writing a resume without work experience

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How to Write a Resume with No Experience: 5 Tips

Writing a resume with no formal work experience means emphasizing other aspects of your life that’ll showcase your skills and passions—like your education, and involvement in activities like extracurriculars or volunteering.

Having dedicated sections for a summary and a list of skills can round out your resume.

Resume with no experience: Template

Templates can help you organize your thoughts, inspire you with ideas, and take the guesswork out of how to format your resume. And regardless of how much experience you have, starting a resume from scratch can be daunting. 

Here’s a resume template you can use if you have no work experience .

Here’s the resume filled out below.

Read more: How to Get a Job with No Experience: A Job Seeker’s Guide

How to write a resume with no experience: 5 tips

If you have no experience you can point to in your resume, highlight your education, include relevant non-work experience, list your skills, and include a summary. Get started by using a template.

1. Highlight your education.

If you have little work experience, emphasizing your education is a great way to showcase your strengths, interests, and background.

Some items you’ll want to consider including in the education section of your resume are:

Relevant coursework: Be sure to list any courses that will emphasize skills that can be helpful for the job. These might include courses that focus on technical skills—like economics, math, or computer science. But don’t forget the importance of courses like English or writing that can show your competence in communication or other human skills. Look through job descriptions to see what kinds of skills are desirable for the field you’re interested in.

GPA and honors: A strong grade point average (GPA) can indicate a willingness to work hard and an aptitude for your field. Experts recommend listing your GPA if it’s at 3.5 or above [ 1 ]. If you’ve received any academic honors, it’s a good idea to list them, too.

Relevant projects: If you’ve completed projects in classes that are particularly relevant to the job you’re applying to, list and briefly describe them. If you have more than one, this can be its own section.

Certifications and online courses: If you’ve completed any coursework outside of school or received a professional credential, list these under the education section as well.

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2. Include relevant experience.

When you first start putting together a resume, you might feel like you don’t have any relevant experience to refer to. But a little digging into your life could unearth several experiences that show your professionalism, interests, and character—all things a potential employer can consider important.

You can include the following in a section titled “Relevant Experience”:

Volunteer experience: Volunteering demonstrates your community involvement, ability and willingness to work with others, and your interests. It might even have gained you some hands-on experience in a related field. 

Part-time jobs: Maybe you worked part-time while you were in school, tutored or babysat kids, or helped your parents out at their small business. If you’re applying for your first full-time job, don’t shy away from including these. Part-time jobs can demonstrate your employability and experience with key skills like customer service.

Extracurricular activities: Whether you played sports, were part of a cultural club, or participated in student council, extracurricular activities can help show a willingness to explore your interests, develop new skills, and work on a team. Don’t forget to include any leadership positions you might have held in these activities.

3. List your skills.

Chances are even if you don’t have any formal work experience, you probably have skills that will be useful in the field. Look through several job descriptions of positions you’re interested in to see what skills are commonly requested. 

The relevant skills you’ll choose to list will likely depend on the job, but might  include: 

Microsoft Office products like Word, Excel, or PowerPoint

Communication

Computer programming

Social media

Foreign languages

Public speaking

Customer service

Not sure if you have the skills you need to land the job you want?

Try emphasizing your transferable skills , like critical thinking, problem solving, and teamwork. Or try taking some coursework in essential skills in your field— data analysis , IT , UX design , and digital marketing skills are all in demand across many industries.

You can also look out for entry-level jobs , which typically have fewer skill requirements than other jobs.

4. Include a summary.

A resume summary is a brief description of your experience and qualifications. Usually one to three sentences long, a summary gives recruiters a way of quickly understanding your background and assets as a worker. 

Don’t forget to emphasize traits and skills that fit the job you’re applying to. You can also include a sentence about your objective —what type of job you’re looking for. Here are two examples:

Recent college graduate with background in computer science and communications. Seeking to leverage strong skills in Python, C++, and public speaking for full-time engineering opportunity.

Curious and hard-working high school honors student with passion for working with children and one year experience baby-sitting. 

5. Use a template.

Eliminate the stress of coming up with your own layout by using one of the many resume templates you can find online—like this one . 

Customize any template you find to fit your needs and tastes. A word processing program like Microsoft Word or Google Docs can be helpful here. Need access to one? Try approaching your local public library. If you’re a student, your school library will likely have resources you can use. You can also create a Google account for free.

Start building skills for an in-demand career in project management, data analytics, UX design, IT support, sales, or social media marketing with a Professional Certificate from industry-leading companies like Google, Meta, and Hubspot. Gain hands-on experience through job-relevant projects you can add to your resume or portfolio.

Article sources

CNBC.  “ This is the only time you should include a GPA on your resume,  https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/31/when-to-include-your-gpa-on-your-resume.html.”  Accessed May 19, 2023.

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This content has been made available for informational purposes only. Learners are advised to conduct additional research to ensure that courses and other credentials pursued meet their personal, professional, and financial goals.

How to Write a Resume With No Work Experience

Whether you’re a student, you’ve just graduated, or if you’ve been with one company for a long time, creating a resume when you have little to no work experience can be a challenge.

However, though it can seem intimidating, it’s completely possible to catch a potential employer’s eye – with or without a great deal of professional experience.

Here are three essential job seeker tips perfect for new grads, students, and candidates changing their career paths that will help you land the interview without years of experience on your resume.

1. Write a Summary

While objectives are a thing of the past, summaries work well for people who have limited work experience. They’re the best place you can explain why you should get the job on your resume, instead of listing an impersonal series of dates and places.

All you need to do is write a sentence or two about who you are as a potential employee and any relevant skills or achievements.

As well, if you recently graduated from high school or college, mention your new status in your summary. It will help explain why you have limited experience.

2. Highlight Your Skills

While you may have little or no work experience to discuss on your resume, you’re sure to have skills that you may have acquired in school or while volunteering that qualify you for the job.

One way to highlight them is to break down these skills into individual lists of hard and soft skills for your resume. Draw employers’ attention to these relevant soft and hard skills as a heading and list achievements related to these skills under the appropriate heading.

Check out an example of a functional resume here .

[sc name=”cta-create-resume-1″]

3. Don’t Forget Unpaid Work Experience

Internships or volunteer opportunities can still count as work experience. If you worked as an intern or volunteered for a significant period of time, include the position on your resume.

Since you already listed your skills on your resume, you don’t need to rehash this information when you are listing internships and volunteer work. Just be sure that you mention the company or not-for-profit organization, the months and years you were in the position and your title.

If you earned any awards specific to one of these positions, it makes sense to list it under the associated position, as well.

Even With Little to No Work Experience…

Building a resume when you have limited work experience can be tough, but it’s definitely possible to make it work. Everyone has to start somewhere, but you don’t have to send in a sparse resume when you are new to the job market.

Emphasize the hard and soft skills that make you the best person for the job with a resume summary and a  functional resume template .

Plus, there are countless ways you can enrich your job application outside of your resume. Try building up your personal brand using social media or learn how starting a blog could help you get your dream job here .

Just starting out in your career? Take advantage of Resume.com’s free resume samples and  resume templates for your resume to get your job hunt started successfully! Publishing your resume on Resume.com will also allow employers search for your resume online! Don’t forget to check out our online job listings to get started on where to apply!

How to Make a Resume With No Experience

You can lean on internships, class projects and extracurricular activities.

Making a resume early in your career feels like a classic catch-22: A good resume highlights relevant work experience, which you don’t get until you land a job.

The truth is you don’t always need professional experience for entry-level jobs. By highlighting your existing skills, coursework and extracurricular activities, you can craft a resume that will impress employers — even without work experience.

Writing a Resume With No Experience

• Start with a professional summary 
• Emphasize your education 
• Include relevant experience like internships and extracurriculars
• Highlight your accomplishments
• Showcase your skills 
• Don’t include a headshot, hobbies and other unnecessary details

Even if you don’t meet all the requirements described in a job description , there are still ways to write a resume that catches a company’s eye. First, you may want to get your hands on a resume template (word processors like Google Docs and Microsoft Word have resume templates to guide you with a general structure). From there, you can fill in the details by following the tips below.

1. Start With a Professional Summary

Career coaches have mixed opinions on including a short professional summary at the top of your resume. Lesa Edwards, founder of  Exclusive Career Coaching and the former director of the career center at  Truman State University , is in favor of a professional summary because it can set the stage and contextualize the experiences that follow. It also allows you to set yourself apart in a large stack of resumes. 

If you decide to include a professional summary, ask yourself: What do I bring to the table? What soft skills could I transfer over to this role? What do I have that other candidates don’t have? If written well, this two-to-three-sentence summary could encourage recruiters and hiring managers to take a closer look at your resume and cover letter.

2. Emphasize Your Education

If you recently graduated from college, put your education experience as one of the first headers on your resume. You should list your major, any academic honors and your GPA (if it is 3.5 or higher). The education section of your resume can also include a subsection for industry-relevant certifications . As your career progresses, you can bump your education section further down the resume to make room for more relevant professional experiences.

3. Include Relevant Experience and Activities 

Instead of focusing on the requirements you don’t meet, think about any transferable skills or experiences you might have gained from internships , extracurricular activities, part-time jobs, volunteering or school projects.

Jill Silman Chapman, director of early talent programs at Insperity , said she favors candidates who have a well-rounded set of experiences. It shows they are able to multitask, work in different types of environments and adapt to changing circumstances.

“In today’s workplace, we’re changing all the time,” she said. “That ability to adapt is critical.”

Internships

Internships are the best way to gain relevant work experience before entering the professional world. They offer an opportunity to apply the lessons you’ve learned in the classroom in real-world situations.

Part-Time Jobs

If you worked in a service industry job and you are seeking your first professional job after college, you could highlight soft skills , like time management skills needed to juggle school and work responsibilities. Customer service is an especially underrated skill, Silman Chapman said, because it translates to customer-facing roles and  interpersonal skills within the workplace.

Extracurricular Activities

This could include student government, fraternities and sororities or any number of campus organizations or community activities. Athletics is also a resume-booster in some industries, especially sales and other professions that tap into a competitive spirit. You might also note if you were an Eagle Scout, helped out at a peer tutoring program or volunteered your time in other ways that show you are engaged in your community.

Class Projects

Projects you worked on as part of a class or online certification program can also be incorporated into your resume. This could include your marketing class working on a semester-long campaign that culminated in a big presentation. If your class partnered with a company on a large project, that could be a relevant real-world experience for your resume.

Online certification programs are also a good way to gain professional experience, and often provide a chance to apply your learnings to a project, which can then be highlighted on your resume, said Karen Scully-Clemmons, assistant director of career services and employer relations at the  University of Texas at Austin . You’ll want to detail what you accomplished, what technologies you used and what you learned . If possible, you should also link to your project on your resume.

Related Reading How to Use the STAR Interview Method to Land a Job

4. Highlight Your Accomplishments

For each experience you list, showcase the results in bullet point format, and look for ways to quantify your results. For example, don’t just rattle off what you did as president of a school organization, highlight how many new members joined during your tenure or how much money you raised while leading fundraising efforts.  

These accomplishments don’t need to be groundbreaking, but you might have to reflect deeply and think creatively to recognize and articulate the value you provided in each role. Just be sure to align these accomplishments with the responsibilities in the job description. 

“Sometimes I think the hardest thing for students is to think of an achievement, because they think it has to be a super big deal,” Edwards said. “So much of it is a shift in mindset of what constitutes an achievement.”

5. Showcase Your Skills

For a skills section, you can include your software proficiencies, as well as soft skills like organization, time management, communication, adaptability to change and the ability to work as part of a team . If you are going to highlight soft skills, though, you should also include evidence of a role or situation in which you demonstrated those skills.

“It may not be numbers, dollars or percentages,” Edwards said, “but maybe you could talk about how you took a leadership role in a class project that was presented to a community organization.”

Related Reading 5 Things New Grads Need to Know About the Job Market

6. Don’t Include These Elements

You only have so much space on your resume, so be sure to leave off these unnecessary details. 

Objective Statement 

Don’t include an “objective” statement that lays out what you are looking for in a job. Instead of talking about what you want, use that space to describe what value you can offer the employer. 

Hobbies and Interests

While you might think a job is related to your hobbies and interests, Edwards said these are of little practical interest to recruiters and hiring managers. Leave them out of your resume.  

A GPA below 3.5 is not likely to win over a company, and a GPA below 3.0 could only hurt your chances. Only include your GPA if it’s above 3.5.   

Headshot or Photo

Recruiters and hiring managers don’t need or want to see what you look like. Unless you are applying for an acting job, don’t attach a picture to your resume because it could be potentially used to discriminate against you. 

Your Full Address

In the electronic age, there is no need to put your address on your resume. Providing your city and state is typically enough, unless an online application requires your full address.  

Graphics  

Don’t employ resume templates with fancy graphics: most companies use applicant tracking systems (ATS) , which can’t read resumes that are decorated with graphics, special fonts, columns and other formatting tools.

Frequently Asked Questions

What can i put on my resume if i have no experience.

In lieu of professional experience, you could highlight your education, skills, internships, extracurricular activities, part-time jobs, volunteering experiences and school projects.

How to write a professional summary for a resume with no experience?

A well-written professional summary will draw upon the experience you’ve gained from school, internships and other extracurricular activities to demonstrate the impact you have made and the value you would bring to your desired role.

How do you say you have no experience but are willing to learn?

Employers are often willing to train entry-level candidates who have shown initiative and a hard work ethic in school, internships and extracurricular activities. You can emphasize your willingness to learn through your professional summary statement on the top of your resume or through the cover letter that accompanies the resume.

Do I need a resume if I don't have experience?

Yes, you need a resume when applying for a job, regardless of your experience. Most word processors, like Google Docs and Microsoft Word, offer free resume templates to get you started.

Recent Resumes Articles

How to Write a Resume With No Work Experience in 2024 (+Examples)

• December 5, 2023
• In Resumes & Cover Letters

Writing your resume with no work experience can be tricky. You need to impress the hiring manager even if you have no relevant experience. When creating your first resume, focus on skills that are unique and valuable. Appropriate experience may include causal jobs, volunteering, or school activities.

Creating your first resume or applying to jobs without experience can be scary. How do you write a resume with no work experience? It may even be your first time having to write a resume, put eye-catching resume objectives, list your job skills , or choose a resume format. But at the end of the day, there is a first for everything, and hiring managers know it.

Do you want to save time and create your resume in just a few minutes? Try our premade Microsoft Word resume templates that will help you save time on designing and formatting so you can focus on highlighting your skills and expertise.

How to write a resume with no experience (with examples)

1. identify your goals for writing a resume with no experience, 2. choose a suitable resume format for a no-experience resume, 3. write a strong resume objective.

• > The objective for the resume with no experience examples:
• > Resume Objective for Students with No Experience

4. Create your education section 

5. list your relevant experience , 6. highlight your skills on a resume with no work experience, 7. include your volunteer work .

• > Volunteer work on resume with no experience examples:

8. Tailor your resume for each position even with no experience 

9. write and attach a strong cover letter , sample resume with no work experience.

There are several steps you should take before starting to write your resume . One of the most important ones is identifying your career objectives and finding the positions and industries you want to apply for. This is crucial to success because it will help you determine what aspects of your skillset and experience to focus on and what to highlight.

No matter how good of a fit you might be, you won’t see much success if your resume doesn’t stand out. So, remember that your resume should show that you can bring value to the company and are knowledgeable about the position. To achieve this, it’s vital to find out what your potential employer is seeking in an employee in two easy steps:

• Begin researching the job listings that align with your career goals and interests.
• Take note of and write down the keywords that appear repeatedly. These may be requirements, certifications, or skills that most of the job descriptions mention. You will want to include these throughout your resume to truly stand out.

Writing a resume with no work experience can be nerve-wracking, especially if it’s the first time writing a resume altogether. To get started, remember that a resume should always include the following five sections:

• A header with your name, job title, and contact details
• A resume summary/objective that presents your skills and achievements in a short paragraph
• An education section with the degree(s) or diploma(s) you have earned
• Your work experience, which can include even volunteering or similar experiences
• A skills section that summarizes all of your best abilities and talents that are relevant to the job

For a resume with no experience, you can also include extra sections for your hobbies, language skills, or academic projects.

But what’s the best way to organize these sections? That depends on the resume format you choose. There are three popular resume formats: functional, chronological, and hybrid. The functional format highlights skills and achievements and focuses less on work experience. On the other hand, a chronological resume format lists the work experience in reverse chronological order.

Finally, a hybrid format combines the other two, illustrating work experience and skills. While many employers prefer a chronological format, the other two are often better for resumes with no work experience. This way, hiring managers will see your achievements and skills immediately. Whichever format you decide to use, make sure to stick with it throughout your resume.

Read more:  “What’s the Best Resume Format for 2024? [Pros vs Cons]

A resume objective is a brief introductory statement that describes your professional goals. Unlike a resume summary , a resume objective is suitable for a resume with no experience because it focuses on the value you could bring in the future. On the other hand, a resume summary presents existing achievements and expertise.

Most of the time, the recruiting manager is flooded with resumes. Thus, they only have a few seconds to scan each one. This paragraph is your opportunity to grab their attention and convey your abilities.

A resume objective should be no longer than three to four sentences and include the following information:

• Your field of study and highest education
• The skills and experiences that are relevant to the position
• Your motivation for applying to this particular position

Just like with contact information, you don’t need to give your resume objective a separate heading. Instead, you can place it under your header.

Example #1: Resume objective for freshers:

Example #2: resume objective for students with no experience.

Read more:  “Resume Objective Examples for 2024 [+How-to Guide]

In your education section, show the degrees, training, and certifications that align with your professional goals without appearing over-or under-educated.

To do this, begin by documenting your educational and training background. This should be just an outline of what you’ve collected, so don’t stress about it not being amazing yet.

What should your education section include?

