Speech and Language Therapist (SLT) CV Examples & Writing Guide

A fictional CV for an SLT working in acute care and community care homes, with a first paediatric year as a newly qualified practitioner. If you work in schools, early years or independent practice, keep the shape and swap the data: EHCP advice and caseload replace IDDSI levels and productivity.

Speech and language therapy hiring is registration-gated and caseload-driven. Whoever reads your CV is checking whether you can legally practise, and whether you can carry the caseload their service demands.

• Registration. HCPC registration (speech and language therapist is a protected title), RCSLT membership, and NQP status if you qualified recently.
• Setting and population. Acute, inpatient rehab, community adult, care homes, paediatric clinics, schools, early years and learning disability services need different skills. Name the setting and the ward size or caseload.
• Volume you carried. Patients a day, productivity, caseload size, assessments per month. This is how a manager works out whether you can handle their service.
• Specialist skills that are hard to recruit. Instrumental assessment (VFS and FEES), tracheostomy and ventilated patients, AAC, eating and drinking therapy, bilingual working. Any one of these moves you up the pile.
• Documentation and record-keeping, because clinical governance depends on it in health settings and statutory timescales depend on it for EHCP advice in schools.

“The first thing I check is HCPC registration, then whether they have done instrumentals. An SLT who rates their own swallow studies and can handle a trach caseload is the hardest hire in my department, and most CVs bury that on page two.”

Three or four lines: registration, years, setting, caseload or productivity, and one outcome. Use a career objective only as a student, a newly qualified therapist or someone changing settings.

Every SLT assesses, treats and documents. What differs is the population, the volume and what happened to the patients. Keep the duty and add all three.

Aggregate your outcomes and never name a patient or a pupil. Percentages, counts and time frames make the point safely.

These are two different jobs sharing one registration. If you are applying across settings, write two versions of the CV rather than one that half fits both.

If you are moving from schools into a hospital, put every adult and health setting hour you have on the page, including student placements, and be honest about what you have not done. Managers will train a strong clinician on a new population; they will not forgive a surprise in week one.

Name disorders, assessments and therapy approaches. A list of soft skills tells a manager nothing about which patients they can give you.

• Dysphagia: clinical swallow assessment, videofluoroscopy, FEES if you have the competency, IDDSI recommendations, compensatory strategies, neuromuscular electrical stimulation
• Adult neuro: aphasia, apraxia of speech, dysarthria, right hemisphere disorder, traumatic brain injury, cognitive-communication therapy
• Voice and resonance: LSVT LOUD, vocal hygiene, resonance disorders, tracheostomy and speaking valves
• Paediatric: speech sound disorders, childhood apraxia, expressive and receptive language, stammering, social communication, eating and drinking therapy
• AAC: assessment, device trials, funding applications, family and staff training

• Assessment tools you actually use, named: CELF-5UK, DEAP, PLS-5UK, Comprehensive Aphasia Test, Boston Naming Test, MASA
• Documentation: EHCP advice and timescales, therapy plans, record-keeping to HCPC and RCSLT standards, outcome measures such as TOMs
• Electronic systems: Epic, Cerner, SystmOne, RiO, care home record systems
• Supervision of students, newly qualified practitioners and SLT assistants
• Bilingual service delivery and interpreter use, if that applies to you

One skill worth showing with evidence rather than a word: explaining a swallowing risk to a family who want their parent to eat normally again. A bullet about staff or family training reaching a specific number of people makes that point.

A newly qualified CV is judged on placements, breadth and honesty. Employers know you are new; they want to see that your placements prepared you for their population and that your registration is in order.

1. 1Write "HCPC registration expected" with the date until it is confirmed, then "HCPC registered, NQP". Do not claim RCSLT certified membership before you have completed the NQP competencies.
2. 2Put clinical placements in the experience section with the setting, the population, the caseload and the hours, not as a list under education.
3. 3Count what you did in each placement: assessments completed, therapy sessions, standardised tests administered, reports written, school meetings attended.
4. 4Name the assessments and therapy approaches you used independently versus with supervision. Managers respect the distinction.
5. 5List your degree with the classification or expected date, plus basic life support and any training you completed early, such as a dysphagia module, Hanen or Elklan.
6. 6Say which settings you want and which populations you have real hours in. A newly qualified SLT who names a setting gets matched faster than one who says they are open to anything.

Write these precisely. Each one is verifiable through the HCPC register or the RCSLT, and employers check before they confirm an offer.

• HCPC registration as a speech and language therapist, gained after an HCPC-approved degree (a BSc, or a two-year pre-registration MSc). The title is protected, so you cannot practise as an SLT without it.
• The year you were first registered. Registration is renewed every two years and depends on meeting the HCPC's standards, including CPD, so a lapsed registration shows up immediately.
• School and children's settings: no teaching qualification is needed, but you will need an enhanced DBS check (PVG membership in Scotland, AccessNI in Northern Ireland).
• RCSLT membership: certified member once you have completed the newly qualified practitioner competencies, with the year.
• Clinical training worth listing: MBSImP, NMES (VitalStim), LSVT LOUD, FEES competency, PROMPT, Hanen programmes, Elklan, Talking Mats, eating and drinking therapy courses.
• Basic life support, required through mandatory training in nearly every health setting.
• CPD: keep a log to HCPC standards. You may be selected for audit at renewal, so a tidy record is worth mentioning.
• Working across the UK: HCPC registration covers England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, so you do not need a new registration to move. What changes is education law and the name of the support plan, so describe the plans you have worked with by their local names.

• Two pages is normal for an experienced SLT. One page is fine for a student or newly qualified therapist.
• Order: name with registration line, personal statement, registration and training, experience, skills, education. Registration sits high because it is the first filter.
• Give each employer a size marker: bed count, number of schools, clinic volume, area covered.
• PDF unless the NHS Jobs, Trac or local authority application asks otherwise. No photo, no date of birth on a UK CV.
• Single column, plain headings. NHS trusts, councils and academy trusts all run applications through parsing software.

Mirror the exact terms in the advert inside your bullets:

• Title variants: speech and language therapist, SLT, speech therapist, Band 5 NQP, Band 6, Band 7, highly specialist SLT.
• Adult health words: dysphagia, VFS, FEES, trach and vent, aphasia, cognitive-communication, IDDSI, productivity, therapy plan.
• School words: EHCP, SEND, caseload, speech sounds, language, universal and targeted support, statutory timescales, classroom-based and pull-out.
• Registration words: HCPC, RCSLT, NQP, basic life support, MBSImP, VitalStim, LSVT.
• System names: Epic, Cerner, SystmOne, RiO, and the EHCP system the local authority names.