Placement CV Examples & UK Templates

When you're looking for a work placement to complement your degree studies, it can be as competitive as applying for a permanent job. 

The opportunity to road-test a job for six or 12 months and boost your employability is true gold and a vital component of many UK degrees. So, how can you stand out in the sea of students all looking to bag the best work placement?

The answer is to write a persuasive, professional, and placement-winning CV that will catch the employer's attention. 

Creating a CV for a placement can be stressful, especially for students who have never created a CV before. Writing about your skills, experience, and achievements in the best possible light can leave you staring at a blank computer screen. Don't worry! We have you covered with our example and expert guide to writing the perfect placement CV.  

CV guide for a placement CV

Highlight your skills and abilities with Resume.io. Our guides and CV examples cover over 150 professions, and our CV builder makes creating a compelling CV easier than ever. 

This CV guide and corresponding placement CV example will cover the following:

• How to write a placement CV
• Choosing the right format for a placement CV
• How to add your contact information
• Using summaries
• Adding your experience
• Listing education and relevant certifications
• Picking the right CV design/layout

How to write a placement CV

Before you start to prepare your placement CV, it's a good idea to have a structure in mind and understand what sections to include. Here are the key elements:

• The CV header
• The CV summary (aka profile or personal statement)
• The employment history section
• The CV skills section
• The education section

Presenting yourself as the best candidate for the placement is vital. What sets you apart from other applicants? What is the company looking for in a candidate, and how do you meet the brief? Can you connect any of your successes to the placement? 

Researching the placement requirements, company, and team will help you answer these questions and communicate the value you can bring to the employer.

Here are some key areas to focus on when creating your placement CV:

• Tailor your CV for each placement opportunity by focusing on relevant skills, abilities, and the all-important achievements. Awards, commendations, stand-out academic projects, and noteworthy work experience are all areas to highlight.
• Emphasise your soft skills too. Problem-solving, communication, and collaboration skills are examples of the types of skills recruiters will be on the lookout for and something you're likely to have in spades via your academic studies.
• Keep your CV short and sweet. Don't be tempted to pad out your CV with excessive or irrelevant details to try and mask a lack of work experience.
• Many CVs fail at the first hurdle as they are not optimised for Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS). Reviewing the job description and sprinkling relevant keywords across your CV will prevent your application from being filtered out by ATS software.

Choosing the right CV format for a placement

The format of your placement year CV needs to be informative, organised, and professional – all qualities you want to project to a prospective employer. 

As a student, it’s unlikely that you will have a lot of work experience to detail. This isn't a problem on a placement CV as employers will understand that you're in the qualifying stages of your career. However, you will still need an effective way to present your career. 

A great choice is the functional CV format, which prioritises skills and strengths, with less focus on work experience. Check out our example of a functional CV below.

For students with more work experience, the combination CV format is another option. This structure places equal weight on both skills and work experience. Typically, skills and abilities are placed at the beginning of the CV, closely followed by the employment history section.

If you’re looking for inspiration, check out our CV templates for a quick and easy way to get started on your placement CV. We also have several versions for students available as CV examples. 

In terms of design, your placement CV should exude simplicity and clarity. Select a clean, modern CV layout so your CV is easy to read by both humans and ATS software. 

Include your contact information

Your CV header is the first thing an employer will see. Projecting your professionalism here could encourage the recruiter to read on and learn more about you. 

Detailing your contact information in a clear and accessible way will also help the HR team and ATS quickly find or scan this information. Here's what you need to include: 

• Full name & title. Detail your first and last name, followed by the title of the placement you're pursuing. For example “Mechanical Engineering Placement.”
• Professional email address. Avoid any quirky email addresses. Use a professional email, such as [email protected].
• Phone number. Add a phone number where you can be easily contacted. Double-check your voicemail greeting to ensure it’s professional.
• Location. Listing your city or general location is perfectly fine. Street addresses and full postcodes are no longer expected or required.
• LinkedIn. If you don't have a LinkedIn profile it may be worth setting this up as most recruiters will check this upon receiving your placement application.

Don't include:

• Photo: This is not expected in the UK and could lead to discrimination or ATS issues
• Personal details: There is no need to include personal information, such as marital status, place or date of birth, and National Insurance numbers.

Make use of a summary

Your personal summary is an opportunity to showcase your top skills and achievements relevant to the placement opportunity. It's a snapshot of you and what you have achieved in the early stages of your fledgling career. 

Sparking the employer's curiosity is the goal. Stick to two or three sentences that outline your transferable skills and experience, combined with the unique value you can offer. Phrase this in a way that shows your enthusiasm for the placement and passion for your chosen career.     

Research can help you craft a unique personal profile. Check out the placement and company priorities so you can reference any relevant academic knowledge or practical experience. For example, if you're targeting a placement in a forward-thinking tech firm, you could mention, 'Eager to apply AI and machine learning knowledge to contribute to upcoming company projects.' Striking a chord with the hiring manager can convince them to give you a shot 

Action verbs are also a great tool that can really make your profile pop. Verbs such as ‘inspired,’ ‘influenced,’ ‘crafted,’ and ‘collaborated,’ are powerful and compelling when used to describe your skills, experience, and achievements.   

One fine line to balance when creating your placement CV profile is to be confident in yourself and what you can offer, but avoid embellishing information or overselling yourself. Employers will understand that you're seeking a placement in order to get more practical experience in your career. Be honest in your profile about what you know, and what you're keen to learn. 

