Engineering CV and cover letter example for school leavers

The blank page is the worst part. You open a document, type your name and then stall, because how do you write a CV for a trade you haven't started yet? Here's the good news: an engineering 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. 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 here gets invented. Everything below is school, hobby and volunteering-grade truth, arranged well. That's all a good first CV has ever been. In this trade it matters double, because engineering interviews ask follow-up questions and a made-up claim falls apart in about two of them.

The one-page engineering CV, block by block

Name and contact details. Name big at the top, then mobile and a sensible email address. If your email involves a nickname from year eight, make a new one tonight. It takes two minutes.

Personal statement. Three lines, specific, no clichés: "Year 11 student applying for engineering apprenticeships from September. Predicted grade 5 in maths and grade 5 in combined science. I rebuild bikes at home for friends and I've been taking things apart since I was about nine. Looking to train properly with a firm that makes real things." That does more work than a paragraph about passion for the industry. Never write "hardworking team player". Every reader has seen it a thousand times and believed it none of them.

Education. School name, years attended, then your grades or predicted grades with maths, English and science listed first, because those are the three an engineering employer looks for and they should not have to hunt. Add a line for anything relevant: design and technology, resistant materials, engineering, product design, computing, electronics. If you did a workshop-based option, name the machines or processes you used.

Practical evidence. This is the block that wins engineering applications and almost nobody includes it. Give it a heading of its own and list what you've actually made, fixed or built, with a verb at the front. "Stripped and rebuilt the rear hub on a mountain bike, including replacing bearings." "Built a desktop PC from parts, including cable management and BIOS setup." "Made a working desk lamp in DT, from technical drawing through cutting, drilling and soldering the circuit." "Kept a petrol strimmer running for two summers, including cleaning the carburettor." Three or four entries is plenty. Nobody expects professional work. They want proof the interest is real rather than something you typed because the advert mentioned it.

Experience that counts. Any paid or voluntary work goes here, even if it isn't engineering. A Saturday job in a shop or a kitchen proves you can hold a rota, take instruction and turn up on time, which is exactly what an employer worries about with a sixteen-year-old. Write it as evidence: "Weekend kitchen porter, twelve months, including opening shifts at 8am with no missed days."

Skills. Short list, each one provable. Hand tools, basic measuring with a rule and a caliper, reading a technical drawing, soldering, CAD software you've actually used, spreadsheets. If you can't back it with a story, leave it off.

Availability and travel. Two lines near the bottom, or right under your name if you want it read first: "Available full-time from September. Comfortable with early starts. I can reach industrial estates across the north of the city by bus. I'm working towards my driving licence." Travel is a genuine reason young applicants get rejected in this trade, because workshops sit on estates with awkward bus routes. Answer it before it's asked.

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

Format matters too. Save it as a PDF so the layout survives someone else's screen, name the file properly - "Amira-Khan-CV.pdf", not "cv-final-FINAL-2.pdf" - and keep a couple of printed copies for the small firms where handing it over in person still works.

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 this employer. Name the company, show you know what they make. "I'm applying for your engineering apprenticeship starting in September. I looked at what you produce and the fact that most of it is made to order rather than mass-produced is exactly the kind of work I'd like to learn."

Paragraph two: what you bring. Match evidence to their needs in two or three sentences. "I'm predicted grade 5 in maths and science. Outside school I rebuild bikes for friends, which has taught me to work to a sequence, keep parts organised and admit when something is beyond me rather than force it."

Paragraph three: commitment and practicalities. "I understand an apprenticeship is a multi-year commitment with college alongside the job. That suits me better than staying in full-time education. I'm available from September, I'm fine with early starts and I can get to your site on the number 12."

Paragraph four: the close. One sentence, no grovelling. "I'd welcome the chance to look round your workshop and show you I'm serious - thank you for reading."

That's it. Somebody reads that in forty seconds and knows you bothered, which - as our sitewide guide to landing your first job puts it - is the whole signal a cover letter exists to send.

Notice what the letter never does. It never apologises for your age, because youth is the selling point in a trade built on training people from scratch: no bad habits, no shortcuts learned somewhere else, genuinely teachable. It never repeats the CV line by line, since the letter's job is voice while the CV's job is facts. And it never pads. Four paragraphs, then stop.

The five mistakes engineering employers see constantly

Passion with no proof. "I've always been passionate about engineering" with nothing underneath it is the most common opening line in the pile and it counts for nothing. One rebuilt bike beats ten sentences of enthusiasm.

Burying the maths. If your maths grade is somewhere in the middle of a paragraph on page two, it may as well not be there. Put it near the top. If it isn't where it needs to be yet, say what you're doing about it rather than hiding it.

Invented experience. Claiming welding or machining you haven't done collapses the moment somebody asks which process, on what thickness, with what settings. The truth arranged well beats fiction every time. The truth also doesn't shake under a follow-up.

Ignoring the practicalities. No availability, no mention of how you'd get there, no acknowledgement that the shift starts before eight. Employers plan around all three and an application that answers them lands in a shorter pile.

Unproofed writing. Their and there, a statement that stops mid-sentence, three different fonts. Nobody needs perfect prose for a workshop job, but careless errors read as carelessness generally, which is a genuinely bad signal in a trade where a misread drawing costs money. Get one adult to read 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 facts are all there. The sentences come out stiff, or flat, or like somebody else wrote them. If that's you, get help with the flourish, never the facts. That's exactly what the FIRSTJOBZ cover letter service is for: you bring who you are and what you've genuinely done, 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 engineer wants to meet the person.

Draft both documents tonight while this page is fresh, then send them somewhere real this week. Intakes fill on a rolling basis and an application in the first week sits in a far shorter pile than one submitted at the deadline. Once they're out, get ahead of the next stage with our 10 common engineering interview questions, swing back to the engineering hub for the rest of the series and keep an eye on live engineering jobs so the right advert never slips past you. The blank page is finished. Go get the interview.