UK CV Format: Length, Photo and Statement

A UK CV is usually two A4 pages, with no photo and no date of birth, a short personal statement at the top, and your work history in reverse-chronological order. Prospects, the graduate careers site, passes on careers-service advice of no more than two A4 pages and says a date of birth is irrelevant and a photo is only needed for acting or modelling (accessed 2026-10-20). In the UK this document is called a CV; "resume" is the US and Canadian term. If you need permission to work in the UK, say so briefly, as covered below.

UK CV Format at a Glance

Length. Prospects, quoting the University of Chester careers service, says no longer than two A4 pages is the usual advice. It allows shorter CVs for part-time jobs and says three pages may be needed for high-level roles or long careers, with some medical CVs as an example (accessed 2026-10-20). If you are over two pages, cut old detail first: Prospects suggests summarising anything from ten years ago.

No photo, no date of birth. Prospects says a date of birth is irrelevant and a photo is unnecessary unless you are applying for acting or modelling work. The National Careers Service goes further and says not to include your age, date of birth, whether you are married, or your nationality. Both accessed 2026-10-20.

Why: the Equality Act 2010. The Act is the law that protects people from discrimination at work. GOV.UK lists the protected characteristics as age, gender reassignment, marriage or civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, disability, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation (accessed 2026-10-20). A photo or a date of birth can reveal several of these before anyone has read your experience. The law does not ban you from including them. Leaving them out keeps the reader on your skills, which is why UK careers services advise leaving them out.

Personal statement. Prospects describes a personal profile as a concise statement at the top that picks out a few relevant achievements and skills and states your career aims. The National Careers Service calls the same section an introduction: a few short lines under your name and contact details. Both accessed 2026-10-20. Three or four sentences is enough.

Reverse-chronological order. Both sources say to list work experience with the most recent first (accessed 2026-10-20). For each role give the employer, job title, dates, and two or three lines on what you did. The National Careers Service suggests the STAR method (situation, task, action, result) for those lines. If you have a lot of experience, put work history before education.

Contact details. The National Careers Service lists name, phone number, email address and a link to a professional profile such as LinkedIn, and Prospects also lists a postal address (both accessed 2026-10-20). Use a professional-sounding email address.

File and layout. Prospects says to check the job advert for the file type wanted, because some ask for PDF and others for .docx (accessed 2026-10-20). It also suggests a clear font such as Arial, Calibri or Times New Roman in size 10 to 12, and bullet points so the reader can skim.

CV or Resume in the UK?

Use "CV" for UK applications. Prospects notes that in the USA and Canada the same document is called a résumé and tends to be more concise (accessed 2026-10-20).

Mentioning Your Right to Work

GOV.UK says you must prove your right to work to your employer before you start, and that if you are not a British or Irish citizen you can do it with a share code or eligible immigration documents (accessed 2026-10-20). The employer-side guidance says employers must check a job applicant's right to work before employing them, and must not discriminate because of where someone is from (accessed 2026-10-20).

None of this belongs in a long paragraph on your CV. The simplest approach for an international applicant is one line near your contact details, for example "Right to work in the UK: Graduate visa until 2027" or "Requires Skilled Worker sponsorship". Those are examples of the format, not a statement about your situation. Put whichever is true for you, so recruiters do not have to guess.

If you will need an employer to sponsor you, GOV.UK's Skilled Worker visa page says you need a job offer from a Home Office approved employer, a certificate of sponsorship, an eligible occupation, and a minimum salary that depends on your job and the date of your certificate (accessed 2026-10-20). Those salary levels have changed more than once, so read the current figure on GOV.UK rather than relying on a blog post. The Graduate visa is a separate route for people who have finished an eligible UK course; check its current length on the same page.

Cover Letters and Interviews

Prospects advises including a cover letter unless the employer says otherwise (accessed 2026-10-20). Use it for what the CV cannot do: tie your experience to this specific role and explain any gap. Do not restate the CV.

For interviews, the STAR structure from the CV section above works for competency questions too: pick a real example, say what the situation and task were, what you did, and what happened. Prepare a handful of examples you can adapt.

Check Your CV Before You Send It

Once your CV is the right length and structure, the free CV check gives it an ATS-readiness score out of 100 across 8 categories, with no signup and no job description needed. To see which words from a specific advert your CV is missing, paste both into the free job match tool. NextCV can also rewrite your experience bullets to fit the advert, but read the result yourself before sending.

Common Mistakes International Applicants Make

Including a photo or date of birth. Common in continental European CVs, and not expected in the UK, as covered above.

Sending a long CV. A three-page CV built for another market is easy to fix: summarise older roles and cut anything that does not help with this job.

Listing duties instead of results. Prospects suggests starting with active verbs and giving real examples rather than generic phrases such as "team player" (accessed 2026-10-20). "Managed a team of eight engineers and shipped the release two weeks early" says more than "responsible for managing a team". Only use numbers that are true.

Sending the same CV everywhere. The National Careers Service says to tailor your CV to the job using the advert (accessed 2026-10-20).

Leaving right to work unclear. A recruiter who cannot tell whether you need sponsorship may move on. One line fixes it.

See how NextCV tailors your CV to match the job posting

Job Search by Country

Looking for guidance specific to another country's job market? These guides cover CV format, application culture, and hiring norms for each region.