You can find adaptable placement CV example summaries below:

Outline your work experience: the value of transferable skills

When you have little or no direct experience, creating a work history section on your placement CV can be tricky. But, with the right approach, it’s still possible to create a killer CV. 

Focus on the transferable skills you have gained via your studies, part-time jobs, freelance gigs, and volunteer work. For example, if you're targeting a business management placement, you may think your part-time restaurant job isn't relatable. However, it's likely you've honed your problem-solving, communication, and collaboration skills via this work, which are great transferable skills for your placement year.

Of course, any direct experience should take priority, so highlight any successful internships or placements you've already completed. Then, cherry-pick the most relatable experience you've gained in other workplace settings.   

Start by detailing your current (or most recent) job first, then work back to earlier roles. Create clear headers for each role, including job title, company name, and employment dates. Below each role include concise, results-focused bullet points that showcase your contributions. Make sure to maintain a professional tone by avoiding the use of first-person pronouns (I, me, my, etc.)   

One thing that can quickly make recruiters lose interest when reading about your experience are passive phrases that simply list duties and responsibilities. For example: 

• 'Worked on social media campaigns.”
• “Entered client information on the CRM system.”
• “Had a good record for teamwork and adaptability.”

Revamping these phrases with action verbs, specific information, and results-based outcomes will make them more impactful. Check out these reworked versions of the above phrases:

• “Contributed to the delivery of a national social media campaign involving user-generated content – with success boosting engagement by 25%.”
• “Accurately updated client data on the CRM system and ensured the issue of BI reports to monthly deadlines.”
• “Commended for teamwork and adaptability during final internship evaluation.”

Include the relevant key skills that make a great placement CV

Skills are an important section on a CV for a placement year, particularly as many employers are increasingly favouring skills-based hiring. The beauty here is that you can present all the skills you have learned during your studies as well as any work experience not directly related to your degree studies. 

When listing skills on your CV, it always makes sense for the essential hard skills to take precedence over soft skills. Start off with any industry-specific skills you possess in line with the requirements of the placement. Follow this with relevant soft skills, which could include emotional intelligence, creativity, leadership, and teamwork.

Check out our CV builder which offers many examples of key skills to choose from with proficiency ranges you can adjust. You can also create and add your own unique skills.

Here's what the skills box looks like in our placement CV template. 

Don't restrict your key skills to just this section. Sprinkle these terms across your CV when describing your experience and achievements, so you can demonstrate these skills in action. 

For example, in your professional profile and work experience, highlight your: 

• Technical skills by describing the use of industry-specific software or platforms to optimise efficiency levels.
• Communication skills by creating engaging blog content and presentations that increased the client base.
• Teamwork by demonstrating your success working in a cross-functional team to deliver a key project ahead of the deadline.

Each placement will have unique requirements. Using the job description as your guide, identify priority skills and provide specific examples of these skills in action.

Detail your education & relevant placement certifications

Unless you have some direct work experience, your education will typically be directly related to your placement, so should be placed prominently on your CV and follow your professional summary. However, if you do have more direct experience, it's fine to switch these sections.

List your academic achievements, in reverse chronological order. When outlining your degree, go into more detail by describing specific modules and research projects that relate directly to the placement opportunity. If you're describing a relevant project, just provide a brief synopsis as you can always go into more detail during a placement interview.

Beyond your degree, this section is a great opportunity to list earlier education, certifications, or training. For example,

• Earlier education. A-Levels and GCSEs with subjects and grades/results can be included to show your academic history. If you didn't complete A Levels, then detail any college-level qualifications, such as NVQs, national diplomas, or tech levels.
• Awards. Achieving prestigious awards shows your commitment to excellence. The Duke of Edinburgh Award is an example of the type of award to include on your placement CV.
• Training and certifications. Technical or industry-specific training courses and certifications will be of great interest to employers so make sure to include them too.

Check out the education section from our adaptable CV sample below:

Pick the right CV layout and design for a placement CV

Now you have the sections you need to include, these now should be placed on the page to create an attractive CV. When your placement CV lands in the hiring manager's inbox, you want this information to jump off the page.

The format of your CV needs to be organised and attractive. Section headers will help improve readability for the hiring manager. These can be in a larger font than the rest of the content and in bold to stand out. Consider using a two-column layout on your CV to maximise space. This will help you include different sections while maintaining a modern and attractive look.

Avoid any design-heavy formats. While a splash of colour is perfectly fine, infographic charts, images, snazzy borders, and fancy fonts are not usually favoured by recruiters and ATS may struggle to parse your CV. The only caveat here is if you work in a creative industry, such as graphic design.

Crafting a perfectly formatted CV can be a painstaking task, but you can speed this process up by using our field-tested CV templates. Check out these job-winning templates and avoid those time-consuming CV design and formatting issues.

Placement text-only CV example

Key takeaways for building a placement CV

A placement gives you a taste of your chosen career path and provides a valuable experience that will look pretty impressive on your CV. But, first, you need a placement-winning CV. 

Highlighting your unique skills and abilities, academic success, and relevant work experience in the best possible light, will ensure you land a top-tier work placement.

Ready to get started on your placement CV? Check out our online CV builder to fast-track the application process and get you one step closer to a great placement opportunity.