• Degrees and certifications earned
• Name of the degree
• Name of the college, university, or training school
• Years attended
• Optionally, you may also include:
• GPA if it is 3.40 or above
• Specific relevant coursework
• Exchange studies
• Extracurricular interests and online education/training

Creating your experience section may seem daunting since you most likely lack formal work experience. However, you still have much to include in this resume section, even with no work experience. Depending on your background, you can include:

• Academic projects –  The easiest experience to include is academic projects. Whether it’s software you made in a programming class, a marketing campaign, or a website you created, they’re all experiences that show you have the skills to succeed. Overall, this is an excellent opportunity to add value to your resume without experience if you are a high school or college student. You can also include interests and hobbies if they relate to the work and have provided you with transferable skills. Extracurricular activities prove you’re dedicated and driven, so don’t be afraid to include them!
• Internships –  Next, paid and unpaid college internships are one of the best weapons you have against the phrase “experience necessary.” They provide real-world work experience and help you network and develop contacts that may lead to a career later. So if you’re a college student writing a resume with no experience, include any internships you have undertaken.

To include an internship on your resume, first, write the title and function of your internship. Instead of simply “Intern,” use “Sales Intern” if your internship was in the sales department. Then, write down the name of the firm, the location, and the length of the internship – in that order. After that, provide a bulleted outline of your intern tasks and achievements. Finally, tailor your duties and accomplishments to the position you’re applying for.

Work experience example:

Marketing Internship YXPic, LLC. Miami, FL 2017 – 2019

• Managed firm social media accounts.
• Analyzing different social media outlets for viral content. 
• Posted engaging content on the company’s Facebook page, which resulted in a 25% increase in customer interaction. 

Lawn mowing and trimming Miami, FL 2015 – 2017

• From early spring until mid-fall, mow, edge, and trim lawns. 
• Maintained seven lawns weekly throughout the season. 
• Developed customer service skills to earn referrals and get more clients.
• In six months, I went from having 2 to having 10 clients. 
• On lawn service, I earned and kept a five-star-rated page on Facebook  

When creating your skills section, it’s crucial to focus on relevant, transferrable skills. The first step is to go through the job description and list the key required skills and qualifications you can meet. Employers value both soft and hard skills, so keep that in mind.

Team leadership, verbal communication, and self-management are soft skills that apply to every role. Hard skills , such as industry-related software or a foreign language, are gained through specialized education or training.

Because soft skills are harder to teach, most businesses focus on them when recruiting for entry-level employment. It’s okay if you haven’t yet developed all the hard skills required for a job. Nowadays, most companies will recognize your worth as a possible new employee if you prove to be a fast learner.

Still, make sure that you only include skills that are relevant to the position. For example, if you’re applying for an administrative assistant position, coding or trade skills won’t be very helpful.

Hard skills, soft skills examples:

Hard skills: Microsoft Excel ,  Cloud Computing ,  CRM Systems ,  Email management ,  POS Software ,  Programming Languages ,  Customer service ,  SEO

Soft skills:  Interpersonal Skills ,  Collaboration ,  Problem-solving ,  Communication ,  Time management ,  Adaptability ,  Organizational skills ,  Active listening

Read more:  30 Top Skills for a Resume (With Examples)

Volunteering demonstrates your commitment and desire to put your skills to use. And nothing makes a recruiter happier than a dedicated employee. You may include it on your resume whether you volunteered at a soup kitchen or helped gather rubbish in the countryside. Most employers consider volunteer experience alongside paid professional experience. Thus, you should always aim to include volunteer work that displays your abilities or where you learned a new relevant skill on your resume.

Volunteer work should be stated in the same way as your employment experience section on your resume. So mention the organization’s name, location, the time you worked there, and a bulleted description of your responsibilities.

Volunteer work on resume  with no experience examples:

Freelancing & Volunteering Phoenix, AZ 2017 – 2019

• Designed posters and created a Facebook page to assist a local community in promoting a series of garage sales events. 
• Wrote promotional pieces and 20+ professional product evaluations for a small technology website.
• Converted a family member into an Apple customer by convincing him of the benefits of iOS over Android-based on his needs. 
• Supervised a team of two regular news and content writers for a musical band’s fan site mentioned in a local newspaper. 
• Planned and led games and activities for groups of elementary school students. 
• Completed a course on the basics of efficient marketing on Udemy.

Nursing Volunteering Experience American Pulmonary Disease Association 2018 – 2018

• Provided patient education to 8 patients weekly.
• Performed an average of 13 health checks per week.
• Received praise from facility management for outstanding patient contact.
• Oversaw physical therapy sessions for 5 patients bi-weekly.

Customizing your resume for each position you apply for is the last and most essential aspect of developing a strong resume. If you lack experience, your greatest chance of landing an interview is to tailor your resume to the position you seek. Examine their job description to determine the skills they require. Then, take the skills you possess from the list and add them to your skills area. Different job advertisements will include different keywords, work responsibilities, etc. Adapting your application to each employer’s demands and job requirements is the best way to get your application noticed.

Most businesses utilize an applicant tracking system (ATS) to screen and organize resumes. So, when applying for any job, you must include a list of keywords on your resume to combat this. The best place to find these is in the job listing itself or in advertisements for related positions.

About half of applicants include a cover letter with their job application. So even with the lack of professional experience on your resume, you can increase your chances of success by preparing a strong cover letter.

A cover letter is a one-page letter sent with your resume as part of your application. Essentially, your resume describes your experiences, while your cover letter explains how they relate to the position. Here are the steps you need to take to compose an outstanding cover letter:

• Ensure that the format of your cover letter adheres to all professional correspondence formatting requirements.
• Create an engaging introduction to your cover letter that presents you to the readers and motivates them to continue reading.
• Describe your skills and how they may assist the organization.
• Explain why your cultural fit is exceptional.
• Always include a call to action at the end of your cover letter.

Also, ensure that your cover letter is the appropriate length. As with the rest of your resume, your cover letter should be relevant, simple, and brief.

Read more:  How to Write a Great Cover Letter in 6 Steps

Example of a resume with no work experience 

Sarah Brown 58 South St, Phoenix, AR [email protected] (123) 456-7890

An independent and driven business administration student with demonstrable proficiency in business, procurement, sales, and marketing. I am eager to use my theoretical knowledge and introduce the most current industry standards to the company.

EDUCATION Phoenix High School Phoenix, AR Class of 2020 (3.9 GPA)

EXPERIENCE Sales Intern ABC Company 2021-Present

• Assisted the sales regional sales manager in ad hoc tasks.
• Took notes and shared them with attendees at weekly team meetings.
• Prepared monthly reports for 7 international clients.
• Uncovered a bookkeeping error, saving the department 5% of yearly expenses.

Soup Kitchen Volunteer Phoenix, AR 2020 – 2021

• Acted as weekend/holiday volunteer manager at a local soup kitchen.
• Organized volunteer shifts and monitored the input of donated food.
• Aided with preparing and delivering meals on Sundays and major holidays, including Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter.

Pet Sitter Phoenix, AR 2018-2020

• Established and operated a profitable pet sitting service.
• Offered services including dog walking, feeding, and yard maintenance to locals in a 5-mile radius.
• Acquired and maintained 13 clients, arranged and attended visits, coordinated appointments, and managed client relationships.
• Collaboration
• Bookkeeping
• Attention to detail
• Microsoft Office

AWARDS & ACHIEVEMENTS

• National BA Honor Society
• Volunteer Club President and Treasurer of the Phoenix High Cheerleading team

Writing your first resume can be daunting, especially if you have no work experience. So, get ready to edit and tweak your resume until you get the desired results. Using these simple tips, you will create a resume demonstrating your strengths and getting you noticed. This is your chance to show prospective employers how you’ve prepared for the job and why employing you would benefit their company.

Popular related posts:

• 15 Best Skills for a Resume (With Examples)
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• 7 Ways to Improve Your Cover Letter Today
• Resume Objective Examples for 2024 [+How-to Guide]
• Cover Letter Format: A Step by Step Guide for 2024
• How To Write a Cover Letter With No Experience in 9 Steps

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How to Write An Effective Resume With No Work Experience (with Templates and Examples)

A recruiter-backed guide to writing an effective resume if you don't have enough (or any) work experience - with downloadable templates and examples.

3 years ago   •   13 min read

Navigating the job market without professional experience can seem daunting, but you can still write a competitive resume with no work experience. The key is to present the experience you do have, and show a recruiter why it’s relevant to them.

Remember, a lack of work experience doesn't mean a lack of skills or potential. Unpaid roles, student activities, internships, personal projects, and volunteer work can all provide substance for your resume, showing your potential to employers and highlighting your transferable skills.

In this guide, we'll take you through crafting a compelling resume without formal work experience, covering how to quantify your skills, focus on education, and fill your resume with competitive keywords.

How to write a resume with no work experience

If you're writing your resume but lack enough (or any) professional work experience, here's a quick step-by-step guide to help you get started:

• Include any internships, extracurricular activities , freelance, and volunteer work to supplement your experience.
• List your education section at the top of your resume.
• Use numbers and metrics to quantify your skills and explain how your experience is relevant, even if it's in a different field.
• Include a skills list of relevant keywords and competitive skills.
• Include in-progress education, training and qualifications relevant to your desired field, and consider enrolling in online courses that match the job description.
• Write a resume summary to highlight transferable skills and career goals.
• Stick with a standard reverse chronological resume format. (Not sure what that means? Don’t worry; we'll explain below.)
• Run your resume through a free online resume checker for personalized advice on targeting your resume to your application.

Remember, just because you lack paid work experience doesn’t mean you lack skills! All you need to do is learn how to highlight those skills in a way that will grab a recruiter's attention. Here is an example of how you can create a well-rounded resume with limited paid experience:

Top tips for creating a resume if you have no work experience

Here are 8 top tips for creating a professional-quality resume, despite having little to no work experience.

Highlight transferable experience

The experiences you highlight on your resume should be relevant and tailored to the job you are applying for, but that doesn’t mean they need to be in the same industry. Many skills are transferable between jobs and industries; these are the ones you want to highlight.

Look carefully at the job description and consider what you’ve done previously that demonstrates those skills. Recruiters look for transferrable technical skills, as well as soft skills, so demonstrate these through any experience on your resume, paid or non-paid.

Focus on accomplishments

Once you have decided what experience to include on your resume (more on that in our sections below), remember to talk about your accomplishments , not your job duties. “Responsible for closing the store every night” is a duty — it tells recruiters what you were asked to do, but not what you actually did or how you’re likely to perform in the job you’re applying for. Narrow down the accomplishments most relevant to the skills listed in the job description and focus on those.

Include a resume summary

Adding this optional section at the top of your resume can benefit those with limited or no work experience. A resume summary outlines your essential skills, experience, and noteworthy accomplishments to highlight why you're a good fit for the job.

Use the job title of the job you're applying for, regardless of your past experience, and list 2-3 key skills that match the job description. Mention if you have relevant background experience in that field, paid or not, and highlight any standout accomplishments.

For example:

Quantify your accomplishments and skills

Including numbers and metrics can help any experience look more impressive. This is known as quantifying your resume ; start with an action verb and include a metric or result that demonstrates your achievement.

If you’re having trouble coming up with metrics, here are some questions to consider:

• How many people have you worked with? Instead of saying that you worked in a team, specify the size of the team.
• How many people attended an event you organized? If it was for charity, how much money did you raise?
• How many customers did you serve on an average day? How many sales did you make?

Here is an example of how to quantify a previous job on your resume:

Use the right keywords

Most resumes nowadays go through Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) , automated programs that scan your resume for certain keywords. This means you have to include the right words on your resume to make it past the filter.

Search our list of top resume skills and keywords to get an idea of the specific skills hiring managers are looking for. Being a match for the essential skills the job requires is much more important than having the perfect background or experience!

Keep your formatting simple

You don’t need a fancy-looking resume to impress. In fact, going overboard with creative elements like downloaded fonts, colors, and images can actually do more harm than good. Stick with an easy-to-read font, clear section titles, and standard one or two-column format, or download a free resume template that does the work for you.

Use reverse chronological format

Reverse chronological format simply means that your most recent experience and qualifications are listed first. This is the most common format for modern resumes and is what most hiring managers are expecting. That applies to work experience, but also to your education, projects, and extracurricular activities.

Use a cover letter

You can get ahead of most other applicants simply by writing a cover letter . A cover letter is a great opportunity to talk about why you’re interested in the job and what you would bring to the table, which, when you lack traditional work experience, may not always be obvious from your resume alone.

Pro-tip: Choosing the right examples

If you’re not sure if you have chosen the right examples of your skills for your resume, upload it to the tool below to get a detailed review of your resume and personalized suggestions on how you can improve your word choice, brevity, impact and style, and if there are any critical keywords missing from your resume.

Professional resume template with no work experience

If you have little to no work experience, you can still write an effective resume with only unpaid experience (internships, online training, volunteer work, etc.) by highlighting your most impressive and quantifiable accomplishments, and accomplishments that showcase transferable skills.Here is a professional resume template you can use to improve your existing resume or build one from scratch. You can download this template and more from our resume templates page.

Pro tip: For students writing their first resume

As a student or recent graduate, you will likely have limited or no experience to fill your resume. But don’t worry. This template is also for you!

Notice how this template lists extracurricular, volunteering and personal experiences as 'Leadership and Work Experience', and the resume starts with an Education section. This is a good approach to take if you're a student just getting started in your career.

You can download this template for free here .

Writing a resume for a career change with no previous experience

Making a career shift without prior experience in your proposed field can seem daunting, but it's not impossible. Just like the template above, your resume should focus on transferable skills and competencies that could apply to your desired role and highlight relevant training and certificates. The goal is to convince potential employers that while you may lack direct experience, you have the aptitude and enthusiasm to excel in this new career path.

For more information, read this article on updating your resume for a career change in 2024 .

Pro tip: Gaining industry-specific knowledge

Although you may not have direct experience in your new field, showing that you have done your homework about the industry can go a long way. This could include enrolling in online training, such as Google Career Certificates or Coursera online courses, attending seminars or workshops, or self-study. Make sure to mention these in your education or training section to show your initiative and commitment to learning about the new field.

How to write each section of your resume when you have no previous experience

There are important key sections that should be part of every resume, such as education and qualifications, work experience, hard skills and a resume summary. But don’t worry if you don’t think you have anything to write.

Below, we will explain how to tackle each section of your resume if you have little to no work experience, including formatting options, what to include and the best way to showcase your skills.

Education and qualifications

If you’re new to the workforce or are changing careers, your education and training are likely the most recent and most relevant experience you have. That means you can list your education section at the top of your resume, which takes some of the focus away from a limited work history.

Capitalize on this by elaborating on your academic achievements. Anything from relevant coursework to study abroad can be listed in your education section.

If you're a current student or recent graduate

If you’re a current student or recent graduate, you can also list your education section at the top of your resume above your work experience. The more recently you graduated, the more detailed you can make this section.

Include the name and location of your school, university or college, your field of study and your graduation date (or expected date if you’re yet to graduate). You can also include relevant honors or awards, and significant coursework.

Here is an example of how this would look on your resume, using the template above:

If you didn’t complete your degree

If you didn’t complete your degree , that’s not a problem. You should still list an unfinished degree on your resume a) if it's relevant, or b) until you have more work experience.

Include the name and location of your university, the field of your degree and the dates you attended school. You can also include the number of course hours completed.

Work experience

This is the dreaded section for most people. How are you supposed to write a work experience section when you don’t have any previous paid experience? You need experience to get a job, but you need a job to get experience!

The most important thing to remember is that experience doesn’t need to be formal or paid to be considered experience. Work experience can include volunteering, freelance work, internships, part-time jobs, extracurricular activities, or personal projects. These all demonstrate transferable skills that hiring managers are looking for.

Internships

Internships and student placements are ideal experiences for your resume since they’re still professional settings. You can list internships under your experience section, especially if you don’t have other paid experience.

Include the name of the company, the dates of employment and your specific job title, and list your experience in 3-6 bullet points describing your duties or accomplishments.

Volunteer work

Volunteer work is another excellent substitute for paid experience. Just like an internship, volunteering can be listed in your experience section or a separate volunteer work section .

Include the organization's name, the dates you volunteered and your role within the company. List 1-2 accomplishments in bullet point format, and include accomplishments to demonstrate your skills.

Extracurricular activities and projects

Extracurricular activities or personal projects are great ways to demonstrate relevant skills, especially when you don't have traditional paid experience. Both can showcase leadership , teamwork , or other valuable attributes, even if they are not specifically relevant to the job you’re applying for.

Think about the skills you demonstrated in your activities and frame those skills as accomplishments. List the name of the activity or project, your role, and then 1-2 bullet points detailing your accomplishments. Remember to start each point with a strong action verb and highlight your essential skills and achievements.

For an extracurricular activity, your entry might look something like this:

For personal or community projects, ensure to include the focus of the project and your specific role. Here's an example:

Freelance work

If you’re still struggling to think of things to include on your resume, consider gaining additional experience by starting up a side project , like running a blog or picking up freelance work .

Include the name of the company you worked for, your role, your date of employment and the projects you completed.

Work experience or no, you should still include a skills section on your resume . This doesn’t mean you need to list every skill you possess, just those most relevant to the job you’re applying for.

Look for the skills listed in the job description and list those if you have them. If you’re not sure what skills hiring managers are looking for, you can use Targeted Resume Tool and our skills and keyword finder to look for relevant skills to include.

How to list hard skills

Your skills section should only include hard skills . In other words, things you can prove and quantify, like proficiency with a software program or technical process. Good skills to list could include:

• Software programs
• Programming languages
• Foreign languages
• Certifications
• Design skills
• Data analysis
• Specific types of writing, like proposal writing or SEO

If you have some experience with a skill but are not yet proficient, you can still include it on your resume. Consider arranging your skills by proficiency to show the skills you are currently improving.

How to show soft skills

Soft skills , like communication , leadership , and initiative , are great skills to have, but simply listing them isn’t going to impress a recruiter. Instead, consider a time you demonstrated those skills and include them in your bullet point accomplishments.

If you’re unsure which skills to include in your skills section, use the tool below to get a list of skills and keywords relevant to the job you’re applying for.

Additional sections

When you’re just starting out, anything that gives hiring managers a better sense of who you are and what you’re capable of could be worth including.

Here are some examples of additional sections you could include on your resume:

• Certifications and Courses : If you've taken additional courses or certificates that are relevant to the job you're applying for, this is the place to include them. For instance, if you're applying for a digital marketing role, you might list a Google Career Certificate or a course in SEO.
• Languages : Proficiency in foreign languages can be a significant asset in many roles. Whether you're applying for a job at a multinational company or a position that involves communication with diverse populations, list your language skills here. Ensure to mention your level of proficiency (beginner, intermediate, advanced, or fluent).
• Professional Associations or Memberships : If you belong to any professional groups or organizations related to your field, mentioning them can demonstrate your commitment to your industry.

