Creative CV and cover letter example for school leavers

The blank page is the worst part. You open a document, type your name and stop, because how do you write a creative CV when your entire body of work is some edits, a few photos and a poster you made for your mate's gig?

Good news. That poster counts. A creative CV for a school leaver has a known shape, every block of it can be filled from the life you've already lived and the whole thing fits on one page with room to spare. Give this guide ten minutes and you'll leave with both documents drafted.

One rule before we start, the same one that governs everything on FIRSTJOBZ: nothing gets invented. Everything below is school, hobby and volunteering-grade truth, arranged well. That's all a good first CV has ever been.

The one-page creative CV, block by block

Name, contact details and the link. Name at the top, then mobile, a sensible email address and - the part that matters most in this industry - a link to your work. A portfolio page, a public folder, a channel, a grid. Put it in the header where nobody can miss it. If your email address involves a nickname from year eight, make a new one tonight.

Availability. Two lines, directly beneath, exact: "Available: weekends, weekday evenings from 5pm, full weeks in school holidays. Happy with early calls and late finishes." Creative work gets booked around gaps in a diary, so this answers the first question anybody has about a junior.

Personal statement. Two or three lines, specific, no waffle: "Year 13 student who films and edits. I've cut the last two school productions, run our sixth form Instagram for a year and I'm looking for a first paid role on set or in a studio. Happiest when I'm useful and I don't mind starting with the tea round." That's enough. Don't write "passionate creative with a keen eye"; every studio manager has read it a thousand times.

Selected work. This block replaces "experience" as the heart of a creative CV. Three to five entries, one line each, always with what the job was and what you personally did: "School production 2026 - filmed on two cameras, edited a 40-minute cut, delivered on deadline for the parents' screening." "Gig photos for a local band - shot, edited and supplied 30 images used on their socials." "Poster and ticket page for a charity night that sold out." Link each one if you can.

Education. School or college name, years and your GCSEs or predicted grades, English and maths first because everything creative involves writing and budgets eventually. One line for anything relevant: a media BTEC, an art A-level, a first aid course, a school AV crew role.

Skills. Short, honest and provable. Name the software you actually use, at the level you actually use it: "Premiere Pro (confident), Lightroom (confident), Canva, basic After Effects." Add the human ones with proof attached: reliable, comfortable talking to strangers, calm on a deadline. If you can't back it with a story, leave it off.

Reference. One line: "Reference available from [teacher, coach or club leader] on request." A named adult who'll vouch for you settles the biggest question anybody has about a first-timer.

Format matters more here than in most industries, because you're being judged partly on presentation. Send a PDF so nothing collapses on someone else's screen. Keep it to one page. Name the file sensibly, "Sam-Patel-CV.pdf" rather than "cv-final-FINAL-2.pdf". And test your own link on somebody else's phone before you send anything, because a dead portfolio link is the single most common way applications die.

Tune the emphasis to the employer too. A production company wants to see reliability and a driving licence if you have one. An agency or design studio wants the work itself, front and clean. An in-house marketing team wants proof you can turn things around weekly. Same facts, different order.

The cover letter, paragraph by paragraph

Keep it under half a page, addressed to a person if the advert names one. Four short paragraphs do the whole job.

Paragraph one: why them. Name the company and one specific thing of theirs you've actually seen. "I'm applying for the runner role at your Salford base. I watched the campaign you made for the food festival last summer and the fact you shot the whole thing in one day is exactly the kind of set I want to learn on."

Paragraph two: what you bring, with evidence. "I film and edit. I've cut both of my school's productions, I run our sixth form Instagram and I've shot photos for a local band that they still use. None of it was paid, all of it had a deadline and everything I've made is linked at the top of my CV."

Paragraph three: availability and appetite. "I can work weekends and weekday evenings in term time, plus full weeks in the holidays. I'm not fussy about early calls. I'd rather start at the bottom somewhere good than wait for something tidier."

Paragraph four: the close. One sentence, no grovelling. "I'd love the chance to be useful on a shoot day - thank you for reading."

That's it. A producer reads that in forty seconds and knows you bothered, which is exactly the signal a cover letter exists to send. Our sitewide guide to landing your first job makes the same point in its fourth tip.

Notice what the letter never does. It never apologises for your age, because youth is a selling point framed right: energy, no bad habits, genuinely teachable. It never repeats the CV line by line, because the letter's job is voice while the CV's job is facts. And it never pads.

One variation you'll need sooner than you think: the letter with no advert attached. Plenty of small studios, venues and production companies never post anything - they hire whoever emailed at the right moment. That version is shorter still. Say who you are in one line, link the work in the second, say exactly what you're asking for in the third: a day's work experience, a place on the casual crew list, a shout when they're next short-handed. Then say when you're free. Vague emails asking "for any opportunities" get deleted; a specific, small, easy-to-say-yes-to ask gets a reply surprisingly often. Send it on a Tuesday morning rather than a Friday afternoon.

The five mistakes creative employers see constantly

The dead link. A private video, an expired folder, a page that needs a login. If they can't see the work in five seconds, they move on. Check every link from a device you're not signed in on.

Showing everything. Twenty pieces of varying quality is a weaker application than three good ones. Your portfolio is judged by its weakest item, so be ruthless. Three strong things, then stop.

No context on the work. A beautiful image with no caption tells them nothing. One line each - what the brief was, what you did, what the constraint was - turns a gallery into evidence of how you think.

The wrong company's name in the letter. The copy-paste tell, fatal in an industry where everybody knows everybody. Read it once slowly before every send.

Careless writing. Their and there, its and it's, a sentence that stops halfway. You don't need perfect prose to carry a flight case, but a business that sells words and pictures reads sloppiness as a warning. Get one adult to check it before it goes anywhere.

When the writing itself is the wall

Some people can fill in every block above and still can't make the letter sound like them. The work is good, the facts are all there and the sentences come out stiff. If that's you, get help with the flourish, never the facts. That's what the FIRSTJOBZ cover letter service is for: you bring who you are and what you've genuinely made, we make it read the way you'd say it on a good day. Flourish, not fabrication - the difference between polishing your story and inventing one. Because the more you sound like a person on paper, the more a busy producer wants to meet the person.

Draft both tonight while this page is fresh, then send them somewhere real this week. Junior creative roles move quickly and an application answered in its first two days lands in a much shorter pile. Once they're out, get ready for what comes next with our 10 common creative interview questions, take the rest of the series from the creative hub and keep an eye on live creative jobs so the right advert never slips past you. The blank page is finished. Go get the interview.