You just graduated. The job posts all say "1-3 years experience" and you have none. So you stare at a blank page, wondering what on earth to put after your name and phone number.
Here's the truth: you have more to write than you think. Employers hiring fresh grads know you haven't worked. They're looking for signs you'll learn fast and show up. Let's fill that page properly.
Start with a real header, not a life story
Top of the page: your name, phone number, a professional email, and your city (Cairo, Giza, Alexandria — wherever). Add your LinkedIn if it's tidy. That's it.
Use an email that's your name, not "cuteboy2003@". If your current one is embarrassing, make a new one in five minutes. Recruiters do notice.
Skip your national ID number, religion, and marital status. They belong on official HR forms later, not on a CV you're sending to strangers.
Write a two-line summary that says what you want
Under your header, write two or three lines: your degree, the field you're targeting, and one real strength. Be specific about the role.
For example: "Accounting graduate from Cairo University, comfortable with Excel and eager to build a career in audit. Strong with numbers and detail." That beats "hardworking team player seeking opportunities" — a line every recruiter has read a thousand times.
Put education near the top — it's your main asset now
Since you're fresh, your degree is the headline. List your university, faculty, degree, and graduation year. If your grade is good (very good or excellent), write it. If it's average, leave it off — you're not obliged to volunteer it.
More useful than the grade: your graduation project and any relevant coursework. Did you build something? Analyse a real dataset? Design a bridge? Say so in one line each. That's closer to real work than a certificate is.
Turn everything you've done into "experience"
You've done more than you're crediting yourself for. All of this counts:
- Summer training or an internship — even the two-week ones at banks, factories or clinics. Say what you actually did there.
- Your graduation project, especially if it involved a client, real data, or a working prototype.
- Student activities: AIESEC, Enactus, IEEE, the college union, event organising. Leading a team of ten students is leadership.
- Volunteering — Resala, the Food Bank, any campaign you ran or joined.
- Freelance or side work: tutoring, running a small Instagram shop, editing videos, doing graphics for friends. If someone paid you or relied on you, it's experience.
For each one, write what you did and the result, not just the title. "Managed the social media for a student event that brought 300 attendees" tells a story. "Member, media committee" tells nothing.
List skills honestly — and separate them
Split your skills into two groups so they're easy to scan.
- Technical: the software and tools for your field. Excel, SAP, AutoCAD, Python, Photoshop, whatever fits. Don't write "Microsoft Office" — everyone writes that. Name the specific tools.
- Languages: state your real English level plainly. "English: fluent, spoken and written" or "English: good, working on it." Don't claim fluent if a phone screen in English would expose you.
A word on English: many roles in Cairo — customer service, sales, admin at multinationals — filter hard on it. If yours is weak, that's a fixable gap. But don't lie on the CV; you'll just get caught in the interview and lose trust.
Add certificates and courses that mean something
Fresh grads compete partly on what they've done outside the syllabus. A CMA path started, an ICDL, a Google or Meta course, a HubSpot certificate, a Udemy course you actually finished — these show initiative.
One caution: don't pad this section with ten half-watched YouTube playlists. Three real, relevant courses beat a wall of names. Quality over quantity — a recruiter can tell the difference.
Keep it to one page, and match it to the job
You do not need two pages. One clean page is right for a fresh graduate, and it forces you to keep only what matters.
Then tailor it. If the post is for a sales role, push your communication and any selling you've done to the top. For an engineering post, lead with your project and technical tools. Sending the exact same CV to every opening is why so many get ignored.
- Read the job post and note the three things it repeats most.
- Make sure those three appear on your CV, in your own honest words.
- Move the most relevant experience or skill higher up the page.
- Save the file as "YourName_CV.pdf" — a PDF, so the layout doesn't break on their screen.
The mistakes that quietly get you binned
- A photo that's a selfie or a wedding crop. If you include one, make it plain and professional. Many recruiters prefer none at all.
- Spelling errors in your name of the company or the job title. Proofread, then ask a friend to read it too.
- Long paragraphs. Recruiters skim in seconds. Use short bullet points.
- Fancy templates with colours and columns that confuse scanning software. Clean and simple wins.
Do this today
Open a blank document and write down every internship, project, activity, course and side job you've done in the last three years. Don't judge them yet — just list them. You'll be surprised how full the page gets.
Then shape that list into the sections above. Show it to one person who has hired before — a relative, a former manager from your training, anyone. Their two minutes of feedback will teach you more than another hour of guessing.
