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Create ResumeA simple UK CV template should make your experience easy to understand within seconds. That means a clear profile, relevant skills, reverse chronological work history, measurable achievements, education, and no distracting formatting. The best simple CVs are not plain because the candidate has nothing to say. They are simple because they remove friction for the recruiter and hiring manager.
I see candidates overcomplicate CVs all the time. Fancy columns, graphics, icons, personal statements that say everything and nothing, and layouts that look nice until an applicant tracking system tries to read them. A good simple CV does not hide your value. It makes your value obvious. That is the real point.
A simple CV template in the UK is a clean, structured CV layout that presents your professional information clearly without unnecessary design, colour, graphics, or overformatted sections. It is usually two pages, written in reverse chronological order, and designed to help recruiters quickly understand whether you fit the role.
A simple CV is not the same as a basic CV. Basic often means thin, vague, or underdeveloped. Simple means focused, readable, and easy to assess.
That distinction matters because hiring is not a design competition. It is a relevance assessment. When I open a CV, I am trying to answer a few questions very quickly:
What does this person do?
What level are they operating at?
Have they done work similar to this role?
Are their skills relevant?
Do their responsibilities and achievements make sense for the vacancy?
Is there enough evidence to justify an interview?
A lot of candidates assume a CV needs to look impressive before it reads impressive. That is where things go wrong.
Recruiters do not spend the first few seconds admiring the design. They scan for relevance. Hiring managers do the same, just with less patience because they usually have another job to do alongside hiring.
A simple CV performs well because it reduces the mental effort needed to assess you. That sounds small, but it is huge. When someone is reviewing a large shortlist, clarity becomes a competitive advantage.
A simple CV also works better with applicant tracking systems. Many UK employers use ATS platforms to store, parse, search, and filter applications. These systems are not impressed by text boxes, icons, skill bars, photos, heavy tables, or unusual formatting. They are built to process plain, structured information.
The hiring reality is this: your CV may be read by software first, a recruiter second, and a hiring manager third. If your layout creates problems at any stage, your experience may not get the attention it deserves.
Simple CVs are especially useful when:
You are applying online through job boards or employer websites
You want a professional CV that works across multiple roles
You are changing jobs but staying in a similar field
A simple CV helps me answer those questions without making me dig. That is why simple CV templates work well across the UK job market, especially for office roles, entry level roles, operational roles, customer service, administration, finance, HR, sales, marketing, IT, project support, and many professional career paths.
You need your skills and experience to be understood quickly
You do not want design choices to distract from your suitability
You are applying in a traditional or corporate UK sector
Simple does not mean boring. It means controlled. It means you are not asking the reader to work harder than necessary.
A strong simple UK CV should follow this structure:
Name and contact details
Professional profile
Key skills
Work experience
Education and qualifications
Additional sections only if relevant
This structure works because it follows the way recruiters naturally screen. We look at who you are, what you do, what you are strong at, where you have worked, what you achieved, and whether your background fits the role.
Here is the simple CV structure I recommend for most UK candidates.
Name
Phone number
Email address
Location
LinkedIn profile if relevant
Write 3 to 5 lines summarising your current role, level of experience, strongest skills, industry background, and the type of value you bring. Keep it specific and avoid empty phrases.
Example
Customer focused administrator with experience supporting busy office teams, managing records, handling enquiries, and coordinating day to day operational tasks. Strong attention to detail, confident using Microsoft Office and CRM systems, with a practical approach to solving problems and keeping processes organised.
Administrative support
Customer service
Diary management
Data entry and record keeping
Microsoft Office
CRM systems
Report preparation
Stakeholder communication
Process coordination
Problem solving
Job Title
Company Name, Location
Month Year to Present
Write 4 to 6 bullet points showing your main responsibilities, achievements, tools, systems, and impact. Focus on what is relevant to the jobs you are applying for.
