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Create ResumeA one page CV can work very well in the UK job market, but only when it gives recruiters enough evidence to make a confident decision quickly. It is not about squeezing your whole career onto one page in tiny font and hoping nobody notices. They will notice. A strong one page CV is focused, selective, and easy to scan. It shows the role you are targeting, the experience that proves you can do it, and the results that make you worth interviewing. The mistake I see candidates make is treating a one page CV as a shorter version of a full CV. It is not. It is a positioning document. Every line has to earn its space.
A one page CV is a complete professional CV presented on a single page. It includes your most relevant contact details, profile, skills, work experience, education, and achievements in a compact format.
The important word here is relevant.
A one page CV is not a compressed career autobiography. It should not include every task, every qualification, every old job, every training course, and every personal detail. The aim is to help a recruiter or hiring manager quickly understand:
What type of role you are suitable for
What level you operate at
What experience supports your application
What value you can bring
Whether you are worth inviting to interview
In the UK, most CVs are commonly two pages, especially for experienced professionals. So when you choose a one page CV, you need to be deliberate. It can be excellent for certain candidates, but restrictive for others.
A one page CV works best when your experience is focused, recent, and easy to connect to the job. It works badly when you have complex experience and remove the very evidence that would have helped you get shortlisted.
Yes, a one page CV is acceptable in the UK, but it depends on your experience level, industry, and the role you are applying for.
I would not reject a candidate simply because their CV is one page. Recruiters do not sit there with a ruler muttering, “Two pages or nothing.” What we care about is whether the CV gives us enough relevant information to judge the match.
A one page CV can be very effective if you are:
A recent graduate
Applying for internships or placements
Early in your career
Changing career and focusing on transferable experience
Returning to work after a break
Applying for highly focused roles
That is the part candidates often miss. A shorter CV is not automatically stronger. A clearer CV is stronger.
Sending a networking CV or speculative CV
Creating a concise version for recruiters or introductions
It can be too limited if you are:
A senior leader with broad responsibility
A technical specialist with deep project experience
A contractor with multiple assignments
A consultant with client delivery history
A candidate in academia, medicine, engineering, finance, technology, or regulated sectors where detail matters
Applying for roles where evidence, scope, tools, systems, budgets, teams, and outcomes need explanation
The real question is not, “Can a CV be one page?” The better question is, “Can I prove I am suitable for this role in one page without weakening my case?”
If the answer is yes, use one page. If the answer is no, do not sacrifice substance for neatness. Recruiters are not impressed by minimalism when it hides the information we need.
A one page CV works best when the reader can understand your fit quickly without needing extra context.
That usually happens when your career story is simple, targeted, or early stage. For example, a marketing graduate applying for an entry role does not need two full pages of part time work, society involvement, coursework, and hobbies. A focused one page CV can do the job better.
It also works well when your experience is clearly aligned with the role. If you are applying for a customer service position and your last two roles are customer service focused, one page may be enough. The recruiter does not need a dramatic life story. They need proof that you can handle customers, systems, targets, complaints, and pace.
Where one page CVs become powerful is in competitive screening. Recruiters often scan quickly first, then read properly if the CV looks relevant. A one page CV can make that first scan easier because there is less noise. But the content must be sharp. A weak one page CV does not become impressive because it is brief. It just becomes a short weak CV, which is not the brand moment candidates think it is.
The best one page CVs usually have three things in common:
They are written for a specific type of role
They include evidence, not just responsibilities
They remove anything that does not support the target job
That last point matters. Most candidates do not have a CV length problem. They have a selection problem. They include too much because they have not decided what the employer needs to see.
A one page CV is a bad idea when it forces you to delete the evidence that would help you get shortlisted.
This happens a lot with experienced candidates. They have ten, fifteen, or twenty years of experience, then they decide their CV “should be one page” because they saw someone say it online. The result is usually a CV that reads like a LinkedIn summary with job titles attached. It looks clean, but it does not prove enough.
Recruiters and hiring managers need detail when the role is complex. If you manage budgets, teams, stakeholders, systems, compliance, projects, or commercial targets, those details are not decoration. They help us understand scale.
There is a big difference between:
Weak Example: Managed operations and improved efficiency.
Good Example: Led daily operations for a 35 person team across three UK sites, reducing order processing delays by 22 percent within six months.
The second version takes more space, but it gives decision makers something real. It shows scale, context, action, and outcome. That is the kind of evidence that gets CVs moved from “maybe” to “worth speaking to.”
