— How to Write a CV for Event Jobs
Quick Answer
How do you write an event manager CV?
A strong event manager CV leads with a short personal profile, then sets out your work history in reverse chronological order with achievements rather than basic duties — all on no more than two sides of A4. Tailor it to each role you apply for, and quantify your event experience with details on sector, attendance and duration. Most events employers skim CVs before they read them, so structure and scannability matter as much as the content.
- →Personal profile, 50–75 words — summarise your experience so far, the key skills you bring, and where you want your career to head next.
- →Achievements over duties — use action verbs (built, produced, delivered) and quantify each event by sector, attendance and duration.
- →Tailor it to each role — match your CV against the job description and cut anything that doesn't earn its space.
A strong CV can set you apart from the competition, and while it won’t necessarily do all of the heavy lifting of landing a job, it can help you to get a foot in the door. Poorly presented CVs can do you a considerable disservice, often downplaying your experience, or presenting it in a way that doesn’t make it easy for the hiring manager to find the information they need.
Whether you are at the start of your career and wondering how to stretch your experience to a full two-sides of A4, or if you’re later in your career and wondering how best to condense all of your experience into such a small space, this guide should help.
We’ll look at the information you should be including, and what you should be leaving out. We’ll also explore some layout tricks that will help you to present the most important information in a scannable style. And finally, we’ll explore some common mistakes you’ll want to avoid.
What event employers look for in a CV
Employers don’t read full CVs from start to finish, they skim them to create a shortlist, and then they read the shortlist when they are deciding who to invite for an interview. This means that the structure and how the information is presented is just as important as the contents. If your CV can’t make it past the first skim, you might struggle to get a foot in the door for your interview.
Employers often have a clear vision of the person they want to hire. So if you feel that you are the perfect match for a role and you aren’t invited for an interview, it’s not always because you aren’t qualified. It’s often because there are many candidates equally qualified, and enough of them were a closer match for the role.
Remember that every employer is looking to hire for a specific role, which means they have a job description and a candidate profile in mind. If your CV doesn’t match this expectation, you might be overlooked for the role, even if you are more than capable.
This is why it’s important to regularly review your CV, adapt it to the role you are applying for, and be responsive to feedback. If you are invited for an interview and aren’t offered the role, you can use this as a learning experience to find out how you could further strengthen your CV.
At a Glance
Which path fits your situation?
Option A
Early-career CV
- ✓Lead with education and any event-related modules
- ✓Include placements, society roles and volunteer event work
- ✓Use a fuller personal profile to compensate for short work history
- ✓List references in full where you have space to fill
- ✓Highlight transferable soft skills with real examples
Option B
Experienced events CV
- ✓Lead with work history in reverse chronological order
- ✓Keep education to one line — highest qualification only
- ✓Quantify each role with budget, attendance and team size
- ✓Use "references available on request" to save space
- ✓Cut older roles that no longer add relevant weight
You might want to stand out, but employers don’t want to have to work hard to understand your CV. This is why following a tried and tested format is so important. We recommend structuring your CV in the following way, or a close variation of this:
- Key contact information
- Short personal statement/profile
- Education history
- Work experience (reverse chronological order)
- Key skills
- Details of references
There are some key variations you might consider making at different stages in your career, which are:
- Students are most likely to lead with their education, particularly if they are completing a course that is relevant to the job, such as event management or business management.
- Those with extensive work history might lead with this, only mentioning their highest level of education achieved.
- Career changers might offer a truncated work history and focus on retraining or the aspects of their roles that lean into the event management side.
Remember that a CV should never be more than 2 sides of A4, so you need to make sure you are making the most of the space available to you.
CV Template
Event manager CV — structure to copy
[Your name]
[Phone] · [Email] · [LinkedIn] · [City]
Profile
[2–3 sentences. Who you are, the formats and scale you specialise in, the type of role you're looking for. Example: "Event manager with 7 years agency-side experience delivering B2B conferences and product launches from 100 to 1,200 delegates, budgets to £600k. Looking for a senior in-house role in financial services or tech."]
Notable events delivered
This is the section that gets you read. List 4–6 of your strongest, most recent events.
- [Event name or type] — [scale, budget, venue, year]
- [Event name or type] — [scale, budget, venue, year]
- [Event name or type] — [scale, budget, venue, year]
- [Event name or type] — [scale, budget, venue, year]
Experience
[Job title]
[Company] · [Dates] · [Agency / In-house / Venue]
[1 line on the business — sector, size, type of events.]
- ›[Achievement with a number — delegates, budget, growth, time saved]
- ›[Achievement with a number]
- ›[Achievement with a number]
[Previous job title]
[Company] · [Dates]
[Same structure as above — context line, then 2–3 quantified achievements.]
[Cvent · Eventbrite · Hopin · Splash · Salesforce · Asana · Health & safety · Languages]
Education & qualifications
[Degree, institution, year]
[IOSH / NEBOSH / BPM / industry accreditation]
Free download · Editable .docx
Download the editable Word template
Every section is laid out and the bracketed placeholders are ready to fill in. Edit in Word, Pages or Google Docs — then export to PDF when you're ready to send.
Download CV Template
Personal profile examples
Writing a personal profile is perhaps the most difficult part of the CV. While everything else can flow quite easily as it’s simple fact-based reporting on your career to date, a personal profile requires you to think about the soft skills and character qualities that you bring to a role.