Managed daily administrative tasks including document preparation, inbox management, filing, and internal coordination
Supported customer enquiries by phone and email, ensuring accurate information and timely responses
Maintained records using internal CRM systems and improved data accuracy through regular checks
Coordinated meetings, prepared agendas, and followed up on action points for the wider team
Assisted with weekly reporting, helping managers track workload, service issues, and outstanding tasks
Job Title
Company Name, Location
Month Year to Month Year
Delivered customer support across phone, email, and face to face channels in a fast paced environment
Processed orders, updated customer records, and resolved routine issues using internal systems
Worked closely with colleagues to manage workload during busy periods and maintain service standards
Built strong knowledge of company processes, products, and customer expectations
Qualification
Institution Name, Location
Year completed
Relevant certificate or training
Software course
Professional membership if relevant
Right to work in the UK if helpful
Driving licence if relevant to the role
Languages if relevant
Volunteering if it supports your application
The template is only useful if the content inside it is strong. A clean structure will not rescue vague writing. This is where many candidates lose impact.
Keep your contact details simple. You do not need your full address, date of birth, marital status, photo, national insurance number, or unnecessary personal information.
Use:
Full name
Phone number
Professional email address
Town or city
LinkedIn profile if it supports your application
Your email address matters more than people think. A casual or old email address can create the wrong impression before anyone reaches your experience. It may feel minor, but hiring is full of small judgement points. Do not give people silly reasons to pause.
Your professional profile should answer one question: why should the reader keep reading?
Most weak profiles are full of broad claims. They say the candidate is hardworking, motivated, reliable, organised, and able to work alone or as part of a team. Lovely. Also completely expected. Nobody is applying for a job saying they are unreliable and chaotic, although occasionally the CV suggests otherwise.
A stronger profile gives useful hiring information.
Weak Example
I am a hardworking and motivated individual with excellent communication skills. I work well as part of a team and independently. I am looking for a new opportunity where I can develop my skills.
Good Example
Office administrator with 4 years of experience supporting customer service, finance, and operations teams in busy SME environments. Skilled in diary coordination, invoice processing, CRM updates, document control, and handling high volumes of email enquiries with accuracy and professionalism.
The good version works because it tells me the candidate’s function, level, environment, skills, and practical value. It gives me something to assess.
Your key skills section should not be a random list of personality traits. It should reflect the skills required in the job description and the skills you can actually evidence.
A recruiter may scan this section to check alignment before reading your full work history. But here is the important part: your skills section must be supported by your experience section. If you list stakeholder management, data analysis, project coordination, or leadership, your work history should prove it.
Use a mix of:
Technical skills
Role specific skills
Tools and systems
Process knowledge
Communication skills relevant to the job
Commercial or operational skills if applicable
Avoid vague skills such as:
Hardworking
Friendly
Passionate
Enthusiastic
Team player
Fast learner
Those are not useless qualities, but they are weak CV keywords because they do not show capability. Show them through evidence instead.
This is usually the most important section of your CV. It is where hiring managers decide whether your background looks credible.
For each role, include:
Job title
Company name
Location
Dates
Scope of role
Main responsibilities
Achievements
Systems, tools, or processes used
Impact where possible
The biggest mistake I see is candidates writing job descriptions instead of evidence. They list what they were supposed to do, not what they actually handled, improved, achieved, supported, or delivered.
Weak Example
Responsible for administration duties and helping the team with tasks.
Good Example
Managed daily administration for a 12 person operations team, including inbox management, supplier documentation, meeting coordination, and weekly reporting using Excel and SharePoint.
The good version gives scale, context, tools, and responsibility. That is what makes it useful.
Place education below work experience unless you are a recent graduate, school leaver, or your education is the strongest part of your application.
For most experienced candidates, education should be concise. Recruiters are usually more interested in recent and relevant experience than every qualification you have ever taken.
Include:
Degree, diploma, A levels, GCSEs, or equivalent qualifications
Institution name
Completion year if helpful
Relevant training or professional qualifications
If you are applying for roles where specific qualifications are required, make them easy to find. Do not bury them at the bottom under a vague heading.