A one page CV can also be risky if you are applying through an applicant tracking system. ATS software does not reject you because your CV is one page, but if you remove important keywords, job titles, systems, tools, qualifications, or sector terms to save space, you can weaken your match.
The problem is not the page count. The problem is under explaining your relevance.
When I review a one page CV, I am not expecting a full career history. I am looking for fast evidence of fit.
The first things I check are:
Does the target role make sense based on the profile and recent experience?
Is the candidate at the right level?
Do the job titles, employers, and dates tell a credible story?
Are the skills relevant to the vacancy?
Is there enough evidence to justify an interview?
Has the candidate made sensible choices about what to include and remove?
A one page CV gives me fewer clues, so the clues it does include matter more.
This is where many candidates accidentally damage themselves. They use vague phrases like “hard working professional” or “excellent communicator” because those phrases feel safe. But safe does not mean useful.
Recruiters are not trying to find nice adjectives. We are trying to reduce uncertainty.
If I see “strong stakeholder management skills,” I still need to know what kind of stakeholders. Internal teams? Senior leadership? Clients? Suppliers? Regulators? NHS trusts? Local authorities? Finance directors? Hiring managers? Different stakeholders create different levels of complexity.
A strong one page CV removes that uncertainty quickly. It does not just say you are capable. It gives enough specific evidence for the reader to believe it.
A strong one page CV needs a clean structure. Do not get creative with strange layouts unless you are in a design led field and even then, be careful. Many beautiful CVs are horrible to screen. Pretty columns do not help if the recruiter cannot find your job titles, dates, or skills quickly.
Use this structure:
Name and contact details
Targeted professional profile
Core skills or key strengths
Relevant work experience
Education and qualifications
Optional section for tools, languages, certifications, or selected achievements
Your name should be clear at the top. Include your phone number, professional email address, location, and LinkedIn profile if it is up to date. In the UK, you do not need to include your date of birth, marital status, full address, nationality, or a photo unless there is a very specific reason. In most cases, leave them out.
Your professional profile should be short. Three to five lines is usually enough. It should say what you do, what level you are at, what sectors or functions you know, and what value you bring.
Your skills section should not become a dumping ground of buzzwords. Keep it targeted. Use skills that match the role and are backed up by your experience.
Your work experience section should focus on your most relevant roles. For each role, include:
Job title
Company name
Location if useful
Dates
Three to five strong bullet points for recent or relevant roles
Fewer details for older or less relevant roles
Education can be short unless you are a student, graduate, or applying for a role where qualifications are critical.
The structure should feel calm and easy to read. A one page CV that looks crowded creates the opposite effect of what candidates want. It tells the recruiter, “I have tried to fit a wardrobe into a handbag.” Not ideal.
A one page CV should include only the information that supports your application.
That means every section has a job to do.
Your profile should position you. It should not be a personality statement. A recruiter needs to understand your professional identity quickly.
Weak Example: I am a motivated and enthusiastic individual with excellent communication skills and a passion for success.
Good Example: Customer service professional with three years of experience in high volume retail and contact centre environments, confident handling complaints, order queries, CRM systems, and service targets across UK customer teams.
The good version works because it gives context. It tells me what kind of candidate I am dealing with.
Your skills section should include the skills the employer is likely to screen for. These might include systems, processes, sector knowledge, technical skills, languages, sales methods, compliance knowledge, or leadership strengths.
For work experience, include achievements and responsibilities, but do not confuse the two. Responsibilities tell me what you were supposed to do. Achievements tell me what happened because you were there.
A balanced one page CV usually includes both.
Weak Example: Responsible for social media.
Good Example: Managed LinkedIn and Instagram content calendar, increasing monthly engagement by 38 percent through campaign testing, audience analysis, and improved posting consistency.
Not every bullet needs a number. That is another piece of career advice that has gone slightly feral. Numbers are useful when they are real and relevant. Forced metrics are obvious. If you genuinely cannot quantify something, show scope, complexity, frequency, stakeholders, tools, or outcomes instead.
For example:
Supported payroll processing for 420 employees across weekly and monthly pay cycles
Coordinated interview scheduling for high volume retail recruitment across 18 UK stores
Resolved customer complaints involving refunds, delivery delays, and account errors using Zendesk and Shopify
Prepared board packs, meeting notes, and follow up actions for senior leadership meetings
Those bullets work because they show practical reality. They do not just decorate the CV with soft skills.
The hardest part of writing a one page CV is deciding what to remove. Candidates often cut the wrong things. They remove achievements and keep generic descriptions. They delete useful context and keep old GCSE details. Painful, but common.
