Free CV Templates
Struggling to get started on your CV?
Stand out and get hired with a free CV template that highlights your skills and gets you noticed.
What is a CV?
A CV is a detailed document highlighting your professional and educational history. CVs typically include your work experience, your academic qualifications, a list of your key skillsets, and details of relevant awards or achievements.
Most importantly, a CV is an opportunity to showcase your expertise and demonstrate to a hiring manager why you are a great candidate for a particular role.
What should be included in a CV?
Contact information: Your CV should include your full name, primary contact number, and a professional email address. You should also include your home address so that hiring managers will know whether you will be relocating (mention it at the top of your CV) to take on the role.
Do you need a work permit? Please mention it here as well as it's particularly important in the Irish market as a lot of companies are not in a position to offer sponsorship. Mention the stamp number and the duration.
Summary statement/objective: You may want to include a brief statement detailing your professional goals and what you see yourself offering to a company. An effective CV should use this statement as a sales pitch to highlight what makes you uniquely qualified for a position.
Work experience: For most people, the majority of a CV will be a structured summary of the organisations where you have worked, your job titles, and the dates you were employed (including months). For each role, you should highlight your accomplishments and evidence of your high performance within those roles.
Education: Your CV should include details of your time at university or college, including your school, your major or concentration, and the year that you graduated. If you did not go to university or college, it’s usually a good idea to include details of your highest level of education.
Qualifications and skills: Include a list of both the technical and soft skills you have gained throughout your professional life. For example, you may list particular software packages or languages in which you are fluent, or interpersonal strengths such as public speaking.
Awards and achievements: Your CV should include the details of any awards you have received, including the name of the prize and the year and location it was awarded.
Certifications: Be sure to list any certifications you hold that are relevant to your profession. Include the name of the certificate, the date it was earned, and the name of the conferring institution.
Hobbies and interests: You may want to include a few dot points about what you like to do in your spare time. If you have lots of hobbies and interests, try to list those that best match the culture of the organisation to which you are applying. For example, listing a team sport you play may bode well for you if you are applying for a team-based role.
Professional CV Templates
Preparing a CV from scratch is complicated work. Without a keen eye, you can easily miss a crucial piece of information or get tripped up by embarrassing errors. It’s also essential to tailor your CV to the particular job to which you’re applying. If you’re applying for several roles, this can add up to a lot of work.
Don’t let an amateur mistake cost you the perfect job.
Start your CV off on the right foot and save yourself time with one of our simple CV templates. We designed our free CV templates to help you stand out from the crowd and ensure you don’t miss any critical sections in your CV. Our CV templates will help you display your achievements and strengths clearly and concisely.
Take a look at some of our Word Document templates below. Each one is specifically tailored to the Irish market as well as your industry.
Digital Marketing CV template
Companies that hire for digital marketing companies are used to receiving hundreds of CVs with the same generic skillset. As an applicant, you can excel beyond the competition by carefully studying the company and job description and tailoring your CV to a particular role. For example, if the description asks for extensive SEO knowledge, take the time to tailor your CV and include your experience with specific SEO tools in your list of technical skills. Get started by checking out our free CV template for digital marketing roles here.
Supply Chain & Procurement CV template
A strong supply chain or procurement CV should emphasise more than just responsibilities. It should demonstrate your ability to improve process efficiency, reduce costs, and negotiate a fantastic deal. When developing a CV for supply chain or procurement, try to incorporate quantifiable statements about your performance, such as cost savings and results from price negotiations. Check out our blank CV template for supply chain and procurement roles here.
Data Science CV template
The single most important goal of a data scientist is to solve business problems. Use your CV to showcase how you have contributed to the business of your previous employers using particular tools and skillsets. Be sure to also tailor your CV to the specific keywords appearing in the role description, such as the names of software packages and coding languages. Repeating these keywords throughout your CV will ensure that it passes the automated screening phase and is seen by human eyes. Get started with our simple CV template for data scientists here.