Only add extra sections when they support your application. A simple CV should not become a storage cupboard for everything you have ever done.
Useful additional sections may include:
Certifications
Technical tools
Languages
Volunteering
Professional memberships
Driving licence
Right to work details if relevant
Avoid adding hobbies unless they genuinely add value or human context. “Socialising with friends” is not doing much heavy lifting on a CV. Neither is “watching films”, unless you are applying to be the person who decides why every streaming platform menu is impossible to navigate.
A simple CV should be easy to read on screen, easy to print, and easy for an ATS to process.
Use these formatting rules:
Keep your CV to 2 pages unless you are very early career or have a highly technical background that genuinely requires more detail
Use a clean font such as Arial, Calibri, Aptos, or Times New Roman
Use font size 10.5 to 12 for body text
Use clear section headings
Use consistent spacing
Use reverse chronological order
Avoid photos unless specifically requested
Avoid icons, charts, graphics, and skill bars
Avoid heavy columns and text boxes
Save your CV as a Word document or PDF depending on the application instructions
The best format is the one that makes your information easy to read. Candidates sometimes confuse “standing out” with “being visually different”. In hiring, standing out usually means being relevant, clear, and credible.
A colourful CV with unclear evidence is not stronger than a simple CV with strong content. Design can support the message, but it cannot replace it.
Recruiters are not reading your CV like a novel. They are scanning, assessing, comparing, and deciding whether to move you forward.
When I review a simple CV, I am looking for:
Clear job titles and career direction
Relevant experience for the role
Evidence of responsibility and impact
Skills that match the vacancy
Recent experience that makes sense
Career progression or logical movement
Gaps that are explained where necessary
No obvious mismatch between claims and evidence
A layout that does not slow down the screening process
Hiring managers often look slightly differently. They care less about general employability and more about whether you can solve their specific problem. If they need someone to manage payroll, coordinate projects, handle customers, analyse data, support executives, or lead a team, they want evidence that you have already done something close enough.
This is why tailoring matters. A simple CV template should stay consistent, but the content should shift depending on the job. You do not need to rewrite your entire CV every time, but you should adjust your profile, key skills, and most relevant bullets so the match is obvious.
Do not make the recruiter connect every dot for you. That is your job.
Simple CVs fail when they become too vague, too thin, or too generic. The layout may be clean, but the content still needs strength.
The most common mistakes are:
Writing a profile that could describe almost anyone
Listing soft skills without evidence
Using duties instead of achievements
Leaving out tools, systems, numbers, or context
Making every role sound the same
Including irrelevant old jobs in too much detail
Using unexplained abbreviations
Adding design features that damage readability
Sending the same version for every role
Hiding the strongest information too far down the CV
Another mistake is trying to sound more senior by using vague corporate language. Phrases like “driving strategic excellence”, “delivering stakeholder centric solutions”, and “facilitating operational synergy” often make a CV weaker, not stronger.
Good CV writing is not about sounding impressive. It is about being understood accurately.
If you are a student, graduate, school leaver, career changer, or returning to work, a simple CV still works. You just need to change the emphasis.
When experience is limited, include:
A focused profile explaining your direction
Transferable skills
Education and relevant modules
Part time work
Volunteering
Internships or placements
Projects
Certifications
Achievements from school, university, or community work
Relevant tools or software
The key is to avoid apologising for limited experience. Do not write as if you are asking someone to take pity on you. Position what you do have clearly.
Weak Example
I do not have much experience, but I am willing to learn and would like someone to give me a chance.
Good Example
Recent business graduate with customer service experience, strong research and presentation skills, and practical knowledge of Excel, market analysis, and administrative support. Looking to apply strong organisation and communication skills in an entry level office or operations role.
The good version is more confident. It gives the employer something useful to evaluate.
Experienced candidates often have the opposite problem. They include too much.
A simple CV for an experienced candidate should prioritise relevance over volume. You do not need to describe every task from every role in equal detail. Your most recent and relevant roles deserve the most space.