Remember, when including additional sections, the qualities or skills you’re trying to highlight should be directly relevant to the job, even if the experience itself isn’t.

Common mistakes to avoid when writing a resume with no experience

When creating a resume with no work experience, it's easy to fall into certain pitfalls. Avoid these common mistakes to write a strong and impactful resume:

Over-inflating your experience

While it's important to highlight your skills and activities, remember to remain honest and genuine. Overinflating your experience can lead to awkward situations during interviews and may raise doubts about your credibility. If you've been involved in student activities or volunteer work, these are great to include, but don't make them sound like full-time professional roles unless they were.

Not tailoring your resume

Many job seekers make the mistake of sending the same generic resume to every job they apply for. Tailor your resume for each specific job posting by highlighting the skills and experiences most relevant to that position. This shows employers you've put thought into how you would fit in the role and makes your application stand out.

Overusing buzzwords or vague language

One of the common pitfalls in resume writing is the use of overused or vague language. Phrases like "hard-working," "team player," and "detail-oriented" are often overused and do not provide concrete evidence of these traits. Instead, demonstrate these skills through specific accomplishments or responsibilities from your past experiences.

Including too much irrelevant information

When writing a resume with limited experience, it can be tempting to include everything you have ever done. While it might be tempting to include all your experiences and accomplishments, it's important to remember that recruiters often have a large number of resumes to go through, so your resume should be as concise as possible.

Only include the experiences and skills that can be related to the job you are applying for, and leave out information that does not directly support your candidacy for the specific role.

Forgetting to proofread

This may seem minor, but a resume riddled with spelling and grammatical errors can create a negative impression. Always proofread your resume multiple times, and consider having someone else look it over too.

Is it worth applying for jobs that require experience even if I don't have any?

Yes, it's always worth applying for jobs that require experience, even if you don't have any. Job requirements are often a ‘wishlist’ from employers, and not having every requirement doesn't disqualify you. It's more about how you can convey your transferable skills, whether it's from your education, volunteer work, or extracurricular activities.

Are there any potential red flags to employers if a resume has no paid work experience?

While a resume with no paid work experience may initially raise questions for employers, it's not an insurmountable hurdle. The key is in how you present your other experiences and skills. Employers understand that everyone starts somewhere, and they are more interested in your potential, adaptability, and willingness to learn.

How should I handle gaps in my resume due to a lack of work experience?

When you have little to no work experience, it's normal to have gaps in your resume . Instead of worrying about these gaps, focus on activities you undertook during these periods. You can include volunteer work, courses, personal projects, or relevant hobbies.

If the gap is due to education or training, that information should be clearly stated in your education section. Remember, employers are more interested in seeing a continuous journey of learning and development rather than a timeline filled solely with traditional employment.

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Thank you for the checklist! I realized I was making so many mistakes on my resume that I've now fixed. I'm much more confident in my resume now.

How to Write a Resume with No Work Experience in 2024 (With Examples)

Don't worry, we've all been there. Thrown into the job world with little to none work experience and no idea how to start a resume. We're here to help.

With more and more people on the job hunt each year, entering the work force with minimal to no experience on your resume can be a daunting and frustrating task.

However, no need to worry, all is not lost for applicants lacking in relevant work experience.

We've all been there.

This guide is here to help you learn how to shift the focus of your resume onto your skills, unpaid experiences, and education in order to frame your lack of experience in a more appealing manner.

• What Resume Format is Best for Someone with No Experience?

Adding Transferable Skills to Resume

Including unpaid experience on resume, listing education on a resume as a student.

• Finally, Getting Jobs with a No-Experience Resume

What Resume Format is Best for Someone with No Experience

The first and arguably most important decision when it comes to crafting a resume is deciding which format is best for you.

When you are lacking in relevant work experience, using the standard resume format – also known as the reverse-chronological resume – may not be the best idea.

Reverse-chronological resumes are centered around the work experience section, which is precisely the section you want to shift the attention away from when your experience is limited.

Instead, you should consider using either a functional or a hybrid resume .

If you are unsure which resume format best fits your needs, check out our guide on choosing the correct resume format.  

1) What are Functional Resumes?

Unlike reverse-chronological resumes, functional resumes are not designed or formatted to be primarily focused on relevant work experience.

Because of this, the functional resume has become the favored format for applicants who do not have work experience to showcase.

There are a number of reasons why a person may not have work experience to feature on a resume. Common circumstances include an individual being a student or recent grad.

Veterans who lack non-military experience and people looking to re-enter the workforce after a gap in their employment history also may favor a functional format. 

The benefits of using a functional resume include:

• Well-suited for applicants who have gaps in their employment history or lack relevant work experience.
• Greater flexibility in how sections of the resume can be structured, allowing for a skills section to be the main centerpiece of the resume.
• Provides better opportunity to highlight any unpaid experiences or academic credentials an applicant may have. 

2) What are Hybrid Resumes?

A hybrid resume mixes the formatting of functional and reverse-chronological resumes in order to make a resume that includes elements from both.

These kinds of resumes are highly customizable and can be restructured according to the applicant’s needs.

Using a hybrid resume may be wise for someone who has some work experience that may or may not be wholly relevant

For people with no work experience whatsoever, however, sticking to a functional format may be best.

Benefits of using a hybrid resume include: 

• Opportunity to show work experience, even if it is not relevant to the job being applied for
• Good for applicants who have limited paid working experience but have extensive history working in unpaid opportunities, such as volunteering. 
• Hybrid resumes may more closely resemble a reverse-chronological, which is the standard resume format that employers typically expect. 

Beautiful resume templates to land your dream job

Making a resume as a job applicant with little to no experience requires you to take an in-depth personal inventory of your personal skills and talents.

Everything from your communication skills to your time management and teamwork skills matter here and creating a definitive list of your greatest strengths is key.

There are two categories of skills to consider: hard skills and soft skills .

1) Hard Skills 

Hard skills are more quantifiable and are typically gained through some form of education, training, or certification program.

This can include skills such as computer programming, speaking foreign languages, or being a mathematician.

While you may not have gained hard skills through prior work experience, there are still potentially hard skills you obtained through other channels, such as through school or from the military.

Writing down your hard skills is important, as this is where you will find your most relevant skills for a job application. 

2) Soft Skills

Soft skills are less quantifiable and have more to do with your personality, work ethic, and how you interact with other people.

Communication, problem-solving, and cooperative skills all come into play here. 

Though soft skills may not be as easy to directly relate to a job application, they are still necessary and helpful to include in a resume with a limited work experience section.

Additionally, job descriptions often lend hints to the kinds of soft skills an employer is looking for, and including those skills can show you pay close attention to information given to you. 

Examples of Transferable Skills

Below we have provided a list of common transferable skills to help get you started on identifying which skills you possess and how you can frame them on your resume to improve your chances of landing a job interview. 

Of course, there are hundreds of skills that are good to include on a resume.

It is important to choose skills that both accurately represent your talents as well as provide relevance to the job description provided.

For more ideas on good skills to include, check out our guide on 100+ key skills for a resume in 2024.

Here are a few examples of transferable skills and how to list them:

1) Collaboration

Collaboration skills generally indicate your ability to work well with departments, professionals, or teams outside of your own.

This can show employers your ability to form connections with others within an industry

Incorrect: Collaborated with volunteer teams from other counties.

Correct: Learned strong collaboration strategies through participating in volunteer service activities involving multiple groups of volunteers.

2) Teamwork 

While collaboration shows your ability to work with external connections, teamwork emphasizes your ability to work well within your own team.

Teamwork requires you to pay close attention to your teammates and be willing to compromise in order to make things happen.

Incorrect: Gained teamwork skills through community service.

Correct: Achieved effective teamwork through helping to organize meetings for a community service group.

3) Communication

Communication skills largely involve your public speaking abilities and your capability for expressing yourself in a clear and concise manner.

Including examples of how you have honed your communicative abilities is key. 

Incorrect: Strong communication skills

Correct: Developed communication skills through working as a peer mentor at the university. 

See how this Art Director resume example listed Communication as a skill on her resume:

4) Computer Skills

Nowadays, digital and computer skills are a must and the more you know, the more opportunity you may have for employment.

Detailing your computer skills and programs you can properly operate is essential. 

Incorrect: Strong computer skills and knowledge of software.

Correct: Experienced in the use of Microsoft Office Suite and Adobe Creative Cloud. Certified in the use of Microsoft Excel. 

5) Dependability

When an employer is considering a job applicant with little to no experience, that applicant’s dependability will be one of their major questions.

As such, including dependability in your skillset is generally a smart idea. 

Incorrect: Provided dependable service as an intern.

Correct: Proved dependability through being on time or early every day on an internship. 

6) Critical Thinking

An employer will want you to be fast on your feet while also being able to think things through thoroughly.

Emphasizing your critical thinking skills helps to show a potential employer your attention to detail and ability to problem solve. 

Incorrect: Gained critical thinking skills through membership in a chess club. 

Correct: Employed critical thinking skills during a chess club competition, placing in second. 

7) Leadership

Taking on leadership roles oftentimes comes with hefty responsibilities.

Showing employers your ability to handle and succeed as a leader can greatly impact their impression of your work ethic and ability to work well with others. 

Incorrect: Grew leadership skills in military training.

Correct: Developed leadership skills in the role of a platoon leader during military training. 

For example, take a look at how Elysse added Leadership skills on her chef resume :

For many job applicants with little to no work experience, there are oftentimes other experiences they have that can be used to emphasize and showcase work done to better hone one’s skills and expertise.

Two common examples include experience gained through volunteering or internships .

When you have no experience or gaps in your employment history, having experiences like these to fill the gaps and give context to your skills is key. 

1) Volunteering

Taking advantage of volunteering opportunities is a great way to both begin to build out your resume while also giving back to your community.

There are all sorts of volunteering positions to consider, from working in a local animal shelter to helping with inventory at a food bank. 

Volunteer service shows not only that you have experience to back up you the skills you claim to have, but it also shows your commitment to your work even if there is no compensation involved.

This can reflect very positively on your work ethic to future employers. 

Incorrect: Volunteered at a local shelter.

Correct: Spent six months volunteering at a local homeless shelter, helping to take daily and weekly food and supply inventories.

2) Internships

Internships are especially common for current students or recent grads to take on, as many jobs require some amount of relevant experience to be considered for open positions.

Internships provide the opportunity to gain relevant working experience for those with little to no prior experience.

Inclusion of internships is important, as though it is unpaid work it still can hold a similar weight to paid work experience, especially when applying to entry or low level positions. 

Incorrect: Interned at a local newspaper for one semester. ‍

Correct: Earned a semester-long internship working as an assistant to an investigative reporter at a locally-run newspaper. 

Aside from internships and volunteer experiences, things such as community leadership or fundraising can be useful to include as well.

Basically any experience that helped you to gain and hone your skills is good to consider adding to a resume. 

See how Marianne added her internship in this graphic design resume example :

When figuring out how to list education on a resume it is important to be mindful of what the job description listed as the educational requirements for the position.

Generally speaking, unless a resume is meant to be more academically focused, it is recommended to keep education sections rather short.

For those with no experience, however, the education section may be a good opportunity to showcase activities, clubs, leadership roles, and other similar experiences.

Showing your involvement on campus can help to fill the time gaps in employment history if you are a student or recent grad. 

Incorrect: Played on an intramural soccer team. ‍

Correct: Participated on an intramural soccer team and earned the role of team co-captain. 

Finally, How to Get Jobs with a No-Experience Resume

When it comes to writing the perfect resume in 2024 , there are lots of considerations to keep in mind.

With so much competition, it can sometimes feel disheartening for those of you with no experience.

However, there is a lot of power in the format and wording of your resume and learning how to optimize your resume is key to overcoming a lack of experience.

Here are three key takeaways for writing resumes with no experience:

1) Be Extra Attentive to Formatting

When you are using a functional or hybrid resume format, it may be immediately noticeable to employers that you have chosen against using the standard reverse-chronological format.

As such, you need to be extra careful with your formatting and design in order to ensure your resume looks clean and is easy to follow. 

2) Contextualize Your Information for Specific Jobs

Since your resume will likely be centered around you skills rather than your experience, it is very important to relate your skills back to the job you are applying for and contextualize for the employer how you will apply you skills if given the position. 

3) The More Detail the Better

You don’t want to leave employers feeling like they’ve been left hanging.

While you should still strive to maintain clarity and conciseness in your descriptions, do not be shy in adding heftier amounts of detail than you might in a more standard resume.

You want to stand out to employers and showcase exactly how you are perfect for the role being offered.

Our Last Thoughts

Landing a job with no experience can be tricky, but it’s nowhere near impossible.

The key to crafting a resume when you lack relevant experience is to identify and showcase your relevant and transferrable skills. 

If you are unsure how to get started formatting your resume, check out our resume templates and examples !

Browse more resume templates that fit your role

Get inspired with more resume examples

Read our how-to guides on making your resume perfect, how to write the perfect resume in 2024 (with examples).

The ultimate guide to learn how to quickly create a resume utilizing best practices to help you land your next job.

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Building a Standout Resume with No Experience: A Step-by-step Guide w/ Tips

You need to write a resume , but you have no “real” work experience. However, without any work experience, your resume can’t stand out. For someone like you who has no idea where to start, what to list, how to structure, and doesn’t have any references, writing your first-ever job resume can be frustrating, and I feel you. 

Worry no more! In this article, we will walk you through the steps of writing a resume with no experience, and the strategies of where to focus if you have nearly nothing to list. With resume tips and examples included in this article, you will learn the techniques and apply them to your first job resume.

Note: This is a resume writing guide for high-school teenagers , internship seekers , college students , and graduate freshers .

Table of Contents:

What to Put on a Resume with No Experience

• How to Make a Resume for the First Job 

Tips on How to Write a Resume with No Job Experience

• Resume Tips for 5 Types of First Job Seekers 

Sample Resume for First Job

Sections to put on a resume with no experience:

• Resume Header (Personal & Contact Information)
• Resume Objective or Summary
• Relevant Experience
• Other Sections

When writing a resume with no experience, the most important thing is to de-emphasize your inexperienced situation and shift focus to your strengths and motivation. Any first job seekers -- fresh graduates, students, internship applicants, high school teenagers, or those applying for colleges -- should keep this strategy in mind. The hiring manager knows you are inexperienced, but the lack of experience can be complemented by your skills. As a result, you need to show your competence by connecting your extracurricular activities and skills with the job role. 

1. Resume Header (Personal & Contact Information)

A resume header is one sentence that briefly introduces your professional identity. It concisely announces your personality and specialization. As a first job seeker, make sure your resume header is confidently connected to the role you are applying for!

2. Resume Objective or Summary

The objective and summary section recapitulates your experience, strengths, and qualifications for the position. It gives you an opportunity to write a short narrative and allows the hiring manager to understand you better, to decide if you are right for the role. Your first job resume objective should not only describe what you want and need, but also why you fit the job. Therefore, your resume objective should connect to the job role. Be specific and use examples of previous events to catch recruiters' attention. 

💡Pro tip: A resume objective explains a candidate’s prospects, while a summary is a short version consisting of the candidate’s best achievements and skills. Both should be no more than 4 sentences! For most applicants with no job experience, resume objective is a good place to start with. 

3. Education

When writing a resume with no work experience, education is a key section. For freshers or students looking for an internship, this resume section requires more of your attention. This part is the main selling point that gives you the chance to promote yourself. 

Here’s what to include:

• Name of the degree and major
• Name of the institution
• Years attended or expected graduation year
• GPA (List if above 3.5)
• Honors or Dean's List (optional)
• Relevant coursework (optional)
• Exchange programs (optional)

Taking the opportunity to list relevant coursework shows your understanding of the techniques and processes, even if you have no job experience. Nevertheless, you should skip the basics in the resume and only include the essential course related to the job position. 

The skills section is another highlight that can show your prominence, only if you list it right. For applicants with no job experience, your skills in the resume have to transfer into relatable qualifications. 

• Hard skills are the proficiency of tools, technical knowledge of the work details, and training that is specific for a job.
• Soft skills refer to the habits, traits, and personality that assists your work environment. 

For your first job resume, hard skills are crucial to justify your competence for the job role. List your hard skills by referring to the job requirements, incorporating the exact skills keywords used in the job requirement. This way, even if you are writing a resume with no experience, it can still speak for your qualification. On the other hand, if you list several soft skills, make sure you have examples or experience to elaborate on further. 

5. Relevant Experience

Your relevant experience fills the gap of no job experience in the resume. There are three things to mention:

5.1 Internship

If you have completed an internship or apprenticeship, include it in your first job resume. Internships are the very beginning of your professional career, so list your internships like how you do it with job experience in the resume. List your position title, and under it list the company name, location, and duration. 

Additionally, use several bullet points to describe your achievements and abilities. Numbers and quantified results are ideal tools to measure your accomplishments, so apply them if you can.

5.2 Volunteering

Here’s how to write your volunteer experience : connect it with the job description. For instance, if the position requires communication across departments or establishing relationships with customers, try blending it with your volunteer experience. This is how you can make your resume with no experience look attractive instead of looking like a novice.

5.3 Extracurricular activities

Likewise, extracurricular activities such as holding events or being a club leader are more valuable if you can tie them with the essential skills for the job in your resume. 

6. Other Sections

Finally, you have finished the main sections of your first job resume. Before submitting your application, here are other materials that you can add to the resume.

6.1 Project/ Portfolio

For computer science students with no experience, adding side-projects in the resume can help demonstrate your passion and effort.

6.2 Certifications 

Certifications are hard proof of your technical knowledge. Taking an extra time to earn a certificate license can be beneficial for a resume with no work experience.

6.3 Honor & Awards

For students or graduate freshers, listing honors and awards in your first job resume is undoubtedly helpful. These awards add value to your ability and can make you stand out immediately.

6.4 Language skills

Language skills can also be a personal advantage. If you speak fluently in Spanish, Chinese, Indian, or any other language, make sure you indicate your proficiency level at the end of your first job resume.

