimination and what employers may ask
• Equality Act 2010 s5, age as a protected characteristic
• Huntr, how applicant tracking systems actually work
• GOV.UK, checking a job applicant's right to work