Computer science CV templates for students and graduates

What a graduate tech recruiter is looking for

Everyone applying for a graduate developer or data role has a computing degree or is about to. The degree gets you through the first filter; it does not separate you from the next applicant. What does is evidence that you have built, fixed or analysed something real, that you can work with other people on it, and that you know roughly where your skills stop. A first-year module list does none of that. A short project with a clear write-up does.

So the order on a student or graduate CV is different from an experienced developer's. Education and projects come before work history, unless you have a year in industry, which goes near the top because it is the strongest thing on the page.

Education, written like it matters

Give your degree title, university, dates and your predicted or final classification. Add A level grades while you are a student or recent graduate, because graduate schemes often ask for them. Then list modules only when they match the job: machine learning and databases for a data role, networks and security for a cyber role. Four relevant modules beat twelve in course order.

Treat your dissertation or final-year project as a piece of work, not a title. One line on the question, one on what you built or tested, one on the result. "Compared three anomaly detection methods on public transaction data; an isolation forest found the most injected fraud cases at the lowest false positive rate" tells a data team more than "Dissertation: machine learning for fraud".

A projects section that proves something

Pick two to four projects and give each a name, the stack, your part if it was a team effort, and what it does or found. Group projects are fine and often better, because working in a team is part of the job; say what you owned. Link to the repository only if the README explains the project in a minute and the code runs. Tutorial clones with the original names still in them are worth leaving out.

Year in industry, internships and hackathons

A placement year is the closest thing you have to a first job, so write it like one: team, stack, what you shipped or fixed, and how your work was used. Summer internships work the same way with fewer bullets. Hackathons, open source contributions, game jams and capture-the-flag competitions go in their own short section with what you built or placed. Part-time jobs outside tech still count; one line on a bar or retail job shows reliability and working under pressure.

Technical skills, honest about level

Graduate interviewers often pick something from your skills list and ask you to talk about it or use it in a test. List what you could explain at interview, grouped by type, and signal level in words rather than bars. A simple split works: "Confident: Python, Java, SQL. Used in projects: TypeScript, React, Docker. Familiar: Go, AWS." Nobody expects a graduate to be expert in everything, and an honest list is easier to defend.

Software, data, IT support or cyber: tailor the top

The same degree leads to different jobs, and each one reads the CV for different evidence. Change your summary and the order of projects for each application.

• Software development: projects with real users or tests, version control, a placement on a product team.
• Data: SQL, Python or R, a dissertation or project with a question and a finding, any dashboard or report someone used.
• IT support and infrastructure: helpdesk or tech support experience, operating systems, networking basics, customer service from any job.
• Cyber security: networks and security modules, capture-the-flag results, a home lab write-up, any vendor certification you have passed.

Graduate schemes, online forms and screening

Large graduate schemes usually combine an online application form, a CV upload and online tests before any interview. Make sure the CV and the form tell the same story, with the same dates and grades. Many of these employers use applicant tracking systems, so keep the layout to one column with standard headings and use the words from the advert where they are true. The data analyst and software engineer examples show where your CV goes after a few years in work.

Coming into tech from another route

Not everyone in tech has a computing degree. If you are moving in through a bootcamp, an apprenticeship or self-study, lead with a projects section and any training, then your earlier career with the transferable parts pulled out. BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, is the professional body for IT in the UK; if you are a member, list it under training.

Which of these templates to use

Many computer science students have seen CVs typeset in LaTeX, and the first two templates give you that look without writing any markup. Both are single-column and read cleanly in screening software. The third is free and suits anyone who wants a slightly softer design.