6.5 Hobbies & Interests

Listing hobbies and interests is not a must, but if you are applying for an energetic and young company, adding interests to your resume without experience can create a connection and spice up a bit.

How to Make a Resume for the First Job

Step 1: choose the right format and a suitable template.

Using the right format has several benefits. Firstly, it makes your first job resume look neat and organized. Secondly, it shows forth your strengths and makes your weaknesses low-key. A nice formatted template can be a valuable time saver for your resume with no experience, so you can fill in the information without having to worry about the sequential order.

📚 Further reading:   Mastering Google Docs Resume Templates [w/ 10+ Essential Tips]

Step 2: Create an insightful education section

When writing a resume without work experience, the education section becomes a highlight. As a result, your education section needs to be insightful. In addition to listing the institution name, attended year, and your major, you can also use honors to show your hard work or add relevant courses from your studies.

Step 3: Put experiences relevant to the purpose of your resume

You want your first job resume to be as meaningful and attractive for the hiring manager as possible, so including relevant experiences are important. Be strong but concise when describing these experiences, such as any extracurricular activities or a developed side-project.

Step 4: Include projects or portfolios to demonstrate your abilities

Another major section to compensate for having no job experience is projects or portfolios. Listing projects and portfolios in your resume with no experience allows the employer to take a look at your actual work. Moreover, by demonstrating your project’s process, the outcome, and what you’ve learned in your resume, the hiring manager can also understand how you think and work.

Step 5: Write a sincere and interesting cover letter

Why write a cover letter if you have no experience? In addition to a resume, a cover letter provides an explanation of these dimensions:

• How your relevant experience proves your capability for doing the job right
• How your skills can translate into your competence for the job role
• Your understanding and passion for the company

In short, you can use the cover letter as a vehicle to impart your enthusiasm and answer why you are a great fit other than your resume (even with no job experience). 

With CakeResume’s online resume builder , professional resume templates and job resume examples , you could showcase your best qualifications to land your dream job. Try making a resume online (free download) now!

Create Resume

Still nervous? Here are some resume tips for first job beginners like you. Keep them in mind to help you write your first job resume! 

Tip 1: Tailor the first job resume to a specific position

The most important thing is to make sure everything you write is related and connects to the job description. If you are applying for several job roles, be sure to tailor each resume for each job position. Tailoring your resume for each company, although more time-consuming when you have no experience, increases your chances of being noticed by targeting the specific company.

Tip 2: Choose the right resume format

Selecting the right format for your first job resume makes a huge difference. Use format to draw the hiring manager’s attention to the most remarkable and relevant achievement. It could be a project you’ve accomplished or an event you’ve organized. Place them at the forefront to capture the hiring manager's attention and enhance your resume, especially if you lack experience.

Tip 3: Make sure there are no careless mistakes

Before you upload or send your first job resume, you should proofread it and get rid of any mistakes -- that includes grammar mistakes, typos, or name spellings. As an applicant with no experience, you definitely don’t want your resume to look floppy. Find a friend or someone you trust to read it through.

Tip 4: Show your confidence

The hiring managers are also unsure about your competence. Therefore, showing your confidence in your first job resume conveys the message that you are capable of managing the job. When describing your achievements, your confidence can add a little boost and help your resume stand out.

Tip 5: Don’t stuff your resume with irrelevant information

As a first job seeker, it’s understandable to freak out a little bit. You might want to list every single experience you have just to see a silver lining. Nevertheless, filtering out the unrelated experience can make your resume with no experience looks more qualified. For instance, there’s no need to list a babysitting experience on a marketing job role, since babysitting can hardly connect to marketing. 

Your resume should be hitting the bull’s eye, so leave out the confounding distractions and make your resume as pertinent as possible.

Resume Tips for 5 Types of First Job Seekers

Here are some extra resume tips for students, freshers, or three other common job roles:

• Call Center Agents
• Data Entry Clerks

1. Students (High School Students, College Students)

For students, focusing on your education in the resume without experience can be a great idea. Including achievements such as a high GPA or outstanding works in class to show your prominence. Also, since students have limited work experience, when listing extracurricular activities, try to translate the experience into soft skills instead of plainly describing your duties in the resume. 

Moreover, leadership experience can be a plus to demonstrate your ability to lead a team. Be sure to include them and relate back to the job qualifications.

2. Fresh graduate/Fresher

For freshers, having a little experience is a boost. To show you’re not just a random rookie, getting a related certificate or authorized license may be useful for your resume with no job experience. Another thing to do is to add your LinkedIn profile , but only if it’s well managed and updated. Adding a LinkedIn profile shows that you have a passion for the industry and are eager to learn and connect.

3. Call Center Agents

To get a good call center agent job, you need more than experience talking on the phone. To write a good call center agent resume , even with no experience, you have to deliver your customer service skills. 

Read the job description carefully, select the keywords such as “listening”, “positive attitude”, or “stress management” and incorporate these into your call center agent resume. With no experience, consider doing a temp job in a call center for one day or two. You’ll get the idea of how to write the skills for a call center agent in your resume without job experience.

For new teachers without experience, pay extra attention when you list your tutoring experience, technical skills , and any instructional material you have prepared. The tutoring experience you have in high school or college shows that you are patient and comfortable around students. 

Skills, on the other hand, is a great chance to showcase your adaptiveness to technology and how you can blend instructional materials with technology. Let the hiring manager know you are tech-savvy.

An instructional material to demonstrate to the hiring manager can bring valuable insight and advantages for new teachers who are writing a resume without experience. 

5. Data Entry Clerk 

Anyone can get a data entry job, right? Well, only if you have a good data entry resume.

A data entry clerk’s resume has to focus on accuracy, especially if you have no experience. To prove your detail-oriented attribute, get a screenshot of your type speed result on your LinkedIn . Enter type contests to prove your data entry precision. In addition, list only the computer skills that are related to data entry in your data entry resume. For junior applicants with no experience, focus on how your qualifications match the position. 

Ryan S. Matthews

Marketing Graduate

4463 Thompson Drive, San Francisco, CA (123)-000-456  [email protected] linkedin.com/RyanMatthews

Independent and creative Marketing graduate at University of Pennsylvania Wharton School (GPA 3.9). Eager to join Hooli as Marketing Consultant to assist with marketing strategies and optimize current online campaigns. Strong theoretical background in marketing strategies, consumer behaviors, and A/B testing.

Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, 2018 - 2020 B.S. in Marketing  GPA: 3.9

2020 Dean’s List achiever

Relevant coursework: Consumer Behavior, Social Media Marketing, Creative Marketing, Integrated Marketing Communications

Technical Skills:

• Google Analytics, Google Adwords
• SEO/CRO/SEM
• Python Data Visualization
• A/B Testing
• Social Media Marketing (Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, LinkedIn)
• Email marketing
• Brand management
• Problem-solving
• Video-filming and editing

Soft Skills:

• Oral and written communication
• Rapport building
• Design sense and aesthetics
• Analytical skills
• Public Speaking

Other Experiences

Extracurricular Activities

• Conducted international student research to plan out 10+ cultural events for diverse student segments.
• Built and wrote marketing campaign to build engagement reaching 20K views.

Volunteer Experience

• Organized and developed marketing strategies and interactive web page that increased ticket sales by 50% compared to 2018.
• Copy wrote for pre-event introduction and collaborate with graphic designers on videos and visual identity, resulting in a 200K reaching rate. 

1) KOL and Influencer in Fitness Industry: A case study on Kylie Jenner

• Conducted surveys with 3k respondents and thorough interviews on 20 young adults.
• Utilized data analytic skills to categorize 5.7K Instagram pic that appeals to 5 main marketing personas.
• Analyzed KOL endorsed company’s strategies to develop marketing strategies for the cosmetic brand in simulation.

2) Marketing strategy report for Markstraat: Marketing Simulation Game

• 1st place winner in Marketing Simulation game among 6 teams.
• Generate insightful reports and presentations on the decision-making process for different stages of the product cycle.
• Utilize marketing strategy theory to allocate budget for product lines, retail tunnels, and awareness increase, and settle decisions for product development.

Certifications

• Customer Analytics (Coursera x University of Pennsylvania)
• Integrated Marketing Communications (Coursera)
• Learn Data Visualization with Python (Codecademy)

Hobbies & Interests

• Video making (Youtube 3K subscribers)
• Marathon Runner
• Reading Marketing, classic literature, and 
• Coding for data visualization

Well done! Here are recaps of the main points:

• Choose the best format for your resume with no experience.
• Read through the job description and determine the keywords you need to use.
• Let your education shine. The hiring manager will look into your first job resume education section.
• Make sure everything you write is relevant. Read through the sentences and make sure it links to the job position.
• Pay attention to your skills. Only the related skills on JD will be noticed.
• Spice up your resume with extra sections. List your certifications, projects, and volunteer experience to amaze your audience.
• Stay confident. There’s no need to be overly anxious. Everybody has their first time. 
• Proofread before you send it out, and stick with the application procedure.

--- Originally written by WuChaoMin ---

More Career and Recruitment Resources

With the intention of helping job seekers to fully display their value, CakeResume creates an accessible free resume/CV/biodata builder, for users to build highly-customized resumes. Having a compelling resume is just like a piece of cake!

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How To Write Your First Resume With No Work Experience

• How To Write A Resume
• How To Build A Resume
• Specific Resume Words
• Action Verbs On A resume
• Words To Describe Yourself
• Resume Outline
• How To Make A Resume
• How To Make A Resume On Word
• How To Write A Resume Profile
• How To Write A Resume With No Experience
• General Resume Examples
• Resume With No Experience
• Student Resume
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• First Resume
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• 2 Page Resume
• Blank Resume Template
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• Work History
• Resume Templates
• Stay-At-Home Parent Resume
• Consulting Resume
• Resume Tips
• Best Resume Writing Services
• Things To Avoid On A Resume
• Resume Paper To Use
• What To Include In A Resume
• How To Write A Bio
• How To Write A Personal Statement
• Lied on Your Resume?
• Avoid Age Discrimination
• Words and Phrases You Shouldn't Include in Your Resume
• How Many Skills Should You List On A Resume
• Send A Resume As A Pdf
• Resume Critique
• Make A Resume Stand Out
• Resume Spelling
• Resume Past Or Present Tense
• How To List Projects On A resume
• Best Resume Action Words
• How To Quantify Your Resume
• Resume Bullet Points
• Are Resume Writers Worth It
• How Many Jobs To List On Resume
• Please Find Attached My Resume
• How To List Contract Work On Your Resume
• How To Put Research On Your Resume
• How To Upload Your Resume To LinkedIn
• Resume Mistakes
• How To Show Promotions On Your Resume
• Magna Cum Laude On A Resume
• Resume-Writing Rules
• Lying On Your Resume
• Tailor Your Resume
• When And How To Use A Two-Page Resume
• What To Remove From Your Resume
• How To Fit Your Resume On One Page
• How Far Back Should A Resume Go?
• What Is A CV?
• CV Vs Resume
• CV Templates
• CV Examples

Find a Job You Really Want In

You may think your lack of work experience pulls you out of the running for most jobs. While having limited or no work experience may narrow your job search down, it doesn’t eliminate you entirely. Just because someone has a lot of experience, doesn’t mean they will have stellar application materials.

Whether you’re right out of college or have no work experience, we’ll go over how to write your first resume with no work experience, we’ll go over what counts as work experience, and provide an example resume with no work experience to help get you started on yours.

Key Takeaways:

You will want to focus on your education and any experiences you have when you don’t have any work history.

If you do not have a college education, list your most recent education experience, like the date of your high school graduation or when you received your GED.

It’s important not to lie on your resume to make it seem like you have more experience than you do because it can come back to haunt you.

Tailoring your resume and using keywords is a great way for your resume to stand out.

How to write a resume for a first job with no experience

First resume with no experience example, what counts as work experience for your resume, what do you put on your resume if you don’t have a college education, how a career objective is different than a career summary, should i send a cover letter, tips for writing your first resume with no experience, writing a resume with no work experience faq, final thoughts.

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When you write a resume with little or no experience you will have to craft it differently, and you will want to focus on your education and skills section. Here is a more detailed list of how to write a resume for a first job with no experience:

Contact information. The first thing you want to add is your contact information. You should include:

First and last name

Phone number

Email address

A link to a professional profile

It’s important to keep in mind that if you have been using a school email, or your email isn’t professional, create a new one. Once you have graduated that email won’t be active anymore and no employer wants to see an email from when you were in middle school.

Include a career objective. This is a statement that summarizes what you have to offer the company and why the position fits well into your career goals.

Education. This is the section you really want to emphasize. On a regular resume you would include your work experience, but since you don’t have any, this section should be at the top.

If you have a college degree or a technical degree, the experience you have gained from that alone is important to emphasize on a resume. And since those experiences are likely recent, you have fresh, up-to-date knowledge about the field, which is a great asset. Here’s what to include in this section.

Name of degree

Name of institute or university

Location of institute or university

Graduation date

GPA (optional)

Relevant coursework (optional)

Honors (optional)

Work experience. Now since you don’t have much work experience you can add any relevant experience for the job. This could include internships, part-time work, or any organizations that you have been in. We will go over more on what you can consider work experience later on.

Skills. Your resume’s skills section is where you can really line up your background with the job, even if you don’t have any formal experience. First, review the job description and highlight all of the action verbs and skills. The two types of skills to include and highlight on your resume are:

Hard skills are generally things that you must be taught to do through schooling or on-the-job training. These skills are measurable.

Soft skills are the intangible interpersonal qualities that make you pleasant to work alongside. They cannot be taught, but you can certainly improve your soft skills through experience.

For a resume with no work experience, you likely have more soft skills than hard skills. That’s okay — just be sure that you’re highlighting the soft skills that the employer values most, based on what you find in the job description (time management, collaboration, and communication are popular ones).

Awards and certifications (optional). This is the place to add anything you think might show off some of your skills to the employer. This can replace any degrees that you might not have completed yet. Having them shows that you are eager to continue learning and you have some experience.

Here is an example of writing a first time resume with no experience. Be sure to tailor your resume to each job you are applying to.

John Smith [email protected] 123-456-7890 September 12, 2023 OBJECTIVE Recent graduate with a degree in English seeking a position as a High School English teacher . Strong skills in written and verbal communication and the ability to work in a team environment. EDUCATION Penn State University Major: English Graduation Date: May 2023 GPA: 3.4 Honors: Deans List Fall 2020 through Spring 2023 SKILLS Strong written and verbal communication skills developed through coursework and extracurricular activities. Ability to work effectively in a team environment, as demonstrated in group projects and team sports. Proficient at identifying and solving problems logically and efficiently. Excellent time management skills honed through balancing schoolwork, extracurricular activities, and personal commitments.

Past experiences or short-term work can count as work experience for your resume. Here is a more detailed list of what both of those include:

Past experiences. There are all kinds of acceptable forms of work experience you can put in a section titled “experience” versus “work history.” It’s all about the framing, folks. Some of these include:

Internships

Volunteering

If you are still feeling uncomfortable about the blank space under your experience section, start filling it up. Yes, you read that right — find some new experience to put in the experience section.

Short-term work. If you are facing a resume deadline that is quickly approaching, gathering experience might not be feasible. If you know you will be applying for a job in the next few months and don’t have any experience, then it’s the perfect time to be on the lookout for short-term work opportunities .

There are many short-term opportunities that are open to freelancers. Anyone can become a freelancer . It is essentially a position in which you get paid to do contract work with no benefits and rarely guaranteed hours.

But that’s okay — because you don’t need all the perks of a full-time job yet. Think of doing freelance work as your stepping stone to a full-time job or internship . So work a few extra hours to bulk up some small gigs to add to the experience section.

Other options include volunteering , writing articles, and internships. Anything to help make it look like you’ve been putting some effort into getting real-world experience for this type of job.

If you are in college currently and have not graduated, include your expected graduation date on the resume.

Maybe you have a college education or a high school diploma, but you are worried about your GPA. If you do not have a competitive GPA (a GPA of 3.5+) you can opt to not include your GPA on your resume . If you are many years past your graduation date, you can also consider not including your GPA.

When writing a resume for a first job with little or no experience, you will want to write a career objective instead of a resume summary statement . You are probably wondering what the difference is between the two. And yes, there is definitely a difference.

A career summary is a statement that summarizes your work history section and gives some details about what type of worker you are and how you will fit the role. A career objective, on the other hand, is a statement that summarizes what you have to offer the company and why the position fits well into your career goals.

Examples of Career Objectives:

Career objective example

A dedicated worker with a BA in Marketing from the University of Connecticut. Looking to join the XYZ Inc. marketing team to aid in developing digital marketing campaigns that drive traffic and increase conversions. Background in consumer psychology and collaborative projects, including creating materials for UCONN’s writing center.

Highly motivated graphic designer hoping to obtain an entry-level position to leverage skills with Adobe Suite. Trained in modern graphic design elements and integration.

Recent graduate with a degree in Finance seeking a position at a reputable financial institution. Strong skills in mathematical modeling, market research, and personal finance tools like Quickbooks and Excel.

The only time you shouldn’t send a cover letter is if the company specifically asks applicants not to. A cover letter can help boost your application’s chances of success if you don’t have much work experience.

A resume answers the “who, what, where, when” while your cover letter answers the “how” and “why.” A cover letter should show the hiring manager how you’ll do the job better than the competition, as well as show off your intrinsic motivation

You should tailor to the job for each cover letter you send. Do some research on the company’s culture , mission, and values, and try to show how you’re the perfect cultural fit.

Just keep your cover letter to under one page long and about 200-400 words ( shorter is usually better ).

You should proofread your resume and don’t lie or exaggerate any of your skills. Here are some more tips to keep in mind when making your resume:

Proofread. It’s so important to proofread before you submit your resume. Take an extra few minutes and look over for any spelling or grammar mistakes. Make sure all of your dates and information are correct.

It can come across as unprofessional to submit a resume with mistakes. You can even have a friend look it over for anything you might have missed.

Don’t lie. Don’t lie about anything on your resume. If you don’t have any work experience or didn’t join any clubs while in school, it’s okay. Everyone has to start somewhere. If you do end up lying, be prepared for your boss to find out and potentially fire you.

Tailor to each job. Take a few minutes are reread the job description to include any relevant skills to your resume. Doing this will help your resume get noticed by a hiring manager and show that you are the right candidate for the position.