Cut anything that does not help the reader understand your fit for the target role.
Usually, you can remove or reduce:
Full home address
Date of birth
Marital status
Nationality unless relevant to work eligibility
Photo
Generic personal statements
Outdated school details if you have higher education or stronger work experience
Old jobs that do not support the application
Repeated duties across similar roles
Hobbies unless they add relevant value
References available on request
Long lists of basic software everyone expects you to use
Training courses that do not matter for the role
The phrase “references available on request” is one of those CV traditions that refuses to leave the building. Employers know references can be requested. You do not need to sacrifice space to announce it.
Also be careful with hobbies. I am not against personality on a CV, but hobbies need to earn their place. “Reading, travelling, socialising” does not tell a hiring manager anything useful. If you are applying for a sports coaching role and you captain a local team, that may be relevant. If you are applying for a finance analyst role and you enjoy brunch, maybe let that one live privately.
A one page CV should be ruthless but not empty. Cut noise, not evidence.
Bullet points on a one page CV need to be clear, specific, and outcome focused. You do not have room for fluffy wording.
A useful formula is:
Action plus context plus outcome
You do not need to follow it rigidly every time, but it helps you avoid vague writing.
Weak Example: Helped with recruitment.
Good Example: Screened applications, scheduled interviews, and maintained candidate records for weekly hiring campaigns across warehouse and customer service roles.
This tells me what “helped” actually means. That matters because candidates and employers use the same words to mean very different things.
Another useful formula is:
Responsibility plus scale plus tool or stakeholder
Weak Example: Managed admin tasks.
Good Example: Managed onboarding paperwork, right to work checks, and HR system updates for new starters across a 200 employee UK business.
The good version gives scale and relevance. It also shows the kind of environment the person understands.
For a one page CV, each bullet should answer one of these questions:
What did you do that is relevant to this role?
What level of responsibility did you hold?
What tools, systems, processes, or stakeholders did you work with?
What changed, improved, increased, reduced, supported, delivered, or prevented?
Why should the hiring manager trust you can do this job?
If a bullet does not answer any of those questions, it probably does not deserve the space.
A one page CV needs to be readable before it is impressive. That sounds obvious, but many candidates sacrifice readability to fit more content in.
Keep your formatting simple:
Use a clear font such as Calibri, Arial, Aptos, or similar
Keep font size readable, usually around 10.5 to 11 for body text
Use slightly larger text for your name and headings
Keep margins sensible
Use consistent spacing
Avoid dense paragraphs
Use bullet points for work experience
Keep headings obvious
Save and send as a PDF unless the employer requests Word
Do not use tiny font to force everything onto one page. Recruiters notice. Hiring managers notice. Nobody is impressed by a CV that requires zooming to 175 percent.
Avoid heavy graphics, icons, skill bars, photos, and decorative design elements unless you have a very good reason. Skill bars are especially weak because they create more questions than answers. What does “Excel 80 percent” mean? Compared with who? Your cousin? A finance analyst? A wizard? It is better to write the actual Excel skills you have, such as pivot tables, VLOOKUP, XLOOKUP, dashboards, or data cleansing.
Also be careful with two column CV designs. They can look efficient, but some ATS platforms read them badly. If you are applying through job boards, company portals, or recruitment systems in the UK, a clean single column layout is usually safer.
A good one page CV should look like it was designed for fast decision making, not like it was designed to win a stationery award.
Use this structure as a practical guide, not a rigid script.
Name
Phone number | Email address | Location | LinkedIn
Professional Profile
Two to four lines summarising your target role, relevant experience, strongest evidence, and sector or functional fit.
Core Skills
Six to ten targeted skills relevant to the role. Keep them specific and credible.
Professional Experience
Job Title, Company, Location
Dates
Bullet showing relevant responsibility, scope, tool, or stakeholder
Bullet showing achievement, improvement, delivery, or measurable contribution
Bullet showing another important requirement from the target role
Previous Job Title, Company, Location
Dates
Bullet showing transferable or directly relevant experience
Bullet showing scale, pace, customer type, system, or process
Education and Qualifications
Degree, qualification, college, university, or relevant training. Keep this concise unless education is your strongest selling point.
Additional Information
Optional section for certifications, languages, systems, portfolio, right to work, or professional memberships where relevant.
This structure works because it reflects how recruiters actually scan. We look for identity, relevance, evidence, and risk. If the CV answers those quickly, it has done its job.
You do not need a full sample CV to understand the strategy. What matters is how the content changes depending on the candidate’s situation.