The personal profile should be around 50-75 words long, so there isn’t much space to work with. You need to summarise your experience to date, highlight the skills you bring to the role, and then briefly mention your long-term ambitions. An example would include:
“I am a motivated and organised student with a strong interest in event planning and coordination. Through my studies and extracurricular activities, I have developed excellent communication, time management, and teamwork skills, along with the ability to stay calm under pressure and pay close attention to detail. I am eager to begin a career as an Event Planning Assistant where I can gain hands-on experience supporting the organisation of events from concept to completion.”
How to list event experience
There are a few simple tips to follow when listing your experience that will make it much easier for employers to scan and extract the information they need.
- List the employer, the job position and the dates you held this position.
- Briefly summarise your responsibilities, using action verbs (built, produced, generated, expanded) to show your impact.
- For each role, also include the events that you produced, managed or planned. Make sure you include information about sector, attendance and duration.
- Be clear about your involvement in the event, but don’t downplay your experience. You should also make sure that the level of experience you are highlighting would also be backed up by a reference, if your application continues past the interview stage.
How to Write a CV for Event Jobs
Anatomy of an Events CV
The five sections that matter most
Keep to two pages. Recruiters scan for under 30 seconds — make every section earn its place.
Section 1
Header
Name, target job title, location, phone, email, LinkedIn. No photo, no date of birth, no full address.
Section 2
Personal profile
Three to four lines. Years of experience, event types you've delivered, one signature achievement. Tailor this to every application.
Section 3
Key skills
Six to ten skills mixing technical (venue sourcing, AV management, budget tracking) and soft (stakeholder management, crisis handling). Match the job description.
Section 4
Experience
Most recent first. For each role: company, dates, three to five bullet points. Lead with specific event outcomes — attendee numbers, budget size, repeat-booking rates.
Section 5
Education & training
Degrees, industry qualifications (CIM, event management diplomas, first aid, food hygiene), software certifications. Brief — one line each.
Key skills to include
Employers want to know about your hard, technical skills and the soft skills that make you proficient and promising. Scan your CV and look for instances where you have highlighted a skill. Now look at the job description and see if there are any key proficiencies requested that you have missed from your CV.
Remember that you don’t just want to list your skills, you want to show when and how you have used and demonstrated these skills. Key skills employers are looking for include:
- Organisation
- Multi-tasking
- Self-management
- Communication
- Teamwork
- Attention to detail
- Creativity
- Positive attitude
- Customer service
- Commercial awareness
- Sales and marketing
- Budgeting and financial management
Common mistakes
There are some simple mistakes you could be making with your CV that are impacting how employers approach it.
- Never lie on your CV. Stretching the truth to make yourself seem more experienced will always come back to bite you, as the truth will often be revealed in the referencing stage. Be honest, but don’t be afraid to highlight your strengths.
- You don’t need to include a photo, your age, or your marital status. This information should be irrelevant to any role. Employers can often guess your age range based on when you went to university, and information about your appearance or marital status should be irrelevant to the role.
- Dense blocks of text will make it difficult to skim. Try to break key information down into easily digestible bullet points.
- Focusing on the basic duties of the role instead of your achievements will leave your CV lacking. While responsibilities are important to outline, you should always demonstrate what you have achieved in each role.
- Another common mistake is failing to clarify the scale of the events you’ve worked on. A 50-person seminar is very different to a 1,500 person conference, so be clear about the scale of your events.
Sample CV outline
Not sure where to get started with your CV redesign? Try following this outline to help structure your CV.
- Key information and contact information – if you have a website, online portfolio or a professional social media account, include this here.
- Personal profile – this is a short overview of your experience, ambition and key traits. Keep it to around 3-4 lines, or 50-75 words.
- Education history – if it’s been a while since you graduated, keep this brief and only include the highest level of education. Include any relevant information about event planning experience you may have gained at university, or placements you have completed.
- Work history – remember to show achievements, not just tasks. You should also match your experience to the job description as much as possible.
- Key skills – if you have additional skills you’d like to mention (including training like first aid, or specialist software packages) you can add a list after your work experience history.
- References – for university leavers or school leaves, you might want to include references to fill up some space. If you’re struggling to cut your CV down, then simply state that references are available on request to save space.
Once your CV is spruced up and ready to go, it’s time to browse jobs and apply with your new CV.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions about event manager CVs
What are some red flags on a CV?
Spelling and grammar mistakes, formatting problems and poor layout will all make your CV look less desirable to employers. Once you have the formatting perfect and you've proofread it multiple times, export it as a PDF so that the formatting looks the same.
Choose a neutral and easy-to-read font like Arial or Helvetica, making sure to use the same style throughout. Make headings slightly larger and then use bullet points to split up large chunks of information. Think about white space on your CV and don't allow it to become too dense.
Should I use AI to write my CV?
We wouldn't recommend this, as there is a high risk that the AI will not accurately describe your work experience. Some employers will also use AI detection tools to filter out any CVs that have not been written by a human. You are best positioned to be able to describe your work experience and professional journey.
The UK's Events Industry Job Board
Ready to put your new CV to work?
Events-Jobs.co.uk is the UK's dedicated job board for the events industry. Browse roles across production, operations, sales, marketing, technical and creative — or post a vacancy and reach candidates who already work in events.
Written by
Sophie
Events-Jobs.co.uk · 3 years in the events industry
With 3 years of experience in the events industry, Sophie understands the events job market and what companies and candidates need from an industry-specific job board.
