How to write a recruitment consultant CV
Your degree got you the interview. Your billing record will get you the job.
A recruitment consultant CV is not like other CVs. The usual rules: put education at the top, list your responsibilities, include your dissertation topic, largely don't apply. Hiring managers at agencies are looking for one thing above almost everything else: evidence that you can perform.
Lead with impact
The first thing on your CV after your name and contact details should be a short personal statement of two or three sentences, that frames who you are, what you bring and your history of impact.
Most graduate personal statements read like cover letter filler: "I am an ambitious and motivated individual seeking an exciting opportunity in a fast-paced environment." Every candidate writes something like it. Be specific.
If you've done any sales, fundraising, account management, or target-driven work, even in a student context, say so and quantify it in the first sentence. Like “Motivated graduate bringing one year of experience managing a £500,000 account …”. If you haven't, lead with something that signals commercial instinct: persuasion, relationship-building, resilience under pressure. Perhaps a society you ran, classes you taught, even just working front of house in a café. If you can prove that you built relationships with clients, thats a plus.
The hiring manager spends literally seconds scanning your CV, and if at the top they see something that grasps them immediately, they’ll keep reading.
Create a separate achievements section
This is the most important structural decision you'll make. Don't bury your wins inside job descriptions. Give them their own section, near the top, before your work history.
Recruitment is a performance culture. Managers want to see that you've hit targets, outperformed peers, or driven a measurable outcome in any context. This section is where you put that evidence directly in front of them.
Examples of what belongs here:
Ranked in the top 10% of sales in a part-time retail role
Raised £4,200 for a charity campaign, exceeding the target by 40%
Grew a university society's membership from 60 to 340 in one academic year
Consistently exceeded KPIs during a summer internship
The “exceeded” is a big key word here. Don’t just say you “met” targets, say you “surpassed” them.
If you don't have anything that feels obviously "commercial," think harder. Sports captaincy, event organisation, tutoring, freelance work. Recruitment managers are good at pattern-matching for potential.
Work experience: Focus on the “value” you brought to your team
For each role, don't just list what the job involved. Write about what you specifically did and what happened as a result.
Weak: "Responsible for serving customers and handling complaints."
Stronger: "Managed high-volume customer interactions during peak periods, resolving complaints independently and maintaining a 4.8-star satisfaction rating across 200+ reviews."
If you have any experience that involved targets, quotas, commission, persuasion, or managing relationships over time that belongs here and should be written up carefully. These are the closest proxies a hiring manager has for how you'll perform on the desk.
Education: Include it, just not at the top
Your degree matters as it signals that you can commit to something over three years and see it through, and some agencies have minimum grade requirements. But it doesn't need to be the first thing someone reads.
If you don’t have an impressive degree classification, put your education section towards the bottom of your CV. Include your university, degree title, and classification (or predicted grade). You don't need to list modules or your dissertation unless they're genuinely relevant ( like a module in negotiation or organisational behaviour might be worth a line).
If your grades are strong, let them sit there as confirmation. If they're not your strongest suit, the rest of your CV should be doing enough work that by the time the reader gets to education, they're already convinced.
A few other things worth noting
Keep it to one page. You're a graduate. One page is the norm and anything longer reads as padding.
Skills sections are largely useless. Listing "Microsoft Office" and "strong communication skills" adds nothing. Only include a skills section if you have something genuinely specific, like a language, a relevant technical tool, a professional qualification.
Tailor it slightly per agency. A boutique tech recruiter and a large generalist agency are looking for slightly different things. Read the agency's website and adjust your personal statement accordingly. It takes fifteen minutes and makes a noticeable difference.
Recruiters typically read in an F shape on the CV, scanning a third of the way through the top two blocks, and reading the first coupel of words all the way down the first page. Put their job description keywords there. They’ll just dump generic CVs.
Proofread it twice. Recruitment is a client-facing role. A typo on your CV signals carelessness with detail, which is exactly the wrong message to send to someone whose job involves representing candidates professionally.
The underlying logic of a recruitment CV is simple: show evidence of performance, put it where it can't be missed, and let everything else provide context. Grades, job titles, and university names are the frame. What you did is the picture.