For experienced candidates, focus on:
Scope of responsibility
Leadership or ownership
Commercial impact
Process improvement
Stakeholder management
Industry knowledge
Systems and tools
Team size, budgets, targets, or workload where relevant
Achievements that show judgement and maturity
Older roles can be shortened, especially if they are less relevant. A hiring manager does not need 9 bullet points about a job from 2009 unless it is highly relevant to the role you want now.
One of the quiet signs of a strong senior CV is editorial judgement. The candidate knows what to include, what to reduce, and what to leave out. That tells me they understand relevance.
Priya Shah
Manchester
07700 000000
linkedin.com/in/priyashah
Operations coordinator with 5 years of experience supporting fast paced service teams across scheduling, supplier coordination, reporting, customer communication, and process administration. Strong working knowledge of Excel, CRM systems, and internal workflow tools, with a track record of improving accuracy, reducing delays, and keeping teams organised under pressure.
Operations coordination
Supplier communication
Customer service
Scheduling and diary management
CRM and database management
Excel reporting
Process improvement
Document control
Internal stakeholder support
Issue resolution
Operations Coordinator
Brightline Facilities, Manchester
March 2022 to Present
Coordinate daily service schedules for a team of 18 field engineers, balancing customer priorities, engineer availability, and urgent repair requests
Manage supplier communication, purchase order updates, service documentation, and job completion records using internal CRM and Excel trackers
Improved job record accuracy by introducing weekly data checks, reducing missing information and repeat clarification requests from managers
Act as first point of contact for customer queries, providing clear updates on appointment changes, service delays, and follow up actions
Prepare weekly performance reports covering open jobs, completed visits, overdue actions, and recurring service issues
Support operations managers with process updates, team communication, and administrative improvements during peak workload periods
Customer Service Administrator
Northgate Home Services, Leeds
June 2019 to February 2022
Handled high volume customer enquiries by phone and email, resolving routine issues and escalating complex cases to the appropriate team
Updated customer records, processed service requests, and maintained accurate documentation using CRM systems
Supported appointment booking, engineer availability checks, and follow up communication with customers
Helped train 3 new starters on customer service processes, call handling standards, and internal system use
Contributed to improved response times by organising shared inbox folders and creating clearer email templates for common enquiries
BA Business Management
Leeds Beckett University
2019
Advanced Excel for Business Reporting
Customer Service Level 3
Full UK driving licence
Tailoring does not mean redesigning your CV for every application. It means adjusting the emphasis so the reader sees the fit quickly.
Before applying, compare your CV against the job description and ask:
Does my profile reflect the role I am applying for?
Are my most relevant skills visible near the top?
Have I included the systems, tools, or processes mentioned in the advert?
Do my bullet points show evidence of the responsibilities they care about?
Have I removed or reduced details that do not support this application?
Would a recruiter understand my fit within 10 seconds?
This is where candidates often lose interviews. They assume their experience is obvious because they know their own background. The recruiter does not. The hiring manager does not. Your CV needs to make the connection visible.
For example, if you are applying for an office administrator role, your CV should highlight administration, organisation, systems, communication, document handling, and team support. If the same person applies for a customer service role, the CV should shift towards customer communication, issue resolution, service standards, and high volume enquiry handling.
Same person. Same background. Different positioning.
That is how strong CVs work.
Use this checklist before sending your CV.
My CV is clear, structured, and easy to scan
My contact details are professional and up to date
My profile explains what I do and what I offer
My key skills match the types of roles I am applying for
My work experience is in reverse chronological order
My bullet points include context, responsibility, and impact
I have included relevant tools, systems, and processes
I have removed unnecessary personal information
My formatting is clean and consistent
My CV is not overloaded with design features
My strongest evidence appears early enough to be noticed
My CV is tailored to the role before I send it
The final test is simple: if someone had only 20 seconds to scan your CV, would they understand why you are relevant?
If the answer is no, the problem is not the template. It is the positioning.
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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