Pick a simple format. You want to make sure your resume is easy to read. A hiring manager usually only takes about six to seven seconds to read a resume before moving on. You don’t want them to spend that time trying to figure out what your text says.

Use keywords. Take some time and look over the job description and look for keywords. It’s a great way to tailor your resume to each job while highlighting the skills that they are looking for.

Apply for the roles that fit your skills. When you don’t have experience, you want to find jobs that fit your skills. This means focusing on entry-level jobs or internships. These jobs are often looking for candidates with little or no experience.

How do you say you have no experience but are willing to learn?

An example of saying you have no experience but are willing to learn is “While I don’t have the necessary experience, I believe my enthusiasm and willingness to learn makes me a strong candidate for this position.” This answer shows the interviewer that you are excited and enthusiastic about the position and you are highlighting your willingness to learn.

Can you still get a job without experience in the field?

Yes, you can still get a job without having experience in the field. When applying for jobs without experience, you want to apply for entry-level positions and highlight all of your transferable skills. You should also consider any volunteer work or internships that you have done.

What can be used on your resume when you don’t have experience?

When you don’t have experience for a job, you can use the following on your resume:

Past experience such as internships or volunteering.

Short term work such as freelancing.

Extracurricular activities such as clubs and sports

Many hiring managers want someone who has the experience to prove a candidate has a good work ethic, but not too much experience that they can’t be molded to the job. Luckily for you, with the tips listed in this article, you will be able to show hiring managers that you are just that person.

It can be scary to apply with other candidates who have a lot more experience, but when it comes to applying for jobs, one of the best skills you can learn is how to frame yourself as the perfect candidate.

Emphasize what you can bring to the position. Be honest but don’t sell yourself short. Highlight what you have accomplished and your enthusiasm for the position and you will be one step closer to landing the perfect job. In the meantime, check out Zippia’s resources for finding your first job.

Champlain College Online – Writing a Resume When You Have No Relevant Experience

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Heidi Cope is a former writer for the Zippia Career Advice blog. Her writing focused primarily on Zippia's suite of rankings and general career advice. After leaving Zippia, Heidi joined The Mighty as a writer and editor, among other positions. She received her BS from UNC Charlotte in German Studies.

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• Career Advice >
• Resume For First Job No Experience

Write a resume with no experience

When you’re looking to land your first job, your resume needs to impress employers.

If you have little or no work experience, this can be tough.

But, with the right structure and approach, anyone can write an interview-winning resume.

This detailed guide, which includes a resume example, will show you how to write a resume with no experience, that will still impress recruiters, and take you one step closer to landing that first job.

• Resume examples
• Structuring and formatting your resume
• Writing your resume summary
• Your education
• Vital skills for your resume

Resume templates 

Resume with no experience example

This resume example shows you the basic format of a resume, and the type of content you can include when you have no experience.

I will now walk you through how to produce your own effective resume.

You can watch the video below or read through the rest of the guide on this page.

Top tips for writing a resume with no experience

• Although you may have no formal work experience, be creative and fill your resume with anything that can demonstrate your workplace skills
• Use hobbies, interests, after-school clubs, sports teams and volunteering to highlight transferable skills
• Head your resume with a punchy summary or personal statement to sell yourself to employers and explain why they should hire you
• Make your hard skill such as languages, IT software and written communication highly visible
• Provide lots of detail on what you have learnt in school to make up for your lack of experience

Resume structure & format

The key to getting recruiters to notice your resume, is having a structure that enables ease of reading and allows them to quickly navigate your educational background and relevant skills.

Using sections to clearly identify your transferable skills, assisting you in securing an interview.

This infographic will support you in creating a simple-but-effective format and show you what sections to include in your resume

Formatting Tips

• Use bold headers, bullet points and sections to break up information and support recruiters in easily navigating your resume
• Don’t over-design your resume with imagery such as company logos or headshots and instead keep to a subdued color pallet and a clear font
• Maintain a resume length of 2 sides of A4, don’t look to add irrelevant information to fill space and be comfortable with submitting a resume that is 1 to 2 sides

Structuring your resume

Highlight essential information within your resume by breaking up large blocks of text and working to a format that focuses on your relevancy for the sector you’re looking to apply to.

Stick to the below format when putting together your resume:

• Contact details – Make your contact details easily accessible at the top of the page
• Summary – Start your resume will a short paragraph summarizing your skills and qualifications, engaging recruiters to read further
• Education – Display your qualifications, especially those most applicable to the industry you’re looking to apply to
• Work experience – If you have any, detail voluntary experience or any part time employment
• Interests and hobbies – Look to add hobbies that document your transferable skills, providing added value to your resume

You can always use a resume template , if you want to make the structuring process easier and quicker.

Resume contact details

Keep your contact information to the top of your resume, allowing recruiters to easily reach you.

Stick to the essential information as seen below:

• Phone number
• Email address

Remove supplementary information such as marital status, profile pictures or date of birth that aren’t required in your application.

Quick tip: You can save space and add some design flair to your resume by adding some icons to symbolize the contact details in your header.

Resume summary

Start your resume with an attention-grabbing introduction, summarizing why you’re the ideal candidate for the positions you are applying to – in a punchy summary .

Give recruiters an insight into your background and core skills, making your educational history a focal point, displaying your interest into your preferred field – give them some good reasons to consider you.

These tips will support you in producing your resume summary :

• Research your chosen industry prior to creating your summary, making yourself custom-fit to the sector, adopting sector specific keywords
• Your summary should be between 5-10 lines; you’ll be able to elaborate elsewhere in your resume
• Avoid cliché and overused statements such as “I am punctual” or “I am hardworking” and instead, try to include key requirements from the job adverts you are applying to

What to include in your resume summary?

• Qualifications – Make your education a focal point, considering qualifications most imperative to the industry you’re pursuing
• Core skills – Document any transferable or marketable skills you’ve acquired in school or university, reflecting on strengths such as interpersonal skills , problem solving, or any skills that can translate into the workplace
• Passions – Why are you interested in pursuing your chosen career? What makes you a good fit?

Core skills & achievement section

Underneath your resume summary, add a skills section that consists of your core skills, using two to three columns of bullet points to list these strengths.

Allowing recruiters at first glance to establish your most applicable soft and hard skills, which relate to the industry you’re pursuing.

Before putting together this section, look to research the industry you’re applying to, adding keywords that make you custom fit to that sector.

When you’ve limited or no work experience, use your educational history as a focal point of the resume.

Represent the qualifications you have achieved as well as describing examples of coursework completed and including any specific accomplishments from your educational history.

Break up this information by clearly heading the type of qualification achieved, the dates obtained and the school or college you attended.

Use bullet points to list the qualifications you secured.

Clubs and Memberships

Within your education section look to incorporate the clubs you were part of and your role within that group.

For example, whether you were the captain of a football team or a prefect at school, even considering adding any charity work you may have done.

When writing about these; try to draw out relevant skills such as teamwork, leadership, communication etc.

See also: Graduate resume – Student resume

Work experience

Although you may have no formal work experience – be creative and add anything that could be demonstrate workplace skills, such as:

• Big projects
• Work experience placements
• A weekend job
• Volunteering
• Club or sports team membership

Quick tip: If you have no work experience, pick up a volunteer role so that you have something impressive to add to the resume.

Structuring your roles

If you have anything you could add as work experience – add to your resume like the below example.

Structure the information within your roles, by breaking up large blocks of text and using bullet points, and defined sections.

Give an overview of your voluntary position, what were your duties or what skills you obtained from this experience.

“Working in a busy café supporting the kitchen and front of house staff to ensure customers have a clean and safe environment .”

Key responsibilities

Use bullet points to document any duties you had within a position.

• Interacting with the waiting and kitchen staff to collect dishes and cutlery
• Supporting kitchen preparations during opening and closing of the café

Key achievements

Document any key achievements whilst in these positions, add relevant examples integrating any facts and figures to verify these where applicable.

• Achieved employee of the month, 2 months in a row

Interests and hobbies

When you have no experience, your hobbies could help boost your application , documenting your transferable skills gained within them.

Emphasize involvement in any clubs or teams, describing the contribution you had and providing any result driven examples.

Impressive hobbies for your resume could include:

• Being in a sports team
• Being a member of a club (book club, chess club)
• Writing a blog
• Building models or machines
• Running a marathon
• Taking part in school schemes

Look to display your personal pursuits, even if these interests don’t directly correlate to the industry you’re applying to, reveal how you can use the experience or skills gained within the industry you’re pursuing.

For example, if you’re looking to gain employment in technology then exhibit your passion for working with computers and the skills you’ve gained such as the ability to solve problems and work methodically.

Essential skills for your resume

Portray the skills you have obtained throughout your experience in education, placements or extra curriculum activities, explaining how these can transition into a work environment.

Look to include these fundamental skills:

Communication – the ability to speak with people of a variety of levels, whether teachers, professors, customers or colleagues

Organizational Skills – the ability to juggle studies whilst taking on voluntary work.

Teamwork – the capacity to work within a team to overcome obstacles and achieve common goals, whether in a school project or extra-circular team

Commitment and Drive – showcase your passion and commitment towards your chosen career path.

Customer Service – a talent for putting customers first and going the extra mile.

Writing your resume with no experience

When you have no work experience, your resume is your first impression in the recruitment process and your opportunity to display what makes you an ideal candidate.

Highlighting all aspects of your educational background as well as the skills that make you applicable for the industry you’re looking to transition into.

By using this guide, you’ll be able to produce a well-structured resume that will assist you in obtaining your dream career.

Good luck in your next application!

The Ultimate Guide to Writing a Resume with Little to No Experience

If you’ve read anything online about writing a resume , the examples can appear a bit daunting if you have little to no experience:

“ Won the O. S. Card award for journalistic achievement. ..”

“ Optimized administrative processes to save 15% on annual costs …”

“ Uncovered $25,000 in annual savings through cost analysis …”

I know what you’re thinking: “I’ve never done anything like that and I don’t have that kind of experience .”

Job hunting is already, well… a job in itself. 

Add on top of that the conundrum of getting a job before you have any experience to help you write an awesome resume and win the job…

And it gets harder. 

Fortunately, there’s a lot you can do to format and write your resume in a way that pulls from what you do have.

( And you’ve got a lot more to offer than you might think. )

The result?

A resume that will help you get the job, even if you have little to no experience. 

Whether you:

• Just graduated high school and are looking to get your first job
• Are fresh out of college and want to know how to position yourself to compete against people who have more experience than you
• Or you’re making a career change and need to know how to write your resume using what you have to make a smooth transition

No matter what you’re starting with or where you’re at in your career, the guide below will show you how to craft a resume that makes you look like the best person for the job.

So, let’s get started.

What this guide will cover

In this guide, you’ll learn:

• How to format and write a resume when you have little to no experience
• The best tool for hooking recruiters the moment they look at your resume (and how to write it)
• The #1 most important step before writing your resume (that can be completed in under 5 minutes)
• A step-by-step method for writing a cover letter
• How to use your education experience and other relevant details as assets on your resume
• Tips for formatting and writing your resume if you’re making a career change
• How to get your resume past ATS
• And much more

Putting together a killer resume takes work, so don’t waste the time and energy you invest in crafting it by using a bad resume design. Save hours of hassle by choosing from one of Resumebuild’s ready-made and professionally-designed templates .

Check out our full library of template examples here.

Part 1: How to write a resume when you have little or no work experience

There’s a lot you can do to write a great resume even if you have little to no work experience.

However, you need to know the right tricks to employ, particularly ones that allow you to shift the focus from your lack of experience to your abundance of other positive qualities such as:

• Quality education
• Relevant skills
• Unpaid experience
• Additional training and certifications
• And other details

Let’s start with how to format your resume, where every good resume should start, but especially if you don’t have much experience.

1. How to format your resume so you stand out, even with limited experience and achievements

Formatting your resume in a way that displays your strong points is key, especially when you lack experience.

Typically, most resumes use a reverse chronological order.

Which looks like this:

• Summary or objective statement
• Other details (Certifications, accolades or honors, additional training, hobbies and interests, etc.)

In a reverse chronological structure, it’s your experience that is displayed most prominently immediately after your profile (whether that’s a summary or objective). 

Clearly, that’s a problem. 

If you don’t have much (or any) experience, you need to shift things around, even potentially doing away with the experience section altogether.

That pretty much comes down to one of three different formats , each shifting a different section of your resume up above your experience section:

• Skills-first
• Education-first, or
• Other details-first (such as certifications or special training)

Which is the best fit for you depends on your situation and strong points:

• Are you just out of high school/not yet started college ? Skills-first is probably best unless you’ve picked up a few bits of volunteer experience (and even then). 
• Currently in college? Use your education and completed coursework thus-far as a selling point. 
• Recently graduated from college ? Education-first is best.
• Making a career change and you don’t have much relevant experience in your new industry? Skills-first can help you show recruiters what relevant skills you’ve picked up from previous jobs.
• And if you’re going into a career where certification or special training is important (such as a firefighter), making a special section titled “Certifications”, “Special Training” or something similar and putting it above your experience is probably best.

We’ll be talking about strategies for both recent grads and career changers later, so let’s go with another example. 

Let’s say you’re currently in college , so you don’t have your degree just yet.

If that’s you, list your education but with the date section as: “[Date Started] – Present” so you make it clear you haven’t graduated yet.

University of California

Accounting / 2018 – Present

Relevant coursework:

• Payroll management
• Accounts receivable/payable
• Account analysis
• Tax management
• Profit and loss

List out all relevant coursework you’ve completed so far so they can see what skills you’ve learned. 

That allows you to get most of the benefits of listing out your education, which will really help your case if you don’t have any relevant experience yet.

We’ll talk later about how to format your resume if you’ve just graduated or are making a career shift and don’t have any relevant industry experience.

But before we do that, let’s talk more about what you can do in general to amp up your resume if you have little to no experience.

And no matter how much experience, education, or relevant skills you have, that always starts in the same place: learning how to target your resume to each individual job post. 

2. How to customize your resume for each job you apply to

Want to know one of the single most important keys to writing a great resume ?

Find out what recruiters are looking for (and how they’re wording it) and include that in your resume.

No, I’m not saying to lie or make things up. Rather, I mean that you should include points for those things which:

• They mention wanting
• And you have

The below is taken straight from the job description for an administrative assistant:

“ Duties and Accountabilities :

• Efficient handling of the quote and sales order processes
• Provide information, reports and support to outside sales representatives
• Compile and create sales reports for sales and management team
• Compose letters and emails as needed
• Manage calendars and schedules for sales teams
• Book travel as needed
• Answer phones and direct questions to proper team member

Interpersonal Skills :

• Excellent interpersonal skills
• Effective relationship management
• Self-motivated
• Bi-lingual is a plus

Great, that gives us a lot to work with, even if you don’t have relevant experience yet.

How to target your resume: An example

Let’s say you’ve done some volunteer work acting as an assistant to the person in charge of running a fundraiser, special event, or in some other capacity.

Point is, you have relevant skills and experience that match much of what they’re asking for here.

That’s a big selling point.

Let’s say you’re going with your skills section first, right after your objective.

You might write it like this:

• Wrote 50+ emails per day for OC5k
• Answered 75+ phone calls and managed multi-line phone for local charity, helping direct questions to proper team members 
• Provided technical information and support to participants during local volunteer event
• Used interpersonal skills to manage relationships with charity managers and participants
• Bilingual (Spanish, Fluent)

Imagine starting your resume off like that?

It certainly doesn’t look like you have no experience to me.

Let’s break down exactly what we did there. 

First, we went in and cherry picked some of the experience they got from their past volunteer work that was relevant to the job post and included it.

Specifically, these points:

But we didn’t stop there.

There’s a second very important step that helps you communicate those relevant skills to the recruiter:

Why you should use recruiter’s own language

What do I mean by “using a recruiter’s language”?

I didn’t just write:

• Averaged 75+ daily phone calls and managed multi-line phone for local charity 

Typically, that’d be fine.

It’s written using specific numbers and is relatively compelling.

But to make it even better, pull in some of the exact language the recruiter used in their description to speak directly to them.

So, instead, write it like this:

(Bold used to point out where we used exact wording)

Just two small changes, but the difference it will make is sizable.

Particularly the addition at the end, “helping direct questions to proper team members ”, taken almost word-for-word from the original description.

You don’t want to get too crazy and start doing this on every line, but a few times in each key section can really help communicate that you have what they want. 

Because you’re speaking their language . 

People respond best when you speak in a way that they’re familiar with, which is what we did above. 

And if you’re worried about the amount of work this might take, don’t be.

A resume targeted to a specific job post is worth 10 blindly sent out in mass (or more), so it’s well worth the effort.

Plus, in your research if you notice a common trend, you can modify your base resume to include those phrases you keep seeing pop up across different job posts, making any mass sends you end up doing that much more effective. 

Now, let’s jump into the actual writing of your hotly anticipated new resume , starting with your resume objective.

3. Why an objective statement is key and how to include it in your resume

Every good resume starts with a resume objective or summary, and that’s no different here.

As opposed to a resume summary, which is best when you have lots of experience/accomplishments, a resume objective is specifically good when you have little or no experience. 

So, that’s what we’ll be using here.

An objective includes:

• A short summary of your relevant experience, education, and/or skills
• A statement expressing your interest in obtaining a position and applying your skills with the company

No matter how good your resume is, a recruiter is only going to skim over it for a few seconds.

That means you need to hook them fast– which is where your well-written objective comes in.

What does a good resume objective look like?

Let’s look at some examples:

New programmer with knowledge in programs like Java, CSS, and Ruby. Seeking to apply my coding knowledge in a position with your company. 

Well! They’re definitely trying. 

Let’s give that objective a bit of a makeover:

Entry-level programmer skilled in Ruby, Java, CSS, and back-end design. Won local programming competition creating an app that allowed community volunteers to schedule and map time for city events. Seeking to apply my growing coding knowledge in a position with Machina Digital. 

Are you sure that’s the same person?

Big difference, right?

First, “New” sounds bad. “Entry-level” means essentially the same thing, but sounds much more professional. 

In other words, be careful what words you choose when you’re writing your resume and what effect they might have on how recruiters view you. 

Next, the first example really needed some more meat.

