Writing a CV for your first part time job
You do not need experience to write a good CV. You need one page, in the right order, that answers the three things a manager is actually asking.
What the manager is actually looking for
A CV for a part time job is not doing the same work as a CV for a career job. Nobody is weighing up your fifteen year trajectory. Someone with a rota to fill by Friday is reading for three things, usually in about twenty seconds:
- Can you do the hours we need covered?
- Will you actually turn up?
- Can we train you quickly without much hand holding?
Almost every decision below follows from that. If a line on your CV does not help answer one of those three questions, it is taking up space that something else could use.
One page, in this order
- Your name, phone number and email. Town and county is enough for an address. There is no reason to publish your street to a stranger, and the only thing the employer needs to know is whether you can get to the place.
- Two or three lines about you. Who you are, what you are looking for, when you can work. Not a personality essay.
- Experience, if you have any. Most recent first. Job title, where, dates, and two bullets on what you were trusted with.
- Education. School or college, what you are studying or studied, and the year. Leave off individual subject results unless they are relevant or recent enough to be interesting.
- Skills worth naming. Languages you actually speak, a licence, a Safe Pass, a barista course, food hygiene training, first aid.
- Availability. See below, because this is the part people skip.
If you have never had a job
This is the most common situation for part time work and it is not the problem it feels like. The trick is to stop thinking about job titles and start thinking about what you have been responsible for.
Ran the social media for a club. Coached an under twelves team on Saturday mornings for a season. Did Transition Year work experience in a pharmacy. Minded younger siblings after school every day. Worked the door at a school fundraiser. Did a fortnight helping in a family business. Any of these will do, because each of them proves something a manager cares about: you showed up repeatedly, on time, and somebody depended on it.
Write it the way you would write a job. What the thing was, how long you did it, and what you were actually responsible for. Do not apologise for it and do not label it as "not real experience". It is evidence, and evidence is the whole point.
Put your availability on it
This is the single biggest difference between a part time CV and a full time one, and most people leave it off entirely. A manager is matching people to gaps in a rota. If your CV says which gaps you can fill, you have just done their job for them.
Be specific and be honest:
- "Available Thursday to Sunday evenings, and all day Saturday."
- "Available weekends during term, full time from mid May to September."
- "Available weekday mornings once the school run is done, 9.30 to 2.30."
Do not write "flexible" when you are not. Saying yes to everything and then turning down half the shifts you get offered is the fastest way to stop being offered any.
Leave these off
- A photo. Not the convention in Ireland.
- Your date of birth and your marital status. Same.
- Your PPS or National Insurance number. That is payroll information and it comes after an offer, never with an application.
- Referees' phone numbers. Ask your referees first, then supply their details when they are asked for. Publishing a teacher's mobile number to every employer in the county is not fair on the teacher.
- Adjectives with no evidence. "Hard working team player with excellent communication skills" appears on almost every CV ever submitted, which is exactly why it carries no information. One concrete example beats five adjectives.
Make it easy to open
Send a PDF unless the advert asks otherwise, and name the file with your own name. A manager with thirty attachments called cv.pdf will find yours faster if it is called aoife-mulligan-cv.pdf. Use one plain font at a readable size. Skip the two column layouts and the skill rating bars: they look designed on screen and fall apart when somebody prints the page to bring it to a manager.
Five minutes of tailoring beats an hour of design
Keep one master CV and change three things for each application: the two line summary at the top, the order of your bullets so the most relevant one is first, and the availability line if the advert names particular shifts. That is usually the difference between a CV that looks aimed at the job and one that looks mass mailed.
Before you send it
- Read it out loud. You will hear the mistakes your eye skips over.
- Get one other person to read it. Any person.
- Check the email address on it is one you would say out loud in an interview, and that the inbox is one you actually open.
- Set up your voicemail. A manager who cannot leave a message usually moves to the next CV rather than trying again.
Common questions
How long should a CV be for a part time job?
One page. A manager filling a weekend shift is scanning, not reading, and a second page usually means the first one was padded. If you are struggling to fill a page, widen the margins slightly and add a short availability section rather than inventing filler.
What do I put on a CV if I have never had a job?
School or college work, Transition Year placements, a sports club, a society, volunteering, minding younger family members, anything you were relied on for. Name the thing you actually did and the responsibility it carried. Nobody expects a first CV to list employers.
Should I put a photo on my CV in Ireland?
No. Photos are normal on CVs in parts of continental Europe but not here, and an Irish employer will find it odd rather than impressive. The same goes for your date of birth and your marital status.
Do I put my PPS number on my CV?
Never. Your PPS number in the Republic, or your National Insurance number in Northern Ireland, is payroll information. You give it to an employer after they have offered you the job, not before. Anyone asking for it at application stage is a warning sign.
Should I send my CV as a Word file or a PDF?
PDF, unless the advert asks for something else. A Word file can reflow on a different machine and arrive looking broken. Name the file with your own name so it is findable in a folder of thirty attachments.