How to write a Social Work CV

The conventions below are the ones this field actually uses. They are what the builder applies when you pick Social Work / NGO, and what the rating checks a finished CV against.

What it must contain

Leave any of these out and the CV reads as incomplete to someone who hires in this field:

Work experience — Beneficiaries reached, geography covered, budget handled and the funder behind the programme.
Education

The order to put them in

Order is not cosmetic. What sits at the top is what gets read before someone decides whether to keep reading.

Professional summary
Work experience
Education
Skills
Grants & Recognition
Projects
Certifications
Languages
Publications

Section by section

Grants & Recognition — Grants secured with amount and funder.

What to put numbers on

The single most common reason a CV in this field reads as weak is that nothing in it is measured. These are the figures that mean something here:

beneficiaries · villages covered · grant amount · programme budget · retention

Verbs that carry weight

Openers like “responsible for” and “worked on” describe a job description rather than a person. In this field these do the work instead:

Reached · Mobilised · Trained · Secured · Evaluated · Advocated

Length

1 to 2 pages is normal for this field.

Build a Social Work CV See a worked example

Free, no account, and nothing is uploaded — the builder runs in your browser and the CV never leaves it.

Related fields

Defence · Government · Law