Fortunately, that doesn’t have to mean industry experience. So, they went with an example that showed the application of some of their relevant coding skills in a real-world context.

Lastly, the addition of the company name in your objective statement is a super simple edit that can make a very good impression.

Why? It tells them you tailored your resume specifically to them and weren’t just spamming it out to 100 potential employers.

Next, let’s talk about whether you should include an education section in your resume. And, if you do, how to do it right.  

4. Should I include an experience section? How to list internships and other relevant experience

Only you can decide if it makes sense to include an experience section.

However, if you have any of the following, the answer is likely yes:

• Internship experience 
• Relevant volunteer experience
• Other experience

Internships are ideal. 

After all, whether paid or unpaid, experience is still experience. 

And you can list it in exactly the same way as any work experience.

For example:

WORK EXPERIENCE

Marketer Internship

June 2019 – June August / Rocket Funnel

• Assisted in putting together marketing campaigns for a new product launch
• Managed 15+ daily email correspondence with influencers and outreach candidates
• Wrote daily content (3+ blog posts a week) for several of the agency’s clients
• Crafted a list of suggested changes to apply in the marketing department as a whole

The recruiter called– they’re listening. 

Any aspiring marketer would be proud of that experience on their resume. 

However, internships are the easy part.

The truth is, most aren’t so lucky to have snagged a nice internship, the valuable experience and resume fodder that comes with it. 

That’s where volunteering comes in (as long as it’s relevant experience).

By relevant volunteer experience, I mean volunteering you’ve done where you’ve applied skills that are relevant to your profession.

For example, if you’re an accountant and you managed the cash generated from a fundraiser event or the finances used to pay for the event, that’s relevant experience. 

That kind of experience is great to include in a resume, either in a separate “Volunteer work experience” section below your work experience or within it and clearly labelled “Volunteering” or “Volunteer work”. 

Let’s say you didn’t get that coveted internship afterall, but you picked up a bit of volunteer (plus personal life) experience applying your newfound skills in anticipation of your job hunt.

Your experience section might look like:

VOLUNTEER WORK EXPERIENCE

• Managed a small team taking payments and answering customer questions at the gate during the Sherman City Summer Fair
• Helped a local church create marketing materials for its annual event
• Ran a fan-based Facebook Group for 2 years, including managing new members, interacting with the community, resolving issues, and putting on several online events
• Helped craft a marketing plan for the family business to draw in more foot traffic to its restaurant

If you look through your own life experience, chances are you can find a few things worth mentioning that are relevant to your field.

And whether you do or don’t, it’s easy to pick up a few pieces of experience in a volunteering, pro-bono, capacity within a few months time.

That should give you enough to fill out a nice volunteer work experience section that makes your resume look way more impressive. 

Of course, if you’re leaning more on your education and have built what you feel is a nice list of relevant skills, you might not feel the need to include an experience section at all (more on that later).

Next, let’s talk about how to list your skills and achievements.

5. How to list your skills and achievements (even if you think you have none)

You might not have much, or any, industry experience.

But chances are, you already have enough relevant experience from various places to pull together a good skills section.

So then, where can you pull these skills from? 

All kinds of places, including:

• Volunteer work
• Internships
• High school experience (clubs, classes, sports, etc.)
• Current college experience (Coursework, clubs, etc.)
• Non-relevant work experience. 

Each of these areas offers an opportunity to develop skills that are relevant to your industry, whether that’s becoming a marketer, financial analyst, teacher, or any other profession.

The great part about your skills section is it’s a place where you can pull from all your relevant experience without having to worry about citing where the experience comes from.

That’s key and why having your skills section at the top of your resume can be so effective.

Sure, they might read further down and see you don’t have much experience, but they’ll also know you understand the essential skills needed to succeed in your profession and that you’ve invested time in developing them before you even officially started your career. 

However, don’t be fooled into making the same mistake that 90% of applicants make and thinking this will get you the interview:

• Team player
• Interpersonal skills
• Critical thinker
• Leadership skills
• Positive attitude

Virtually everyone writes their skills section this way and (mostly because of that) it just doesn’t work . 

( Especially the phrase “team player”. Whatever you do, don’t ever include that phrase in your resume. You’ve been warned.)

You should be reading through the job description and taking down all the skills they mention which you have to list on your resume.

However, don’t just put down the phrase, “Leadership skills” and call it a day. 

Also, don’t just mention vague soft skills either.

Let’s look at a better example, this one for a project manager:

Hard Skills

• Product validation and iteration
• Ideation leadership
• Product design
• Forecasting 

Soft Skills

• Applied leadership skills in managing a small team to create new marketing plan for a local church
• Used problem-solving to identify and solve pricing that saved 10% on product sales for Ajenson
• Showed strong collaboration and interpersonal skills as a team member working with a small SaaS
• Used time management skills in internship with Ajenson to take care of the ideation, design, and launch of a new product within a 3-month window

We did a few things here, so let’s break it down.

First, it’s arguably more important to mention your relevant hard skills than it is to mention soft skills.

That’s because hard skills are more specifically relevant to the profession and harder to come by.

Any hard skills you have that are relevant to your profession should be mentioned, whether they’re:

• Technical skill-based : Such as product design, project management, or cost analysis.
• Or technology-based : Such as Microsoft Suite, Quickbooks, Scanners, Faxes, Oracle, Trello, Slack, etc.

Both types of skills should be placed into a “Hard Skills” section and mentioned first above your soft skills. 

Second, let’s talk about what we did with the soft skills.

How to list soft skills in your resume

For soft skills, you never want to just drop empty phrases like “leadership skills” into your skills section like we did in the first example.

Why? It’s not believable because everyone does it . 

In fact, it’s just shy of an empty page. 

Instead, you want to add context for every one of the soft skills you mention.

That means instead of, “leadership skills” you use a real example to clarify what you mean and show you actually have those skills.

For example, “ Applied leadership skills in managing a small team to create new marketing plan for a local church ”

When you say it that way, it sounds much more believable.

Plus, it adds weight to your skills section, which can often seem empty. 

Not sure what kinds of soft skills you could have to mention on your resume?

Here’s a list of soft skills you might be a match for:

• Collaboration
• Interpersonal/Communication
• Critical thinking
• Problem solving
• Decision making
• Time management
• Oral and written communication
• Organization
• Presentation
• Quick learner
• Strong morals

6. What to avoid mentioning and common mistakes of no-experience resumes

In general, if you follow this guide you’ll be well set up with a professional resume that’s not only memorable but effective. 

Still, there are some things you’ll want to avoid that are easy mistakes to make.

So far, we’ve touched on:

• Don’t just drop soft skills into your resume. Add context.
• If you have little to no experience, don’t just throw your college and high school experience into your resume without clarifying relevant details such as coursework and relevant projects, conferences you went to, etc. Add those as points and other relevant experience such as work you’ve done in a club or on a sports team.
• Refrain from dropping whatever you feel like into your resume. Read the job description and see what they’re looking for. Write to those points in your objective, experience, and skills sections.

But there are other mistakes that, while less impactful, are still very easy to make and could affect your ability to get the job.

That includes:

• Listing references : Old practice, don’t do it unless requested.
• Including a photo of yourself : It’s not common to include this. Again, only include this if the employer or recruiter requests it. Otherwise, skip it. 
• Using an unprofessional email : If your personal email is something like “ [email protected] ”, you’ll probably not want to include that on your resume . Just saying. Take 5 minutes and sign up for a new email on Gmail (or anywhere else) using something basic like your full name. For example: “ [email protected] ”. 

Another mistake that resume builders sometimes make that can hurt your chance of landing that coveted role is including a social profile that isn’t clean.

That means a Facebook, Instagram, or other social account that has content on it that isn’t reflective of the personal brand you’re trying to show potential employers.

Generally, you should only include your LinkedIn profile on your resume. There are exceptions to this, such as if you’re applying to be a fashion writer or editor, but in general that’s best practice for most professions. 

Part 2: How to write a cover letter if you have little or no work experience

You’re off to a great start.

You’ve got your resume started, maybe even completed, and you already feel leagues better about your ability to convince recruiters you’re a solid candidate for the job. 

But there’s another step you can take which can give you yet another advantage– something most job hunters never do.

Include a cover letter with your resume. 

A cover letter, done right, is a powerful asset because it helps place your resume in context to you and your positive traits.

That’s why it’s so useful if you’re lacking experience.

Even if you have little to no experience, you can include a cover letter that tells more about you and your enthusiasm for joining said company, further helping your chances. 

Maybe the problem is it’s a bit nebulous.

• What do you include in your cover letter? 
• How long should it be?
• How should you start it and what should you highlight?
• And how should you end your cover letter? 

Fortunately, we’re going to cover all of that and more below and show you how to craft the perfect cover letter in a few basic steps. 

So, it’s time to gear up and take notes.

1. How to format your cover letter to perfection

What does the perfect cover letter look like?

It’s a pretty simple formula, despite the common confusion around how to craft one:

• Greeting : Include the recruiter’s name if you have it: “Dear Robert”. Otherwise, “Dear hiring manager” will suffice.
• Opening paragraph : This is where you hook them so they read on.
• Second paragraph : This is where you explain why you’re the best fit for the job.
• Third paragraph : This is where you communicate your interest and excitement to join the company.
• CTA ending : Every great cover letter ends with a “call to action” that gently nudges the recruiter to reach out. 

A good cover letter should be no more than a single page (about 250-300 words), so between that and the straightforward structure, it’s relatively easy to craft one in under an hour. 

And, considering it can help your chances of getting noticed, it’s a no brainer. 

First, let’s talk about how to craft a great opening paragraph that reels in recruiters.

2. How to write an opening paragraph that will hook recruiters

Your first job with your cover letter is to hook the recruiter.

What does that mean?

It means your first paragraph needs to immediately catch the eye of the recruiter and make them want to read more.

If you succeed at this, you’re golden.

If not, they’ll be much less likely to read through the rest of your cover letter and resume. 

Because of this, you need to make a great first impression, the kind that makes recruiters say:

“Wow, they sound promising.”

Here’s an example of what your opening paragraph might look like:

I’m excited to have the opportunity to respond to your post for the position of Programmer. I’m confident I’d be a key member of the team for upcoming projects. I’m a new programmer, but I’ve applied my skills to attain several notable achievements in my short time in the industry. 

What’s wrong with this?

First, while there is promise, it’s painfully generic.

There are no numbers, no specific examples, just a lot of, “I’m this” and “I’m that” without any real proof. 

Here’s a better example: 

As a programmer passionate about amazing design and a fan of MailChimp’s, I’m excited to have the opportunity to respond to your post for the position of Programmer. I’m confident I’d be a key member of the team for upcoming projects. I won the 2019 West Covina City Programming Challenge with my unique app idea. I also helped launch one of the most successful iterations of management SaaS Lighthouse’s new product while interning. 

Now that’s an amazing opening paragraph for someone without any experience. 

They’re enthusiastic about the company, mention specific quantifiable achievements, and they used strong words to describe it all. 

Keep in mind that you don’t need to highlight specific experience in this way.

Instead you could study the employer’s needs and impress them by showing them how well you know them:

I’ve been an avid user throughout the years, but I’ve always felt the reports U.I. and some aspects of the editor were lacking. I’m excited to lend my insights to helping improve design elements for the company.

The important part is that you start your cover letter out strong with some personalization showing the employer that you’re writing your cover letter to them and impressing in some way whether through your achievements, experience, or knowledge. 

3. How to show you’re the perfect fit for the job

Now that you’ve hooked them with your opening paragraph, it’s time to dig in and show them why you’re the ideal candidate. 

Remember when we talked earlier about targeting your resume to each job post?

That’s exactly what you’re going to do here. 

After all, how do you show that you’re the best person for the job? 

Show them you have exactly what they’re asking for. 

For example, if they’re looking for:

• Creative problem solving
• Understanding critical objectives in development
• Create automation’s with API’s
• Develop internal software

With experience using:

• GitHub Services

You could write your second paragraph like this:

In my recent internship at Lighthouse, I worked with the design and programming teams to understand project objectives while helping develop internal software and automations. My last objective was to create an automation within 14 days to place on GitHub for constructive feedback. 

During my internship, I applied several additional skills including:

• And lots of creative problem solving

Notice how this second paragraph is all about backing up the impression you set in the first paragraph.

You start off by showing your experience or relevant skills and talk about how you actually used them in a real setting.

Then, you further back up that initial statement with whatever you have that’s relevant to it or the other items they asked for. 

Now, let’s move on to the final paragraph, where you express to the recruiter why you want to join the company. 

4. How to tell the employer that you’re excited to join their company 

This final paragraph is a lot like the objective statement in a resume objective, which we talked about earlier:

You’re communicating to the recruiter your passion and excitement to work at the company. 

Remember when I mentioned how important personalization is? 

Like when you mentioned the company in the objective statement of your resume? And the name of the hiring manager in the greeting on your cover letter? And in the opening paragraph?

I hope you’re seeing a theme, because it’s one of the most important lessons there is when it comes to crafting a great resume and cover letter . 

The reality is, companies get a lot of general, cookie-cutter resumes.

What they really want is to receive a resume and cover letter that was clearly written for them . 

In this final paragraph, you go all-in on that one lesson and explain why you’re excited about the prospect of working for their company. 

One way you could do this is by mentioning a recent update, project, or product launch and how your skills and experience would be a perfect fit for that initiative.

Doing that will show them that you can be of value to them specifically, as opposed to just being a professional looking for a job with any random company.

I’ve been paying close attention to the updates you’ve made revolving around your help center experience. My skill set would be a great match to help further develop that project and others like it in exciting directions. I would be eager to apply my knowledge of front-end design to realize tangible results with it and similar projects. 

Great, but you’re not quite done yet.

Lastly, let’s add a CTA to the end of your resume to really compel them to take action on your cover letter and resume. 

5. Why ending your cover letter with a call-to-action is key

CTA stands for “call to action” and it typically refers to the moment where the writer nudges the reader to take a particular action.

Throughout your first 3 paragraphs, you established a clean, logical flow: 

Introduction -> Hook -> Sell -> Connect (emotionally)

Now, we’ll finish that sequence with your call to action, which puts a nice cap on your cover letter and makes sure you don’t leave without compelling them to reach out. 

Generally, this takes the form of:

I look forward to the chance to discuss your design goals with you and show why my skills and experience would allow me to make a positive contribution towards achieving those objectives. 

However, it’s easy to write this part in a way that makes you seem a bit too enthusiastic, to the point of being desperate. 

Like this: 

Eagerly awaiting the chance to discuss your design goals with you and show why my skills and experience would make me a great addition to the team. 

A good effort, but phrases like “eagerly awaiting” and “make me a great addition” are a bit too self-centered. 

Instead, you want to focus on what you can give to them, not the other way around. 

It might seem odd to include a CTA like this in your cover letter, but the reality is without it, it’s too easy for them to read your cover letter and forget about it, even if they did like it. 

A call to action gives just enough of a nudge in the right direction without being pushy. 

Once you’re done with that, all that’s left is to close it out with a simple “Thank you,” or “Best regards” and your cover letter is good to go. 

Now that you understand the basics of how to write an effective resume and cover letter with little to no experience, let’s dive into writing a resume if you’re fresh out of college.

How does that change how you can and should structure and write your resume to get the job?

Read on to find out. 

Part 3: How to write a resume when fresh out of college

You’ve finally got your degree.

Congratulations– and welcome to the world of job hunting. 

If you read the previous section, you know you’ve got a plethora of options to make your resume look impressive even if you have little to no experience.

But as a new graduate, you have another tool at your disposal: your education experience.

Make no mistake, you got a whole lot more than a piece of paper while going after your degree, possibly including:

• A list of skills relevant to your profession
• Experience applying those skills through participation in clubs or special projects
• Special training or internships you acquired as a result of your coursework
• Possible honors and achievements

Now, it’s time to learn how to apply that and any other relevant experience and skills you’ve acquired throughout your life to snag your first professional role.

First, let’s talk about a useful strategy for formatting your resume that lets your education and extracurricular activity shine. 

1. How to format your resume education-first

So far, we’ve talked about how you can make things like relevant skills more prominent to make up for a lack of experience.

But if you’ve just acquired your degree, there’s another route you can take which may be even more effective: putting your education section first.

That might sound weird if you’ve been looking at resume examples , but it’s actually pretty common.

So, instead of putting your experience section first, you’d format your resume something like:

• Other details (Additional training/Extracurricular/Academic projects/Hobbies/Etc.)

That structure may look a bit questionable at initial glance, but when you see it in practice, it works. 

Also, we’ll talk later about how you can still include an experience section with a different spin if you have any internships, volunteer work, or have done any special projects whether inside or outside college. 

In that case, your resume would be formatted something like this:

No matter how you format your resume , there’s one last and very important detail that makes this structure work.

Include this and your education becomes almost as compelling a selling point as a swath of relevant experience and effectively takes the place of your work experience section in a new graduate resume.

2. Why effectively listing your education and ed-related achievements is key 

You know that bright, shiny new degree you just got? 

No, I don’t mean put your certificate up on eBay to the highest bidder. 

What I mean is, when it comes to being a new graduate, it’s your education section that should be the real selling point on your resume.

But not like this:

2019 BS in Computer Science

St. John’s University

Salt Lake City, Utah

That’s an atypical education section for someone who likely already has some professional experience under their belt.

For you, it’s your education which needs to take center stage.

So, level it up to something more like…

Relevant Coursework:

• Machine learning : Wrote AI-based app that scored 93/100 for class final.
• Cloud computing: Created 2 separate virtual machines as part of cloud computing unit. 
• Software/Game development : Created 3D models and several scripts for a game design project. 
• Cybersecurity : Created an encrypted app and tested it against the class’s invasive software. The software was never broken.  

Alright, now we’re talking. 

Let’s talk about what we did and why . 

As a new graduate, you don’t have a list of duties and responsibilities from a previous employer that you can show off to prove you have the necessary skills.

But remember what we talked about earlier with considering putting your skills section first: 

Chances are, you picked up a swath of valuable, relevant skills through your education, whether that was coursework or a project where you applied part of what you learned. 

The first example is: “ I went to school at X .” It doesn’t tell us anything about your education experience.

The second example tells us you learned X, Y, and Z valuable skills through the coursework and completed these projects with these results (if you cite something like project results or the completed work, it can be useful to include a link to it somewhere on your resume). 

