UK CV format for international students (A4, no photo, 2 pages)

A CV that's perfect in one country can quietly fail in the UK. The differences are small but they're the kind recruiters notice in the first three seconds. If you're applying from abroad or new to the UK market, this is the format to default to.

(For the mistakes to avoid, see the 7 UK CV mistakes international students make. This piece is the positive template.)

The non-negotiables

• A4, not US Letter. Set your page size to A4. A Letter-sized CV looks subtly off when printed or rendered by UK recruiters.
• No photo. UK convention — and good ATS practice — is no photograph. It avoids bias flags and stops parsers mangling your layout.
• No date of birth, no marital status, no nationality required. Asking for date of birth is tied to UK equality law; leave personal data off. (You may state your right-to-work/visa status briefly if relevant — see below.)
• Two pages maximum. One page is fine early-career; two is the cap. Three-page CVs are routinely rejected unread.
• Single column, no tables. So an applicant tracking system can parse it.

Section-by-section template

1. Name and contact line. Name, city (not full address), phone, professional email, LinkedIn. In the body of the document, not just the header.

2. Personal statement (optional, 2–3 lines). Role-specific, not generic. "Final-year MEng targeting graduate civil engineering roles, with placement experience in structural design." Skip "hard-working team player".

3. Education. Most recent first. Degree, institution, dates, and your result (predicted or achieved). UK recruiters expect to see your classification (e.g. 2:1, First) or its equivalent. State real grades — transcripts get checked.

4. Work / placement experience. Most recent first. For each: role, organisation, dates, then bullet points led by strong verbs and outcomes. Use implied first person — "Led the billing migration", "Reduced processing time by a quarter" — not "I led…". Quantify where honest.

5. Skills. As plain text, grouped sensibly (technical, languages, tools). Not as rating bars or icons — those don't parse.

6. Optional extras. Projects, positions of responsibility, publications, volunteering — if relevant and there's room.

A note on visa status

You don't have to declare your immigration status, but a brief, factual line can pre-empt a recruiter's first question — e.g. "Eligible to work in the UK on the Graduate visa until [year]". Keep it one line and factual. If you need sponsorship, focus your applications on employers who can actually sponsor rather than relying on the CV line to do the work.

Tone and language

• British spelling ("organise", "programme", "centre") for a UK audience.
• Concise bullets, one idea each, led by a verb.
• Numbers where you can defend them. Don't invent metrics; do surface the real ones.

Check it before you send

Format is only worth it if the machine can read it. Run your finished CV through the free ATS checker — it'll flag anything that won't survive parsing and show missing keywords for a target role.

A4, no photo, two pages, single column, real grades, British spelling. Get the format right and let the content compete on its merits. Scan your CV free.