Advice that actually helps you get hired

A practical guide to how to write a CV for the UK job market, covering CV layout, the personal statement, achievements, tickets and licences, and the mistakes that get good candidates filtered out.

How to write a CV personal statement for UK applications, with worked examples for care, construction, admin, driving and career changers, plus the phrases to cut.

A CV with no experience still has plenty to say. Here is how school leavers, graduates and career changers fill two pages with evidence UK employers take seriously.

The interview questions UK employers ask in almost every role, why they ask them, and how to build answers that are specific, honest and short enough to hold attention.

Competency based interview questions need structured answers rather than opinions. Here is how the STAR method works in practice, with worked UK examples covering conflict, pressure, admitting a mistake and leadership.

Practical video interview tips for Teams and Zoom calls, plus what to wear to an interview in UK offices, sites, care homes and warehouses without overthinking it.

How to ask for a pay rise in a UK job: researching your market rate, timing the conversation around budget cycles, what to say, and your options if the answer is no.

A realistic plan for changing career in the UK: testing the idea cheaply, funded retraining routes, handling a pay dip, and rewriting your CV so employers take the move seriously.

How to write a covering letter that adds something your CV cannot, with a three paragraph structure, a worked UK example, and advice on speculative and email applications.

How UK apprenticeships work, what apprentices get paid, and which entry level jobs and short tickets give you the fastest route into paid work with no experience.

How to write a job advert UK candidates respond to: the title, the salary, must-haves versus nice-to-haves, wording that stays lawful, and what advertising a role should cost.

A practical process for shortlisting candidates quickly and defensibly, plus what UK employers must do on right to work checks, DBS checks and references before someone starts.

How UK holiday entitlement and statutory sick pay work, including the 5.6 week rule, bank holidays, part time and zero hours accrual, SSP qualifying conditions and fit notes.

What UK notice periods actually require, how garden leave and pay in lieu work, what your final payslip should include, and what an employer can and cannot say in a reference.

The difference between a regulated qualification and a CPD certificate, how to check which one you are holding in two minutes, and why a long list of them can work against you.

What an applicant tracking system does with your document, and the ATS CV format choices that keep your job titles, dates and tickets where a recruiter can find them.

A career change CV has to answer one question fast: why you, when other applicants already do this job. Here is the structure, the wording and the evidence that works in the UK.

How to write a CV after a career break, illness, caring, parenting or redundancy, with plain wording for the gap and a checklist of the tickets worth refreshing before you apply.

A CV for over 50s has the opposite problem to a first CV: too much material. Here is what to cut, what to date, what the law says about age, and how to answer the overqualified objection.

How long should a CV be in the UK, when one page beats two, when three pages are accepted, and exactly what to cut when you are over the limit.

The CV mistakes UK recruiters see every day, from unreachable phone numbers and unexplained dates to exaggerated qualifications, and the quick fixes for each one.

How to build a CV skills section that earns its space, which keywords are worth including for UK roles, and how to prove a skill instead of simply claiming it.

A driver CV is read for licence categories, Driver CPC, points and the work you have actually done. Here is how to lay one out for Class 1, Class 2, 7.5 tonne and van roles in the UK.

How to write a care assistant CV for residential, nursing and domiciliary roles, covering the Care Certificate, DBS, medication, safeguarding and the shift detail managers need.

How to write a construction CV for UK sites, with CSCS card colours, SSSTS and SMSTS, plant tickets, the projects to name, and how to handle CIS, umbrella and day rate work.

The questions to ask at the end of an interview that make you look serious rather than polite, the ones to avoid, and how to raise pay, hours and start dates without damaging the offer.

What a second interview is really testing, how UK assessment centres and trial shifts work, what to prepare for a presentation task, and how to handle the pay conversation at this stage.

How to get promoted in a UK workplace: making the business case, using appraisals and one to ones properly, acting up, and what to do when the next step does not exist where you are.

If you are not hearing back from job applications, the cause is usually one of six things. Here is how to diagnose it and fix it, from filters and timing to the way you apply.

How to interview candidates without a HR department: structuring the questions, scoring fairly, the questions you must not ask, and turning a good interview into an accepted offer.

Who gets the National Minimum Wage, how the National Living Wage differs, the deductions that can make pay unlawful, what a payslip must show, and how to challenge underpayment.

The cost of hiring an employee in the UK, broken into three numbers you can calculate yourself: advertising, agency fees and what the vacancy costs you every week it stays open.