You could even expand each of the bullet points to a section of its own with 3-4 bullet points each, but be careful as you risk making your resume too long that way. 

You never want your resume longer than 1-page unless you’re applying for something like a federal government job. 

Also, if you have any special education-related achievements, make sure you include these here as well. 

Numbers, data, or achievements you can cite are the best way to prove your skills and abilities, so they’re the most convincing thing you can include on your resume.  

You could put that in a bullet point within your corresponding line of education or, better yet, include it as a separate section below (or even above) education like this:

ACHIEVEMENTS

• Kaladin Sanderson Futurism Award , 2019 for the creation of an app that uses basic facial recognition to unlock Google Chrome keychain information for logging in

Now, let’s jump into a related topic: using your education and life experience to distill out relevant skills to include in your skills section. 

3. How to highlight skills developed through your education and life experience

Think you have nothing to list in a skills section?

Think again.

The reality is, you probably picked up a good collection of skills throughout your education experience, from soft skills to hard, as well as throughout your life whether through freelance or volunteer work or elsewhere. 

It can be hard knowing where to start, however, so be intentional about what skills you look for when you think back to your education and life experience.

For example, a study by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) found that these soft skills are valued most by employers (in this order, based on percent):

• Problem-solving skills: 82.9% 
• Teamwork/Ability to work in a team (the latter is better wording): 82.9% 
• Communication skills (written): 80.3% 
• Leadership: 72.6% 
• Strong work ethic: 68.4% 
• Analytical/quantitative skills: 67.5% 
• Communication skills (verbal): 67.5% 
• Initiative: 67.5% 
• Detail-oriented: 64.1% 
• Flexibility/adaptability: 60.7% 
• Technical skills: 59.8% 
• Interpersonal skills: 54.7% 
• Computer skills: 48.7% 
• Organizational ability: 48.7% 
• Strategic planning skills: 39.3% 
• Creativity: 29.1% 
• Friendly/Outgoing: 27.4% 
• Tactfulness: 22.2% 
• Entrepreneurial skills/Risk-taker: 19.7% 
• Fluency in a foreign language: 4.3%

For soft skills, peruse through your life and start thinking about times where you might have developed these various skills.

You might have volunteer experience, experience working at the family business, or did freelance or personal projects by yourself or with friends/group members. 

Pull hard skills from your coursework and personal study

Some argue that hard skills are more important while others say that employers value soft skills more because they translate no matter what work you have been or will be doing for the employer over time.

The truth is probably more nuanced than that, in that some employers value one over the other.

Point being, try to also pull out whatever hard skills you can related to your profession.

If you’re an accountant, that might be:

• Accounts receivable
• Account reconciliation
• Collections and account management
• Software-specific knowledge, such as Microsoft Suite (can mention whichever you have individual experience in, such as Excel/Outlook/Word, or just say “Microsoft Suite”), Quickbooks, Oracle, or SAGE

Just because you don’t have work experience doesn’t mean you can’t list that your coursework included learning these hard skills. 

Plus, while you might not have real on-the-job experience with something like Oracle, you could always get a hold of the software yourself and take online tutorials to learn how to use it on your own time (if your coursework didn’t include this already). 

Now, let’s talk about how to put this all together and talk about how your skills section should look.

How to write your skills section

The most important thing with any good skills section is to include context .

What that means is, instead of listing your soft or profession-specific hard skills (like account analysis) like this:

SOFT SKILLS:

• Problem-solving skills
• Teamwork skills
• Written communication
• Resourceful
• Strong work ethic

HARD SKILLS:

• Collections
• Account management
• Intuit Quickbooks
• Microsoft Excel (Expert)
• Microsoft Outlook

You expand those single words and phrases to elaborate on the skill.

• Skilled at solving workplace problems whether technical (software), accounting, or HR-related 
• Ability to work well in a team setting, both through strong written and oral communication
• Resourceful– efficient use of time and resources to accomplish tasks under any circumstance 
• Strong work ethic and ability to stay on task until the job gets done

Your hard skills speak for themselves, but soft skills like “Problem-solving skills” and “Teamwork” are way too generic and overused for recruiters to pay any attention or even believe what you’re saying.

Instead, add a little context and watch them come alive– and catch attention, instead of diverting it. 

Another bonus: notice how this added several lines to their resume.

If you’re fresh out of college and you don’t have much to add to your resume , expanding your skills section in this way can help fill up the page in a nice way. 

Okay, next, let’s talk about 4 different sections you can include in your resume to replace your work experience if you have little to none of it.

You can include any or all of these various sections, but go with the ones that are most relevant to the job and appropriate for you and your experience.

4. How to list internships and why they’re just as valuable as paid experience

Not everyone has internship experience.

But if you’ve got it, sell it– big time .

In fact, it’s worth about as much as paid work experience on a new graduate resume.

After all, you were doing relevant work, and that’s what really matters to employers. 

Likewise, the way you show it on your resume is almost identical to work experience:

• Duties/Responsibilities

Take this example of an aspiring marketing manager: 

INTERNSHIPS

Marketing Intern / June 2019 – Sept 2019

Single Grain / Los Angeles, CA

Key Responsibilities:

• Oversaw the launch of a new Summer ad campaign
• Created new weekly video and blog content for company blog
• Managed company Instagram with daily content updates

Nice. That looks about as good as any employment experience and includes super relevant skills.

Plus, they wrote about those skills with context.

They didn’t write, “Social media”, they wrote, “Managed company Instagram with daily content updates.”

That doesn’t just sound way more impressive, it’s actually believable. 

Way better than this:

Marketing Intern 

June 2019 – Sept 2019

Sure, if you have other experience you’re trying to highlight more than that internship, maybe you want to include it but save a little space.

However, if you are including it, you might as well use it as an asset by dropping some compelling bullet points in. 

After all, that’s what everything you put on your resume is– an asset. 

If you have one of more nice internships, consider putting those above your education to replace your work experience section. 

You could do the same with the next several sections, but they’re generally better relegated to being after your education section. 

5. How to include volunteering like a line of work experience

Earlier, we talked about how you can include volunteer experience in your resume.

We used a kind of collective list format, but this time we’ll show you how to list out your volunteering like work experience.

This is especially useful when you have volunteer experience that’s super relevant to your field or you picked up a number of relevant skills from it. 

Let’s say you’re looking to get into human resources.

You knew you’d need to build up a little experience outside school, so you volunteered over the Summer to help put on a big local 5K/fundraiser.

You helped manage the entrant’s information and the volunteer’s time and other details that had to do with making sure they were taken care of while working on the project. 

The event took about a month to plan and went off without a hitch. Now, you’ve got some great volunteer experience you’d like to put on your resume.

However, you want it to really shine. 

Not like this:

VOLUNTEER EXPERIENCE

Human Resources Manager

Go Pink for 5K / June 2019 – July 2019

Instead, expand it with bullet points detailing some of the skills you applied and the items you were responsible for.

Responsibilities:

• Managed volunteer onboarding and created a welcome packet for seamless integration into the team
• Collected and archived files for all team members
• Handled questions and concerns for volunteers

Alright, now that sells your volunteer experience.  

It’s amazing what a few bullet points can do.

Make sure that whatever you put down are real skills you developed during your volunteering.

Lying on your resume can be tempting when you don’t have much experience. 

It’s not only wrong, though, it will get you into hot water later when the employer sits down with you for an interview and asks you to elaborate on your experience. 

But also: make sure they’re relevant.

Just because you handled some of the marketing doesn’t mean you should mention it on your resume.

If you’re applying for an HR position, mentioning your marketing responsibilities is just going to detract from your relevant experience, so resist the temptation to mention everything you did there and stay with the relevant stuff. 

Next, let’s shift gears and talk about two additional sections that function a bit differently from volunteer experience and internships. 

However, which can be just as valuable. 

6. How to list extracurricular activities such as sports and clubs

Our third additional section, listing extracurricular activities is something most first-time resume builders don’t think about but which can really help beef up your resume .

What do I mean by extracurricular activities?

That could include all kinds of things, but most notably college and/or high school:

• Clubs you participated in 
• Sports you were a part of
• Or groups you founded or were a part of in or outside of school surrounding a hobby, especially if you put on events and learned relevant skills

For example, you might have been a part of:

• The debate club at high school
• A fashion or business club in college
• The track team in high school
• Or the Boy Scouts outside of school

Depending on what field you’re going into, each of those could be relevant to your profession and worth mentioning on your resume. Or not. 

Take a few minutes to think back about any and all relevant clubs, teams, or groups you participated in on a regular basis throughout your life and which might be useful to mention on your resume.

Again, keep it relevant. You shouldn’t be throwing just anything onto your resume to fill up the page. 

You want whatever you put down into your resume to help display you as a perfect fit for the job. 

However impressive, anything you put down that isn’t relevant to the position itself will be ignored and give the recruiter one more reason to stop reading your resume. 

How to write an extracurricular activity section

Once you’ve got one or more things to put down, it’s time to write.

But instead of this:

EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES

Futurism and Tech Club

Mar 2018 – Sept 2019

Futurism Sci-Fi Facebook Group

Jan 2016 – Jan 2019

If you need a little more umph on your resume , you can expand that same example into this:

• Organized a “Future of Tech” showcase for campus students and community members
• Ran projects surrounding creating and brainstorming new digital tech advancements
• Managed memberships, from
• Managed group projects of 10+ members
• Maintained positive group environment

You’ve now single-handedly taken what would otherwise have been an easily forgettable section on your resume and amped it up to ten. 

Now, let’s talk about our final section: academic projects.

7. How to list academic projects relevant to the job

Our 4th and final additional section you can choose to add to your new graduate resume, academic projects are more focused in scope than the previous sections but are super relevant.

This can include class projects, studies you took part in, journalism, or other similar project-related tasks.

• A write up on the effects of Facebook and other social networks on marketing
• A project where you create your own basic AI and program it into robotics
• Or a study you performed using your college peers to find out the psychological effects of recent political events

Each of these is an example of a project-related task you might work on as part of your coursework.

However, instead of just mentioning that coursework in the bullet points of your education section like this:

B.S. Hotel Management / Sept 2016 – June 2020

Colorado State University / Fort Collins, Colorado

• Sales and marketing management-focused coursework including sales flow and digital marketing studies
• Extensive business law study
• Food and beverage and kitchen management knowledge
• Catered a successful event project for course final in third year (<— See here)

You can pull it out of there and give it the A+ treatment:

• Extensive business law and ethics study

ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENTS

• Catered a successful event project with 75+ guests for course final in third year

What if you can’t really, or prefer not to, refer to your project as an “academic achievement”? 

That’s just fine, you can list it like this and even add some more detail:

ACADEMIC PROJECTS

Perception and Reality: Is the World Getting Healthier?

B.A. in Journalism Finals Project

UCLA / Apr 2018 – May 2018

• Interviewed several scientists and historians to write a feature piece on perception and reality of well-being through history

Which of these routes you go all depends on how much you want to highlight said project.

If it’s one of your best selling points, use the second. 

If there are other areas you want to feature more and you’re having a hard time fitting everything you want onto one page, consider the first. 

Also, for a section like this in particular, it’s key that you include a link to whatever you have connected to the project, be it a document, software, artwork, photos, or summary of results. 

Whatever you do, make it a link. Don’t bog down your resume by including said document/artwork/etc. in your PDF resume (yes, even if you’re a journalist or photographer– link to your portfolio website). 

Now, let’s talk about some of the other additional sections you can include in your resume (yep, that wasn’t all of them!). 

8. Additional sections you can add to your resume as a recent graduate

So far, we’ve covered 4 sections you can add to your resume as a new graduate that can help take the place of and make up for your lack of work experience.

But there’s a lot more you can mention.

In fact, we’ve just covered the tip of the iceberg, the most common sections.

Here’s a list of some other sections and information you could include to make up for your lack of experience:

Certifications and other special profession-related training

If you’re an aspiring firefighter with a paramedic certification or have CompTIA A+ and you’re getting into IT, sell that big time. 

Any profession that requires additional training outside college is often:

• Essential, OR
• Highly sought-after

In many cases, this can be the best section to put at the top of your resume right after your objective.

That way, they click on your resume and… BAM, you hit them with the good stuff right off the bat. 

Plus, it’s the easiest section in the world to write, no bells or whistles required.

Do it like this:

CERTIFICATIONS 

• Certified CompTIA A+

Boom, nothing else needed; it speaks for itself. 

Also: Make sure to sell the heck out of that throughout your resume (add it to your objective too even if that section is right after your objective, for example).

That includes the next section– honors and awards– too. 

Honors and awards

We’ll talk a bit about how to really make your resume stand out in the next section, but for now know that any kind of awards, honors, or achievements you have are some of the best things to include in your resume. 

It’s simple: they’re proof you know what you’re doing.

Compare that with some of the bad examples we’ve looked at so far, such as the typical skills section:

SOFT SKILLS

• Detail-oriented 
• Communication skills

Most recruiters will see that and immediately pass over it without giving it much weight.

Now, you can add context to those skills to make them more believable, and that’s a big improvement.

However, you can take this a step further by showing relevant awards and achievements that prove you know your stuff. 

Plus, this is a super basic section that just lists the award, so it takes no time at all to write:

HONORS AND AWARDS

• Valedictorian, BA in Life Sciences, Penn State 2018
• Awarded the Braddock Scholarship for the study of biology

Language skills

Another section that’s virtually a sure-fire win if you have it, if you’re bi, tri, or whatever lingual than consider highlighting it separate from your skills section.

When you do, make sure to include the standard terminology for how well you know the language:

• Native or Fluent : You can read + write in the language
• Proficient : You can use the language pretty comfortably, but you’re not yet at a fluent level
• Conversational : You can hold a basic conversation, but many words still escape you and you can’t read or write in the language

Anything below that is typically not worth putting on your resume (sorry).

That is, unless the job specifically calls for it and you want to express that you have a beginner-level understanding of a particular language and are willing to learn more quickly. 

Include this section below your skills section (unless you put that at the top, in which case keep it toward the bottom of your resume) and structure like this:

• Spanish: Fluent
• Mandarin: Conversational
• French: Beginner

Most companies will be stoked that you’re so… lingual , so be sure to sell it, especially if they have international operations. 

Hobbies and interests

While never considered an essential section on any resume, a hobbies and interests section can help show you have a passion for activities related or valuable to your profession. 

Plus, it shows them a bit about who you are as a person, which can be endearing (a quality not typically conveyed by resumes without it). 

Here’s a quick example for a nutritionist:

HOBBIES AND INTERESTS

• Run 1-2 marathons annually 
• Healthy food junky
• Avid reader of non-fiction related to diet science and nutrition

Consider adding any personal interests, long-time passions, or even old hobbies if they relate to your profession (though skip this section first if you already have a full page of relevant experience/accomplishments and need to save space). 

9. How to stand out from the crowd as a graduate student

One of the biggest mistakes new graduates make when crafting their resumes is to not include quantifiable results or achievements. 

Results and achievements are similar to honors and awards: they’re a form of proof that you have the skills you’re saying you have.

It’s a lot more compelling when simple numbers are listed vs. when they’re not. 

Plus, it’s easy to do. 

What do I mean?

A lot of new graduate resume points look like this:

• Greeted clients
• Answered phone calls
• Handled emails
• Took care of conference room

That’s basic and uncompelling.

Now, you can expand and add a little context and it really lights things up:

• Greeted clients and managed the check-in process
• Answered phone calls using a multi-line phone system
• Handled outgoing emails 
• Maintained central conference room so it was always prepared for regular meetings

But if, in addition to this, you do a little creative digging, you can often come up with statistics or specific numbers you can mention.

• Greeted 50+ clients per day and managed the check-in process
• Answered 60+ phone calls per day using a multi-line phone system
• Handled 25+ outgoing emails per day

Now that is powerful.

The more numbers and specificity you include, the more believable and compelling it is. 

That will go a long way toward helping you get the job (longer than most other simple changes you can do to your resume). 

Next, let’s look at how to write a resume if you have experience but you’re making a career change. 

Part 4: How to write a resume when changing careers

Making a career change? 

It can be tough reassessing your life and your career and realizing that you’re not doing what you want to do (or going where you want to go).

For the same reason, it can be tough writing your resume in anticipation of that career change.

• What do you leave in? 
• What do you take out?
• How do you use what you already have to help position yourself for your new direction?
• How do you write it so recruiters in your new field can tell you’re one of them?
• And how do you write an effective objective or summary that frames that career change in a positive light for recruiters reading your resume? 

Below, we’ll cover that and much more to help you craft a career change resume that sets you up– so you can knock ‘em out. 

1. Invest time in identifying your transferable skills

Before we get writing, it’s important that you do something first:

Get to know your new industry and profession-related job posts to identify transferable skills. 

Throughout this part of the guide, we’ll talk about making the most of your transferable skills.

But before you can do that, you need to know what those transferable skills are. That way, you can promote them on your resume in various ways to help them (and you) shine.

To do that, spend some time reading job posts for your new profession.

• What skills do they ask for most? 
• What common patterns can you infer from reading 10+ job descriptions?
• What do they list as “essential” or “required” and what are “preferred”?

These are all things you want to be thinking about as you do your research.

For example, this is straight from a recent job post looking for a medical assistant:

“One to three years experience in medical field, physician’s office/direct patient care; ability to perform spirometry, EKG, use centrifuge, microscope, pulse oximeter, computer skills; ability to read, write and comprehend medical terminology; ability to effectively communicate, and excellent customer service skills.”

From this paragraph, you might be able to pull out that:

• You have previous customer service experience you can cite (yes, even if that was working at McD’s– still counts!)
• Or you have written/oral communication skills you can show (X emails/calls per day or experience working in a team assisting in some way, even if it was just at college through your coursework)
• Maybe you even worked as a receptionist at a doctor’s office before you got your new degree and, working on your career shift to a medical assistant, can cite a bit of experience working in a physician’s office through an internship

Chances are, there’s something you have that you can use as an asset to get the job. It all comes down to finding out what they want and what you have to offer . 

This is important, so make sure not to skip this step . 

To make this even easier, you can open your resume in Word, Docs, or print it out.

As you’re going through job listings, highlight / bold /or color the text for the skills you see listed frequently or make marks for each time they’re mentioned.