Engineering & Life Sciences CV template
A good CV for a role in engineering or life sciences should be clearly laid out and well organised. The attention to detail that goes into your CV should serve as a reflection of the precision you put into your work. Keep the details of the CV factual and neat. Try to highlight evidence of your high-quality work, such as any prestigious publications, to help set you apart from the competition. Take a look at our Project Engineering CV template for engineering and Quality Control Microbiologist CV template for life sciences.
IT CV template
A strong CV in the IT industry will strike a balance between being readable and showcasing your knowledgeability of the field. Use relevant keywords, such as the names of platforms or software packages, while also highlighting how you have produced outstanding results, worked cooperatively with others, or solved problems using these tools. Check out our free CV template for a Software Engineer here for some inspiration.
How To Write a CV
So, you now understand the basic structure of a CV and have chosen a fresh template. But before you get started, we wanted to share some of the most commonly asked questions our consultants receive when chatting with candidates like you.
Here are a few to keep in mind as you begin writing (and if you have a question that’s not covered, let us know — we’d love to hear from you).
How many pages should a CV be?
A CV should be as many pages as is required to demonstrate the breadth of your skills and expertise that make you uniquely qualified for a role.
Note the phrasing ‘uniquely’ qualified. This means the description of each of your past roles should include information that is surprising, outstanding and highlights what makes you different from other candidates. If a section of text doesn’t achieve this, it may be adding unnecessary pages to your CV.
What are the key skills in a CV?
Usually, your key skills will include a combination of both technical skills, such as experience with particular technologies, and soft skills, such as adaptability.
How you should display these skills on your CV will depend on your particular industry, but typically they should be listed as dot points. When listing technical skills, it may be appropriate to sort them under subheadings according to your proficiency or indicate your years of experience relating to each one.
How do I organise my CV?
Your name and contact details should always appear at the top of your CV. Do you need a work permit? Please ensure it's mentioned here as well.
If you have one, your summary statement or objective should come next.
We generally recommend having your work experience come third, followed by your educational history. However, you might want to swap these two sections depending on your strengths and the specific requirements of the job. For example, if you are a fresh graduate with an impressive academic history but do not yet have much work experience, you may want to put the education section before your work experience. Always ensure that you order your education and employment history so that your most recent experiences appear at the top, then work backwards.
Lastly, you should include a list of your technical and soft skills, any certifications, and details of your awards and achievements. If you like, you can also include a few hobbies and interests at the end.
What is the best font size for a CV?
Avoid having a font size smaller than 12 points. Otherwise, your CV may be challenging to read. Use a larger font size for headings and subheadings and be sure to keep your usage consistent throughout the CV (our free CV templates can help with this).
What should not be included in a CV?
Do not include irrelevant work experience — if you are applying for a role as a biophysicist, there's no need to include the details of your part-time job in retail while you were studying.
It is usually not appropriate to include a description of your physical characteristics or a photo. Likewise, private information, such as your religious orientation, should not be included unless there is good reason to suggest it is relevant to the role.
Most importantly, keep your CV free of spelling errors and grammatical mistakes!
How long should it take to write a CV?
Expert CV writers will tell you that preparing a good CV from scratch can take several hours or days. How long it takes you will depend on your fluency with words and the amount of work and educational experience you need to cover.
Perhaps a better question is: “How much do you want the job?”
If the answer is, “Really, really bad,” take as much time as possible to tailor your CV to the criteria. Write multiple drafts and carefully proofread your CV before applying. Using one of our free CV templates will help you get started but make sure you put aside plenty of time to fill it out thoroughly!
What do you put on a CV if you have never worked?
Not all experience needs to be professional experience. Highlight your skills in other domains and their relevance to the particular role. For example, include any details of your community involvement and volunteering. This may include committees or boards you have been involved with or public events you have helped organise. You can also make up for a lack of work experience by placing more emphasis on your skills and qualifications, such as if you have completed several online courses or skills classes.
If you’re a fresh graduate, highlight particular projects or coursework that afforded you job-relevant skills. If you achieved a high GPA, consider including this in your CV, too.
Further Reading
