Application advice, counted rather than guessed
Most careers advice is somebody's opinion about what employers want. We read every live UK graduate job advert each night, so where a question can be answered by counting, these pages count it — 12,914 adverts as of 5 November 2026. Where it cannot, they say so.
Your CV and cover letter
The skills graduate jobs actually ask for
Teamwork appears in 55.7% of adverts — and that is exactly why writing it on your CV achieves nothing.
Counted from live adverts →
Cover letters, with a worked example
Only 4% of adverts mention one, which is not the same as not wanting one. The form usually asks.
Counted from live adverts →
Writing a CV with no experience
2.1% of graduate adverts ask for a number of years of experience. The premise of the question is mostly wrong.
Counted from live adverts →
How long should a CV be?
Two pages — though 13 of 12,914 adverts say so. It is a convention, not a rule.
Counted from live adverts →
The CV personal profile
Four worked examples for four different starting points, and the five lines to delete.
Worked examples →
Interviews
The question bank
Every question with what it is really asking and where the marks go. Filter by your sector and the order comes from what those adverts name.
Read it →
Competency-based interview questions
The interviewer is holding a scoring sheet, not a blank pad. Which eight competencies come up, a full worked answer, and why five stories cover all of them.
Read it →
Assessment centres
Finance adverts mention them seven times as often as general business ones. The five exercises, and why dominating the group task scores badly.
Read it →
Psychometric tests
Probably not the personality quiz you are expecting. It is timed numerical and verbal reasoning, and it is where most silent rejections happen.
Read it →
Questions to ask them
“Any questions for us?” is still being scored. The ones worth asking, grouped by who can actually answer them, and five that cost you.
Read it →
The data behind these pages
Free tools: check how your CV reads to an employer's software and which of the skills they ask for it names, both without an account. Also free, from the same adverts: what UK graduate jobs pay, how many of them say so, and what arrived today. Journalists and careers services are welcome to cite any of it with a link.
Or skip the writing
Gradovio ranks every live graduate role against your CV, writes the CV and cover letter against whichever advert you pick, and fills the application form on the employer's own site.
Start a free trial — 13,277 live graduate roles.