Student CV: Template and tips for your first internship or job

The first CV always faces the same paradox: you need experience to be hired, but a job to gain experience. The reality is actually less bleak: a student career contains exploitable material, provided you know how to identify and formulate it. Course projects, extracurricular activities, summer jobs, sports commitments: everything can go into a credible CV, presented in the right order with the right words.

The structure that compensates for the lack of professional [experience](/en/blog/career-change-cv)

Without professional experiences to detail, the hierarchy of sections changes: education moves to the top, followed by projects and extracurricular experiences. The personal statement becomes essential: two lines that state what you're looking for and what you already master, rather than a "seeking an internship" without focus or direction. A recruiter who reads fifty student CVs each week remembers those that already show purpose.

1. 1A targeted personal statement: 'MSc Marketing student, specialising in acquisition and SEO, available from June for a six-month internship.'
2. 2Education at the top of the page, with relevant courses, options and projects for the position.
3. 3Two to four academic projects treated as real experiences, with methodology and results.
4. 4Student jobs and extracurricular activities, rephrased as useful skills for the position.
5. 5Technical skills and languages, with precise and honest levels, never exaggerated.

This order isn't just a trend: it answers the real question from internship recruiters, which is "what can this candidate do right now, and how will they fit in?" Education proves your technical foundation, projects show practical application, and jobs demonstrate reliability. Each section thus addresses a specific objection, and none serves merely as filler.

Turning a course project into credible experience

An academic project is sold exactly like a professional mission: context, action, result. The difference between a useless line and a convincing achievement lies in concrete details and numbers, even modest ones. Recruiters don't expect twenty years of experience: they look for signs of methodology, autonomy and rigor, and a well-described project provides all three at once.

Apply this framework to all your graded work, dissertations, business simulations or hackathons. If a number is missing—audience reached, budget managed, data volume processed—estimate it honestly: an assumed order of magnitude is infinitely better than an empty or vague section.

Summer jobs and extracurricular activities: translating into useful skills

Working as a cashier for three summers isn't anecdotal if you know how to extract what an employer deduces from it: reliability, endurance, customer service, procedural compliance. The translation follows a simple rule: describe the actual responsibility, then the transferable skill it demonstrates. This rephrasing work is the heart of a student CV, and it distinguishes a thoughtful application from a rushed one.

Common student CV pitfalls

Certain flaws appear so frequently that recruiters filter them instinctively. Simply avoiding them is often enough to get ahead of half the applications received, even before the content is compared. Here are five, all easily corrected with a careful review.

• The two-page CV to compensate for lack of content: one full, dense page is more than enough, without exception.
• The whimsical email address from secondary school: use firstname.lastname, and create a new one if necessary.
• Poorly named file or non-PDF format: name it CV_FirstName_LastName_Internship.pdf, consistently.
• Forgetting LinkedIn: an up-to-date profile, even brief, doubles the credibility of a junior application.
• Exaggerating skills: technical testing happens early for juniors, better to remain honest.

Final tip: prepare two versions from the start, one for career-oriented internships and another for paid student jobs. On HightCV, duplication takes a minute and each version gets its own @pseudo link; view statistics then show which type of profile generates the most interest.