Recruitment CV and cover letter example for school leavers

The blank page is the worst bit. You open a document, type your name, then sit there wondering what goes underneath when you've never had a proper job. There's an extra layer of nerves in this industry too, because the person reading your CV reads CVs professionally. They've seen thousands. They spot padding in seconds.

Take that as good news rather than bad. A recruiter spots effort just as fast. Almost nobody applying for a trainee role has made any. Your CV needs one page, a clear shape and nothing invented. Give this guide ten minutes and you'll finish with both documents drafted.

One rule before we start, the one that governs everything on FIRSTJOBZ: nothing here gets made up. Every line below is school, sport, part-time work or volunteering-grade truth, arranged well. That's all a strong first CV has ever been.

The one-page recruitment CV, block by block

Name and contact details. Name at the top, then your mobile and a sensible email address. If yours still contains a nickname from year eight, make a new one tonight. In this industry the phone number is the important line, because somebody is going to ring it rather than email you.

Availability and practicalities. Straight under your name, two lines, exact: "Available: full-time from 8 September, happy in the office five days, 25 minutes from the city centre by bus, provisional licence held." Most trainee roles are office-based and the manager's first worry is whether you can reliably get there. Answer it before they ask.

Personal statement. Three lines, specific, no clichés. "Year 13 student applying for trainee resourcer roles. Two years on a shop floor talking to strangers all day, plus a fundraising role where I rang local businesses for raffle prizes. I want a job where being organised and hard to put off actually counts." That last sentence does more work than any amount of "passionate about people".

Education. School or college, years attended, then your GCSEs or predicted grades with maths and English led first. Add one line for anything extra: a debating team, an enterprise competition, a first aid course, a customer service module.

Experience that counts. This is where "no experience" gets translated into recruitment language. Saturday job: "Served customers in a busy shop, handled complaints and hit a weekly add-on sales target." Resale selling: "Sourced, priced and sold over a hundred items online, including negotiating with buyers and resolving disputes." Fundraising: "Cold-called 40 local businesses for raffle donations and secured twelve." Sports captaincy: "Organised weekly fixtures for a squad of fifteen, chasing availability and arranging transport." Each one starts with a verb. Two to four entries is plenty.

Skills. Short, each one provable: phone confidence backed by the fundraising, working to a target backed by the Saturday job, organised backed by the fixtures, comfortable with spreadsheets and databases. If you can't tell the story behind it, leave it off. A recruiter will ask.

Reference. One line: "Reference available on request from [teacher, coach or manager]." A named adult who'll pick up the phone settles the biggest question anybody has about a first-timer.

A word on format, because in this industry the format is part of the test. Save as a PDF so nothing collapses on somebody else's screen. Name the file properly - "Amira-Khan-CV.pdf", never "cv final FINAL 2.pdf". Keep it to one page, use plenty of white space and pick one plain font. Consultants reformat other people's CVs all day long. A tidy one from a school leaver quietly says you'd be good at the job.

Tune the emphasis to the agency, too. A high-volume temp desk wants pace, resilience and reliability, so lead with the shop job and the attendance record. A specialist consultancy wants curiosity about their market, so let the personal statement mention it. An in-house team wants care and accuracy above hustle. Same facts, different order.

The cover letter, paragraph by paragraph

Keep it under half a page, addressed to a real person if the advert names one. Four short paragraphs cover it.

Paragraph one: why this agency. Name them, name the desk, give a genuine reason. "I'm applying for the trainee resourcer role on your industrial desk. I've read that you recruit for a lot of the warehouses out by the motorway, which are exactly the places my mates work, so I'd start already knowing the shifts people actually want."

Paragraph two: what you bring. Two or three sentences matching your evidence to their job. "I've spent two years on a shop floor, so talking to strangers doesn't faze me. When I rang forty local businesses for raffle prizes I got told no about thirty times before it started working, which taught me more about persistence than anything at school did."

Paragraph three: availability and appetite. "I can start full-time from September, I'm happy to be in five days a week and I'd rather learn on a busy desk than a quiet one. I know the first year is mostly calls and admin. That's the part I want."

Paragraph four: the close. One line, no grovelling. "I'd welcome the chance to show you how I sound on the phone - thank you for reading."

That's the whole letter. A manager reads it in forty seconds, then knows you bothered, which is exactly the signal our sitewide guide to landing your first job says a cover letter exists to send.

Notice what the letter never does. It never apologises for your age, because youth is a genuine selling point in recruitment: energy, no bad habits, easy to train. 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 agencies see constantly

The wrong agency's name in the letter. The copy-paste tell. Recruiters are hardened to it because they see it from candidates every single week. Read every application once, slowly, before it goes.

A CV that's badly laid out. In most industries this is a minor sin. In recruitment it's a demonstration, since formatting other people's CVs is literally part of the job you're asking for.

Invented experience. Claiming a year somewhere you never worked collapses about ninety seconds into a phone screen. The truth arranged well beats fiction every time, mainly because the truth doesn't wobble under a follow-up question.

No sign of why recruitment. Plenty of applicants write a letter that would fit any office job at all. One sentence about why this industry, not just any employer, puts you ahead of most of the pile.

Unproofed writing. Their and there, its and it's, a statement that stops halfway. Nobody needs perfect prose for a trainee role, yet careless errors read as carelessness in general. Get one adult to read it before you send anything.

A sixth, specific to this industry: an unanswerable phone. Your application is a promise that you're contactable. Miss three calls from an unknown number in week one of applying and you've failed the only practical test they gave you.

When the writing itself is the wall

Some people can fill in every block above, know exactly what they want to say, then watch it come out stiff and flat on the page. If that's you, get help with the flourish, never with the facts. That's precisely what the FIRSTJOBZ cover letter service is for: you bring who you are and what you've genuinely done, we turn it into something that reads the way you'd say it on a good day. Flourish, not fabrication - polishing your story rather than inventing one. Because the more you sound like a person on paper, the more a busy manager wants to meet the person.

Draft both tonight while the shape is fresh in your head, then send them somewhere real this week. Agencies move fast on their own vacancies, so an application in on day one lands in a far shorter pile than one submitted on the closing date. Once they're out, get ahead of the next stage with our 10 common recruitment interview questions, swing back through the recruitment hub for the rest of the series and keep half an eye on live recruitment jobs so the right advert never slips past you. The blank page is done. Go get the phone call.