The short answer
For each job, placement or volunteering role, give the organisation, your role and the dates, then two to four short lines about what you did. Start each line with an action, add a detail that helps someone picture it, and finish with what came of it if you know. Unpaid experience belongs here too.
What counts as experience
Paid jobs count, but so do work experience placements, volunteering, helping in a family business, regular babysitting, a paper round, coaching a younger team, or a role at school or college. The National Careers Service lists placements and volunteering alongside paid work, most recent first.
If something was regular, involved other people, and you’d be happy to talk about it in an interview, it can go in.
The layout of each entry
Keep the top line of each entry consistent so it’s easy to scan. (The people and businesses in this lesson’s examples are made up.)
Sales assistant, Hartley’s Hardware, Northgate · June 2025 to present (Saturdays)
Serve customers at the till and on the shop floor, including finding the right screws, paint and tools for their job.
Restock shelves from deliveries each morning and check prices match the labels.
Cover the paint mixing counter when the regular colleague is on a break, after being trained by the manager.
Role, organisation, place, dates. Then what you did. Months and years for dates is plenty.
The pattern: action, detail, result
Most weak CV lines are just a duty: helped customers, did the till, made drinks. Those are true, but they could describe anyone who ever stood in a shop.
A stronger line has three parts:
- Action. Start with a verb that says what you did: served, sorted, trained, organised, fixed, explained, checked, planned, packed, welcomed.
- Detail. Who, what, where, how often or under what conditions. This is what makes it yours.
- Result, if there was one. What happened because you did it? Sometimes there isn’t a neat result, and that’s fine.
Before
Worked in a shop and helped customers.
After
Helped customers find products, answered questions and kept the shop floor organised during busy shifts.
Why it works The first says where you were. The second says what you did there, and “during busy shifts” tells the reader you can cope with pressure.
Before
Made coffee and cleaned.
After
Made hot drinks to order on the Sunday morning shift and kept the tables and counter clear so the queue kept moving.
Why it works Same tasks, but now with the setting (Sunday mornings) and the reason the cleaning mattered (the queue).
Before
One week work experience at an accountancy firm.
After
Spent a week at Ashby & Lowe Accountants: filed client paperwork, checked a spreadsheet of invoices against receipts, and sat in on a client meeting.
Why it works A placement often gets one line saying it happened. Say what you were trusted to do.
Before
Volunteer at charity shop.
After
Volunteer at the Ridgeway Hospice shop every Thursday after college: sort and price donations, steam clothes for the rails and serve at the till.
Why it works Frequency and specific tasks show commitment and range.
Before
Member of the chess club.
After
Run the Year 10 chess club on Wednesday lunchtimes: set up the boards, pair players for games and keep the club’s league table.
Why it works “Member” is passive. Running something is organisation, communication and reliability in one line.
Adding a number (only a true one)
Numbers help a reader picture scale. They don’t have to be money or percentages, and they must never be invented. Ask yourself:
- How long? Since when? For how many months or years?
- How often? Every weekend? Three evenings a week?
- How many? People served, team members, children in the group, items packed, if you actually know.
- What changed? Did something get faster, tidier or easier because of you, and do you know by how much?
If you know it, add it. If you only roughly know it, use the honest rough version: around 30 children, most Saturdays. If you don’t know, leave it out. An interviewer may ask where a number came from, and “I made it up because a website told me to” is a hard answer to give.
Before
Delivered newspapers.
After
Delivered newspapers to around 60 houses before school, six mornings a week, for two years.
Why it works Sam, who is fictional, knows the round roughly and knows exactly how long they did it. Those numbers say reliability more loudly than any adjective.
Verbs that do the work
Start lines with what you did. A few that come up often in first jobs:
| If you... | Try |
|---|---|
| dealt with people | served, welcomed, helped, advised, explained, answered |
| kept things in order | organised, sorted, stocked, checked, filed, tidied |
| looked after money | handled, counted, cashed up, recorded |
| made or fixed something | built, made, repaired, set up, designed |
| took charge | ran, led, planned, coordinated, trained, showed |
| learned something | trained in, picked up, completed, practised |
Don’t repeat the same verb on every line, and don’t reach for big words you wouldn’t say out loud. “Facilitated” isn’t better than “ran”.
How many lines, and in what order
Two to four lines per role is usually enough. Put the line most relevant to the job you’re applying for first. If you’re applying for a café, the food and customer lines go to the top; for an office, the paperwork and spreadsheet lines. That’s tailoring, and there’s a whole lesson on it.
Most recent experience goes first. If an older role is more relevant, you can still keep it, but the order of the section should stay by date so it’s easy to follow.
Try
Rewrite two of your lines
Pick two things from your own experience, paid or not. For each, fill in the boxes, then join them into one line.
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In short
- Experience includes placements, volunteering, family businesses and regular responsibilities.
- Each entry: role, organisation, place, dates, then two to four lines.
- Each line: action, detail, result if there is one.
- Numbers are useful only when they’re true. Time and frequency count.
- Put the most relevant line first for each job.
Ready to write your experience into a real CV?
The CVBUFFED editor asks what you did, one role at a time, with a prompt and an example beside each line, and keeps only your own words. £12.50 once, no subscription.
Build my CVSources and further reading
- CV sections National Careers Service
- How to write a CV Prospects
- How to write a CV UCAS
Checked against these sources on 14 November 2026. Rules and rates change: if something here looks out of date, tell us at hello@cvbuffed.com. How we check our guidance.