What a first employer is actually buying
Nobody expects a 17-year-old to have managed a store. A first employer is buying three things: you show up on time, you learn fast, and you’re pleasant to customers and colleagues. Every line of your CV should be quiet evidence for one of those three.
The structure (one page)
| Section | First-job version |
|---|---|
| Contact details | Same as any CV — name, town, phone, email. No photo, no age. |
| Profile | 2–3 sentences: student/school-leaver, your strongest quality with proof, what you’re applying for |
| Education | Moves to the top — Leaving/Junior Cert, school, years, relevant subjects |
| Experience (broadly defined) | TY placements, volunteering, sport, babysitting, farm work, school events |
| Skills | Honest and specific: fluent Irish, confident with tills from TY, full clean licence |
| References | “Available on request” — a teacher or coach counts |
Things that count as experience (that you forgot)
- TY work placement — a real week in a real workplace. Name the business and one thing you did.
- Sport — “GAA club player, 6 years; captained the minor team” is teamwork, commitment and leadership in one line.
- Volunteering — Tidy Towns, parish events, charity shop shifts, coaching juveniles.
- Responsibility at home — minding siblings after school daily, or working the family farm every summer, is reliability an employer can picture.
- School roles — prefect, student council, debate team, running the bake sale float. Money handling counts.
A worked example (profile + one entry)
“Leaving Cert student at Coláiste Éinde (2026) looking for a part-time retail role. Reliable — captained the school camogie team for two seasons and haven’t missed a Saturday training in three years. Comfortable with customers from a TY placement in Centra.”
“TY Work Placement — Centra, Salthill (1 week, 2025): shelf stocking, date rotation, bagging at tills at peak; asked back for Christmas relief work.”
That’s a hireable CV with zero paid experience on it.
Build it properly
The free CV builder handles the Irish format for you — put education before experience, keep it to one page, and export Word or PDF. Then add a short letter using the cover letter guide; for a first job, three sincere sentences beat a page of buzzwords.
Frequently asked questions
What do I put on a CV if I have never worked?
Education first, then anything with responsibility attached: volunteering, sports teams, school committees, Gaisce awards, TY work placements, minding siblings or a neighbour’s farm. Framed properly, all of it is evidence of reliability — which is what a first employer is actually buying.
How long should a first CV be?
One page. A padded two-page CV with no jobs on it reads worse than a tight single page. White space is fine; waffle is not.
Should I include my Leaving Cert results?
Include the Leaving Cert with the year and school. List individual results only if they help (strong grades or subjects relevant to the job). CAO points are optional — add them if they’re a selling point.
Do employers really hire people with no experience?
Constantly — retail, hospitality and services run on first-jobbers. What they screen for is reliability: will you show up, on time, every shift. Your CV’s only job is to prove that with evidence from school, sport and volunteering.