For graduates, the challenge is usually lack of professional experience. The answer is not to fill space with vague enthusiasm. Use projects, placements, part time work, volunteering, technical skills, and relevant modules intelligently.
Good Example Profile:
Recent Business Management graduate with retail team leadership experience, strong customer service background, and practical exposure to market research, Excel analysis, and group project delivery. Seeking an entry level commercial or operations role within a UK business where organisation, communication, and problem solving are essential.
This works because it connects education with employability. It does not pretend the candidate has ten years of experience. It shows useful signals.
For career changers, the main risk is confusion. The recruiter needs to understand why the move makes sense.
Good Example Profile:
Operations administrator transitioning into HR coordination, with four years of experience managing employee records, onboarding paperwork, scheduling, compliance checks, and internal stakeholder communication across a busy UK service environment.
This works because it bridges the old role and the target role. A career change CV must reduce doubt quickly.
For experienced candidates, a one page CV should only focus on the most relevant and recent experience. Do not list every old role in detail.
Good Example Bullet:
Led monthly management reporting across sales, margin, and operational performance, giving senior leaders clearer visibility of regional trends and underperforming product categories.
This shows value without needing a long explanation. Senior candidates should avoid turning a one page CV into a list of disconnected keywords. Evidence still matters.
The most common one page CV mistake is confusing short with strategic.
A one page CV can be concise and still weak. I see this often when candidates remove useful information but keep generic phrases. The result is tidy but unconvincing.
Watch out for these mistakes:
Making the font too small
Using vague profile statements
Listing duties without impact or context
Removing keywords needed for ATS screening
Including irrelevant hobbies or personal details
Giving equal space to old and recent roles
Hiding job titles or dates in a creative layout
Using too many soft skills without evidence
Writing for yourself instead of the target role
Trying to make one CV work for every application
That last one is important. A one page CV has less room for error, so it needs to be more tailored, not less. If you are applying for three different types of jobs, you probably need three different versions.
Employers often say they want a “concise CV.” Candidates sometimes hear “remove detail.” That is not what concise means in hiring. Concise means the right detail, clearly presented, without noise.
A recruiter does not need more words. A recruiter needs better evidence.
Your CV should be as long as it needs to be to prove your fit, without wasting the reader’s time. In the UK, that often means one page for early career candidates and two pages for experienced professionals.
Use one page if:
Your experience is limited or highly focused
You can include the strongest evidence without crowding
You are applying for graduate, internship, junior, or simple career transition roles
You are creating a networking CV or short recruiter introduction
The employer specifically asks for a one page CV
Use two pages if:
You have several relevant roles
You need to show leadership scope, technical skills, projects, or achievements
You work in a specialist or regulated sector
You have important qualifications, tools, systems, or certifications
Cutting to one page removes information that would help you get shortlisted
This is where I want candidates to be more honest with themselves. Do not choose one page because it feels cleaner. Choose it because it makes your case stronger.
A two page CV with strong evidence is better than a one page CV that looks elegant but says very little. Hiring is not a graphic design contest. It is a risk decision. The employer is trying to work out whether you can do the job, fit the environment, and justify the interview slot.
Your CV length should support that decision.
Before sending your one page CV, read it like a recruiter who is slightly tired, has too many tabs open, and needs to shortlist quickly. That is not cynicism. That is Tuesday.
Ask yourself:
Can the reader understand my target role within ten seconds?
Are my strongest selling points visible in the top half?
Have I included the keywords the employer is likely to screen for?
Do my bullet points show evidence rather than just duties?
Have I removed old or irrelevant information?
Is the layout readable without zooming in?
Does this CV match the job description, or just describe me generally?
Would a hiring manager understand why I am a sensible interview choice?
The strongest one page CVs are not built by deleting randomly. They are built by prioritising.
Start with the job advert. Identify what the employer is really asking for. Not just the obvious skills, but the hidden signals. If they mention “fast paced environment,” they may be worried about volume, pressure, changing priorities, or someone who needs too much hand holding. If they mention “stakeholder management,” they may need someone who can handle conflicting expectations without creating drama. If they mention “commercial mindset,” they probably want evidence that you understand cost, revenue, efficiency, customer impact, or business priorities.
Then make sure your CV gives proof of those things.
That is how you turn a one page CV from a short document into a strong hiring argument.
Written by Simar Malhi, a recruiter and headhunter with international recruitment experience. I write about CVs, job applications, hiring decisions, and the reality behind recruitment processes. My goal is to help candidates understand more honestly how employers, recruiters, and hiring managers actually select candidates.
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