How long should a degree apprenticeship CV be?

One page. At eighteen with no professional history, a second page means padding, and padding is visible. The exception is a career changer with genuine employment history, where two pages can be justified — but one still reads better.

What do you put on a CV with no work experience?

Education with actual detail, any part-time or casual work, school or college projects with outcomes, positions of responsibility, volunteering, personal projects, and relevant skills. The setting matters far less than being able to state what you did and what resulted from it.

Do you need a CV if the application is an online form?

Often not for the application itself, but write one anyway. The work of assembling it — deciding what your evidence actually is — is what you then reuse in every form field, video interview and assessment centre. Many employers also ask for it later in the process.

Should you use AI to write your apprenticeship CV?

As a first draft built from your own details, yes. As the finished CV, no. Recruiters screening hundreds of applications recognise generated phrasing, and generic wording loses the specific detail that makes a CV land. Let it handle the structure, then rewrite each entry in your own words and check every fact, since you may be asked about any of it at interview.

What should a degree apprenticeship CV look like?

One page, education first, and every entry written as evidence rather than as a description. The employer already knows you have no professional experience — that is what the apprenticeship is for. What they are screening for is whether you can be specific about things you have actually done.

The structure

Name and contact details. Two lines. No photo, no date of birth, no full address — town and a postcode area is enough.
A short opening statement. Three lines maximum, naming the occupation and the route. Rewrite it for each employer. If it would fit any apprenticeship at any company, it is doing nothing.
Education. Highest first. Predicted or achieved grades, the actual subjects, and GCSE Maths and English grades stated explicitly, because a recruiter is looking for those two and should not have to hunt.
Projects and responsibilities. Usually the strongest section and the one most people omit. EPQ, coursework with a result, a team project, captaincy, a personal build.
Work. Any work. Part-time, casual, family business, volunteering.
Skills and interests. Short and specific. Named software or tools, languages, certifications. Skip anything unverifiable.

Education sits above work here deliberately — the reverse of a normal CV — because at this stage it is your strongest evidence and the thing being screened against entry requirements.

The one change that improves it most

Turn descriptions into outcomes. Almost every weak apprenticeship CV describes duties; almost every strong one states results.

Weak: “Worked as a sales assistant. Responsible for serving customers and stock.”

Strong: “Sales assistant, 12 hours a week alongside A-levels for 18 months. Trained two new starters, and was trusted to open and cash up unsupervised within six months.”

Same job. The second tells the reader about reliability, trust and progression — which are the actual things being assessed. Duties tell them nothing they could not have guessed from the job title.

What to include when you think you have nothing

Applicants routinely discard their best material for not looking professional enough. All of this counts:

School and college projects — especially anything that went wrong and had to be recovered
An EPQ, which is genuinely useful evidence of independent work
Positions of responsibility — prefect, team captain, society organiser, running the fixtures
Personal projects — a website, a game mod, a repair, a small business, a channel
Volunteering, including informal help at a club or in your community
Caring responsibilities, translating for family, or holding things together at home alongside study — strong evidence, almost never used
Free certifications completed properly — cloud fundamentals, a language course, first aid

The test is not whether it sounds impressive. It is whether you can say what you did and what happened as a result. More on this in do you need work experience.

What to leave out

A photo, date of birth, marital status, nationality. Not expected in the UK and occasionally a problem for the employer.
“References available on request.” Assumed. It wastes a line.
Adjective lists. Hard-working, passionate, team player. Unverifiable, and used by every applicant. Show it in an entry instead.
Every GCSE individually. Summarise the spread, then state Maths and English specifically.
Anything before Year 10.
A second page. If you are filling one, you are padding.

Tailoring, without rewriting it every time

Given you may be sending fifteen to twenty-five applications, a full rewrite each time is not realistic. Change three things:

The opening statement — name the employer and the specific programme.
The order of your projects, so the most relevant one is first.
The skills line, weighted to what the advert asks for.

Then check it against the advert. If the advert names three qualities, all three should be evidenced somewhere on the page — not claimed, evidenced.

Before you send it

Proofread it, then have someone else proofread it. Typos on a one-page CV are conspicuous.
Export as PDF and name the file properly — your name and the role, not cv-final-v3.
Read it as a stranger: could you tell within ten seconds which occupation this person wants?
Check GCSE Maths and English are visible without searching.

The CV builder lays out a first draft in this structure, from a CV you already have or from your profile, for you to rewrite in your own words.

Next: applying with no work experience, how many to apply to, or the full application guide.