A job advert getting no applications almost always has one of five faults: hidden pay, an unsearchable title, a vague location, excessive length or a painful apply process. Here is how to fix each one.

How to write the salary in job adverts so it attracts the right candidates: real ranges, what moves someone up the band, the whole package, and why competitive costs you applications.

Recruitment agency fees explained for small UK employers: contingency and retained percentages, rebate periods, temp charge rates, transfer fees, and when an agency is genuinely worth paying.

How a small employer can measure cost per hire and time to hire using a single spreadsheet, what to include, what to ignore, and how to use the numbers to decide where to spend next.

Job advert titles decide whether anyone ever sees your vacancy. How to pick the term candidates search for, the one qualifier worth adding, why internal grades fail, and the wording to avoid.

How long should a job advert run in the UK, what to expect in the first week, a week two checklist for a quiet vacancy, and when to refresh the advert rather than start again.

A twenty minute a day system for screening job applications: triage, a phone screen script, staying fair under time pressure, and what to keep on file when you have no HR team.

Practical employer branding for small UK employers: the four free things candidates actually check, how to handle reviews, why consistency in adverts matters, and how to tell your careers story.

Why employers keep losing candidates at offer stage, from slow decisions and lowball offers to counter offers and the silence during a notice period, and the steps that stop it happening.

You have never heard of us, we are smaller than the national boards, and you have been burned before. Nine real objections to advertising with a new UK job board, answered without spin, including the ones we cannot fully answer yet.

Treating candidates and employers decently is usually described as a nice-to-have. In hiring it is the cheaper option, and here is the arithmetic that shows why.

Whether to put a photo, date of birth, marital status or nationality on a UK CV, why employers would rather you did not, and the handful of jobs where a photograph is genuinely expected.

Fonts, margins, headings, file format and the two column question. What a UK employer's eye does in the first ten seconds, and how to lay a CV out so the important things land in that time.

Redundancy, illness, caring, prison, a failed business, or just looking for a while. What to write, where to write it, and why hiding a gap costs you more than the gap does.

What is actually negotiable in a UK job offer, the sentence that does the work, how to counter without a rival offer, and the point at which pushing costs you the job.

What to do in the first week, the second and the fourth, how many applications is the right number, and why applying to eighty jobs a week is the least effective thing you can do.

The five fields recruiters actually search, what to write in your headline and About section, and why most profile advice is written for people who want to be influencers rather than employed.

What managers judge in the first fortnight, the questions to ask on day one, what probation actually means in UK law, and the mistakes that cost people jobs they had already won.

How agency pay really works, what the Agency Workers Regulations give you after 12 weeks, what an umbrella company deducts, and the arrangements to walk away from.

How long your CV is really looked at, why the essential list is a wish list, what the salary band actually is, and the other things employers know about their own process that candidates are never told.

The order a recruiter's eye moves in, what they are checking at each stop, and what to put in each place so the answer is there when they look.

Replace the twelve phrases that appear on nearly every CV with the sentences that get interviews, with before and after examples from real trades.

The real reasons applications are turned down in UK small and medium employers, ranked by how often they actually happen, and what each one tells you to change.

The four changes worth making for each application, in the order they pay off, and how to do it without rewriting the whole document every time.

Why a large share of UK vacancies are filled without an advert, who fills them, and the two approaches that work for ordinary trades rather than executives.

The complete list of documents, registrations and insurance a new UK recruitment agency needs before the first placement, in the order you need them, with links to the free official sources.

Permanent placement and temporary supply are different businesses under UK law, with different duties, different cash needs and different risk. Which one you are decides most of your compliance.

What a key information document must contain, when it has to be given, why it is the document agencies most often get wrong, and where to download the free official examples for PAYE and for a limited company.

How to carry out a right to work check that actually gives you a statutory excuse, how long to keep the evidence, and why the duty now reaches into labour supply chains.

From April 2026 an agency is jointly and severally liable for PAYE an umbrella company fails to pay, with no reasonable care defence. What that means in practice, and the simplest way to be safe.

Agency drivers are almost always under supervision, direction or control, and where they are, the agency legislation requires PAYE whatever the invoice says. Why the 2026 IR35 threshold change makes this worse rather than better.

Supplying labour into agriculture, horticulture, shellfish and the food processing and packaging attached to them requires a licence, and operating without one is a criminal offence. Where the line actually falls.

The clauses that decide whether you get paid and whether you keep the candidate, including the transfer fee rules under regulation 10 that make badly drafted terms unenforceable.