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CV examples
A builder is not an example. A form asks you what to write. An example shows you what the finished thing looks like, which is what you actually want if you have never written one, and what you want even more if you are writing in your second language.
These are complete, not templates full of brackets. Every one ends with a list of what to change.
Class 1 driver, experienced
You hold C+E, you have been driving a few years, and your problem is that your CV reads like a list of companies.
A transport manager reads the top six lines and decides. Everything that gets you the call is in those six lines: categories, CPC, digi card, and what you have actually driven. Put them first and nothing else has to work as hard.
Read itClass 1 or Class 2, newly qualified
You have just passed and every advert wants two years' experience. This is the hardest CV to write and almost nobody writes about it.
You cannot invent experience and you should not try. What you can do is answer the two questions behind that advert before anybody asks them: will this person be safe, and will they still be here in six months. Everything below is aimed at those two.
Read itWarehouse and forklift
You have tickets and shift experience, and your CV is being read in thirty seconds alongside forty others.
In this trade the tickets and their expiry dates are the whole first screen. An agency is checking whether you can start on Monday. Make that answerable without a phone call.
Read itWhat holds a CV back in these trades
In the order it costs people jobs.
The first six lines decide it
Licence categories, CPC expiry, digi card, tickets. Not a paragraph about being a hard working team player. Somebody reading forty CVs before lunch is looking for a reason to stop reading, and a personal statement is one.
Dates on every ticket
“Forklift licence” tells a reader nothing. “RTITB counterbalance, valid to April 2028” tells them you can start Monday. An expired date is worse than no date, because it says you have not looked.
Two pages, and one is better
Nobody in this trade has ever been turned down for a short CV. Take out anything from more than ten years ago unless it is a licence.
Explain a gap in six words, do not hide it
“2023: four months off, broken wrist” is finished business. A gap with nothing written next to it becomes the first question at interview, and then it is the whole interview.
Send it as a PDF
A Word file opens differently on somebody else's machine and your layout falls apart. Print to PDF and send that. Name the file with your own name, not CV_final_2.doc.
Do not put these on it
Date of birth, a photograph, marital status, National Insurance number, your full address. None of them gets you the job and the first three can get an employer into trouble for how they used them.
Know somebody writing their first CV? Sending it costs nothing and it is how a small board grows.
These are ordinary links. No like button, no follow widget and no tracking pixel, because those load somebody else's script and start watching you before you press anything. Nothing leaves this page unless you choose to send it.