This will help visually chart how to adjust your resume based on your transferable skills. 

Here’s a quick list of some of the more common transferable skills to help get you started in the right direction:

• Decision-making
• Communication skills (both written and verbal)
• Disciplined
• Good judgment
• Customer service
• Conflict resolution
• Adaptability

With that said, let’s dive into the first decision you need to make: how to format your resume .

2. How to pick the best resume format for a career change 

Why start with formatting your resume ?

Because it has everything to do with how you present your skills and experience, and that’s what a career change resume is all about. 

Your resume should be formatted in a way that it displays your strongest selling points prominently. 

When it comes to formatting for a career change, there are really 3 routes you can go to achieve that, all depending on where your strengths lie:

• Work experience first
• Education first
• Or skills first

Let’s talk a bit about why you’d use one formatting strategy vs. another.

First, a skills-first resume is pretty straightforward and likely most useful for about half of career changers.

Skills-first is best if you have a collection of relevant skills perfect for the job… but from irrelevant professional experience.

For example, you’re a front desk clerk-turned programmer and you really don’t want to put your experience first.

However, you do have some great programming-relevant skills you built up on your free time outside of work. 

In that case, those really should be at the top of your resume. 

Second, an education-first resume is ideal for anyone who just completed a new degree but who has previous work experience in another field. 

Again, let’s say our clerk went back to college and got a degree in computer science. 

In that case, putting her education at the top of her resume would typically be an even better idea than putting her skills first.

Lastly, you’d put your experience first if your previous roles weren’t so far off from your new field and you feel like your duties and responsibilities would impress recruiters and lend to your hiring.

If some of the responsibilities you held at a previous employer are closely aligned with your new profession, experience first might be the best route to go. 

Which of these 3 routes you take really all depends on your available professional assets.

Use this basic guide to help you decide: 

• A brand new degree in your new profession?: Go education-first
• Relevant skills, irrelevant work experience?: Go skills first
• Semi-relevant experience or responsibilities from previous experience?: Go experience first

That last one can be a bit confusing, so let’s go over an example.

Which just so happens to bring us to our next section: 

3. How to use previous work experience to show up transferable skills 

Remember what we talked about earlier with regards to identifying transferable skills?

It’s going to come in handy now, so be ready with them. 

There are a lot of places you can use relevant, transferable skills on your career change resume.

One of the most important of those places is your previous work experience . 

If our clerk from earlier managed the finances for a small doctor’s office for several years, that could be a great bit of experience to highlight on her new accounting resume. 

Just make sure you write your bullet points based on those relevant skills and leave out anything not relevant to your new profession.

Front-desk Clerk / Dec 2016 – May – 2019

Dr. Jarrod Phein, PhD Practicing Physician / Lakewood, CA

• Managed Medi-Cal payments and sorted alternative payment methods for customers
• Balanced books including payments, supplies, and wages
• Issued weekly payroll deposits to staff

And while she was probably responsible for a lot more than that, it’s those bullet points in particular that sell her experience in key accounting-related areas. 

In other words, where it matters .

If you can do something similar with previous experience, consider putting your experience first on your resume.

However, regardless, you want to make sure any previous work experience is written like this.

Whatever transferable skills you can get in there will be well worth the digging, so think hard about anything you did at your previous jobs that is relevant to your new profession. 

What you don’t want to list is irrelevant experience.

What skills and job experience you should avoid mentioning when changing careers

So far, we’ve talked about various strategies for formatting your resume based on what assets you have to sell on your resume, be it skills, previous responsibilities, or a fresh new degree. 

But there are some things you should avoid mentioning altogether.

Take the example we just gave above, but written like this:

• Managed appointments and made follow-ups
• Greeted patients and answered questions

No, no, no. 

That won’t help her one iota toward getting that coveted accounting job. 

There’s nothing about that bit of experience that’s relevant to being an accountant, so no value in mentioning it (aside from filling in the page). 

Instead, go with example #1 and dig out whatever relevant skills and responsibilities you can from your previous experience.

That way, your previous work experience will (ideally) show highly relevant bullet points that display to the recruiter you have the skills and experience they’re looking for. 

Similarly, toss out any hard skills on your resume that aren’t relevant to your new profession.

You might be tempted to put everything you can down, but more is not more. Relevant is more . 

Be discerning about what makes the cut and you’ll have more success than if you just threw every bit of experience you have into your resume.

Speaking of relevant, there’s another critical step you need to be mindful of when crafting your career change resume.

4. Write to ATS systems

Earlier, we talked about the importance of targeting your resume based on the job post.

That’s critical as it allows you to speak directly to recruiters and show them that you have what they’re looking for (even if it’s only some of it). 

Not to mention you’re literally speaking to them through your resume using their own words like a mirror, which is a powerful– and proven– form of communication. 

But it’s also important for another reason: it helps you get past ATS systems . 

ATS stands for “applicant tracking system” and it refers to the type of programming job boards use to filter applications for employers. 

When an employer posts a job online, they get swarmed with resumes. 

To help them sort through it all, job boards will automatically filter out the resumes that don’t appear to match the criteria that the employer stated they were looking for in their job description. 

How exactly does that work?

The system looks to see if your resume has certain keywords that the employer has written on their job post . 

Fortunately, this is an easy puzzle to crack if you know where to look.

First, go back to the last job post you were looking at.

Take a look at their “qualifications” or similar section. 

Read through their points and pick out from the list the ones that apply to you.

Now, make sure you use their wording in your bullet points .

For example, let’s say they’re looking for someone with these skills that are relevant to you:

• “Strong communication skills (written and oral)
• A welcoming personality with experience greeting customers
• Knowledge of Quickbooks, Microsoft Suite, and task management software (Asana preferred)”

In the corresponding bullet points, you could say:

(Experience)

• Strong written and oral communication skills
• Experience greeting customers in a hectic, fast-paced environment

(Hard skills)

• Microsoft Suite
• Asana and other task management software

(Soft skills)

• Warm, welcoming personality

Keep in mind that those bullet points would be spread throughout your resume in the notated sections, but that doesn’t matter.

ATS systems will pick up on those keywords and phrases throughout your resume and match them up with the same or similar phrases in the job post, helping you get filtered in instead of filtered out . 

Whatever you do, don’t even think of skipping this step.

After all, you don’t want to spend hours crafting a knock-out resume only to have recruiters never see it. 

If you follow these steps, however, you’ll be all but guaranteed to get through the ATS. 

5. How to use your education as the ultimate career-change asset

Earlier, we talked about the potential value of placing your education first.

If you just snagged a brand new, shiny degree for your career shift, it’s time to sell the heck out of it . 

That’s because a relevant degree is easily one of the best things you can put on your resume , especially in the event of a career change.

Writing your work experience in a way that sells your transferable skills is key, but a fresh new degree in your new chosen field is even more important. 

Just make sure you sell that experience effectively .

Whatever you do, don’t just do this:

B.S. in Business Administration

University of Miami / Miami, FL

The purpose of putting your education first is to show that you’re knowledgeable in the various relevant skills required for the job. 

Placing your education first ensures you show recruiters right off the bat that you’re trained in each of those relevant areas.

But that example doesn’t communicate any of that.

So, instead, write your education including your coursework. Like this:

Coursework:

• Financial and management accounting
• Marketing and microeconomics
• Communications
• Computer science
• Sociology and consumer behavior
• Business management

If you want to make this even better, consider adding in relevant clubs you were a part of, conferences you attended, or projects you worked on in connection with your education.

B.S. in Business Administration / 2020

• Performed on-site business assessment (4th year), placed top in class for identifying tangible and significant improvements to management and various business processes. 
• Future Business Leaders of America (Vice President)

Conferences:

• 2019 Startup Grind Global Conference

See what we did there?

It was a small addition, but those additions help show you’ve really gone the extra mile and are investing everything into your new career.

First, the projects add gives more weight to your education in the form of proof of your skills.

Second, the clubs addition shows you went above and beyond just your coursework toward your chosen profession and did it while assuming a leadership position.

Third, in the case of any business-related degree especially, showing conferences you’ve attended in connection with your education displays a few things, namely your drive to learn and grow as well as hinting at your ability to network and build valuable connections.

6. How to create the perfect resume objective or summary when changing careers 

Your resume objective or summary is the first thing recruiters see (besides your cover letter) when looking at your resume.

So then, why did we leave it for last? 

That’s because, particularly with a career change resume, you can’t really know how you’re going to position and sell yourself until you go through the motions.

Identifying your transferable skills and crafting your education, experience, and skills sections are all important steps to take before writing your objective or summary in this case.

That’s because what goes into those sections influences what you mention in your objective/summary . 

So, which should you use?

Here’s a quick breakdown of why you might use one vs. another:

• Objective : A summary of your key selling points along with an objective statement expressing your interest in the position. Good if you don’t have much in the way of impressive achievements/results/relevant work experience from a previous job .
• Summary : A more extensive display of your work experience and other selling points. Good if you have some relevant experience or notable achievements/results to mention from a previous job . 

In most cases, a resume objective is going to be better suited for you if you’re making a career change.

So, let’s start with an example objective.

How to craft an eye-catching resume objective

One of the most important aspects of crafting a career change-oriented objective or summary is to not shy away from mentioning you’re making a career change in the first place. 

Likewise, you also then want to clearly communicate what has motivated the change.

Though keep in mind, you want to preferably do both of these things in the same sentence and in as few words as possible.

A new software engineer looking to shift careers as a web designer to develop a career in SaaS. Not fulfilled as a web designer, so decided to follow my passion as an engineer. Have led design teams and worked solo to accomplish team goals. 

Let’s unpack what’s wrong with that, because it’s a lot.

First, you want to mention you’re making a career shift, but you don’t want to actually include the word “new” as an adjective for your new profession. 

Instead, use something like “dedicated” or “energetic” in front to convey some positive quality (new just says, “I don’t know what I’m doing.”).

Next, you also don’t want nor need to elaborate any more than you already have.

Mentioning that you were fulfilled in your previous career doesn’t tell the employer what you can contribute to their company, so leave it out. 

Next, this person really needs to think of at least one other specific example of an experience/skill/accomplishment they can mention that’s relevant to their new profession. 

Let’s put it all together and see what we get: 

Dedicated software engineer seeking to leverage experience as a web designer to develop a career in SaaS at OwlFund. Experience leading design teams with a set of objectives and deliverables. A resourceful self-starter who can work solo or in a team to accomplish goals. 

Night and day. 

This objective succinctly describes that they’re making a career change without hanging around and focusing on it.

Mention it then move on and communicate what you can offer to them. 

They also mention the company name, which is always an easy win that proves you took the time to customize your resume for their job post (even if it only took you a minute).

That objective doesn’t even mention anything particularly impressive. It’s simple and effective and gets the point across.

But what if you do have a thing or two you can mention, say a new degree, some semi-relevant experience, or accomplishments?

For that, let’s look at how to craft a great resume summary. 

How to craft a resume summary that sells your relevant experience

A summary isn’t all that different from an objective.

The difference is that one essentially trades an objective statement for more details regarding career experience, results, or accolades. 

Let’s say our software engineer friend decides he actually has a few things he can mention and would prefer to use a summary.

His summary might look like this:

Dedicated software engineer leveraging 4+ years experience as a web designer to develop a career in SaaS. Lead design team to launch new app wireframes for development on a tight schedule using Agile, including several 6-figure app launches using our original designs. Was made team lead for delivering crisp, clean design prompts that took into account Java, C++, and other programming languages to make translating into code simple and pain-free for the programming team. 

As you can see, this is a bit longer and clearly has some more detail to it.

The opposite is a summary without enough detail or no real compelling, memorable points:

New software engineer with 4+ years experience as a web designer looking to develop a career in SaaS. Lead design team to develop app wireframes. Experience with Java, C++, and other programming languages. 

That’s altogether uninspiring . 

Notice the lack of detail when explaining key accomplishments.

For example, instead of just saying you have experience with Java and C++, the first example says it without directly stating it while at the same time explaining how you used that knowledge to help your previous employer . 

Whether you use a resume objective or summary, remember to always bring it back to how you can help them.

Now that your resume is complete, it’s time to give it the finishing touch by going over some keys to keep in mind when crafting a career change-oriented cover letter. 

7. Specifics of writing a cover letter when changing careers 

Earlier, we did a deep dive into how to craft a killer cover letter.

All of that applies here, but it’s also important to take into consideration a few other points unique to a career change resume. 

First, if the recruiter/employer spends enough time looking at your resume (the better it’s written, the more likely this will be), they’ll naturally be able to tell that you’re making a career change.

Don’t hide this fact in your cover letter.

Instead, come right out and say it. 

Explaining why you’re changing careers and display your passion for your new profession and how you believe you can communicate that as results for their company (always bring it back to them).

Explain what unique skills you bring to the table as a result of your career change, perhaps a set of useful skills that the typical candidate in the profession doesn’t have, as well as what makes you a great fit for the position.

Your cover letter is a place where you get to communicate who you are and what you bring to the table, framing your career change and your assets before they lay eyes on your resume.

Because of this, crafted well, a cover letter is arguably even more of an advantage for a career changer than it is for someone looking for a job in a preexisting career. 

Make sure to highlight some of your more impressive transferable skills, especially if you can site numbers or achievements alongside them, such as:

• High marks on X unit of your college coursework
• X results in a previous job
• Grade or achievement from an academic project
• Or a special award or honor

Proof in the form of results is always better than dropping vague mentions of “good communication skills”.

However, if you don’t quite have anything like that which you can mention yet, don’t worry. 

The most important thing is that you’re clear, straightforward and that you communicate your passion, your selling points, and how you can apply those to help their company. 

8. Why avoiding terminology from your previous field is important 

As a final bit of advice to polish up your career change resume, let’s talk a bit about the language you use throughout it.

This is especially relevant with regards to 3 sections. Your:

• Objective or Summary
• Experience, and your
• Cover letter

In each of the above places, you’re doing more than just reporting basic facts about your career or education.

And, because of this, that opportunity to elaborate with description can lead to a mistake that career changers often make: 

Using terminology from your old industry. 

It’s an easy mistake to make: you were in the field for X many years, and it was likely your first profession, which can make it hard differentiating which terms are universal and which are jargon specific to your old profession. 

Why is this bad?

Because using words that someone from your new field wouldn’t typically use can quickly peg you as an outsider and make you look bad in front of recruiters. 

Fortunately, it’s a problem that’s pretty easy to fix. 

There are really 2 things you can do to make sure you’re avoiding terms from your previous field:

• Read job posts for your new profession, and
• Read forums and content from professionals in your new industry

For the first, do exactly what we talked about earlier: take some time to read through the job descriptions for openings in your field.

The people writing the job posts are likely the owner, manager, or a key person in the company. 

They’ll write the job post employing language that’s typically used in your profession, so you can use them as a guide. 

Second, you can also take a bit of time and either seek out forums, look through Quora, or search for content from professionals in your industry.

Read their comments and see how they talk about the profession in general to get an idea of common phrases and language used. 

Generally, the first step is more than enough, but if you want to go the extra mile, this step can be really useful too.

Plus, as a bonus, doing this can really help you during the interview as you’ll need to hold your own in a conversation with your employer. 

Create the perfect resume design in minutes with Resumebuild 

Throughout this mega-guide, we’ve equipped you with the tools you need to score that coveted dream job, even if you have little or no work experience.

We covered:

• How to format your resume so your unique selling points stand out (and how to find what those selling points are)
• Tips for customizing your resume to each application, to make sure you’re giving recruiters what they want
• A step-by-step method for crafting an awesome cover letter
• How to write a resume when you’re fresh out of college with no previous experience
• And how to write a resume when changing careers, including tips for identifying and utilizing transferable skills to get the job.

It can feel like an uphill battle to jump into job hunting with little or no relevant experience in your pocket.

But with this guide, you’ve got everything you needed to craft a stellar resume that doesn’t just pass, but positions you as the ideal candidate for the job.

Well, almost everything.

It’s a crime to put this much work into creating an awesome resume … only to drop it into a bad resume design. 

After all, your resume design is the first impression a recruiter has of you. 

You need to make it count. 

The only problem?

Putting together an effective, eye-catching resume design takes work.

So, if you want to save time and energy designing your next resume, check out Resumebuild’s full collection of designer templates and easy-to-use resume builder . 

Choose the design and layout that speaks to you, drop in your resume, add some finishing touches, and you’re all done.

With a few minutes of work, you’ve got a resume that could stand toe-to-toe with the most experienced candidates.

Start crafting the resume that gets you your dream job by checking out our full library of templates here.

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• Resume and Cover Letter
• How to Make a Resume:...

How to Make a Resume: Beginner's Writing Guide with Examples

30 min read · Updated on May 22, 2024

Your dream job is one resume away!

Your resume is arguably the most important financial document you'll ever own. And before you think, “Yeah – right” let's consider for a moment. Without a resume, you don't get the job, so you can't pay bills, support a family, go to the big game, have that weekend trip, or plan for retirement. Your resume is the doorway to your future, so let's make sure it's perfect.

Part of making it perfect is remembering that it's a targeted career marketing document – not a chronicle of your life. So, how do you write a resume? In this beginner's writing guide, we'll show you how to make a resume and provide examples of what each section should look like. 

Grab a cup of coffee and strap in, because you're about to learn everything you need to know about how to make a new resume!

Table of contents:

The purpose of a resume

Avoid rejection by the ATS

What is your career target?

Build your personal brand, what should your resume look like, how to make a resume – the layout.

How long does it take to put together a resume?

A major resume no-no: typos

How to make your resume more professional

Theory in practice – resume examples

The most basic purpose of a resume is to sell your skills , achievements , and qualifications to prospective employers. This one document can financially make or break you. Let's take a quick look at what being unemployed costs you per day (assuming a five-day workweek):

If you make $40,000 per year, you lose about $155 every day that you're out of work

If you make $50,000 per year, you lose about $190 every day that you're out of work

If you make $75,000 per year, you lose about $288 every day that you're out of work

If you make $100,000 per year, you lose about $385 every day that you're out of work

Clearly, finding out how to make a resume for a job is critical so that you can properly sell your skills, qualifications, experiences, and achievements to prospective employers. 

The job market is tough and highly competitive; you have to stand out in a sea of qualified candidates by creating a compelling narrative that tells a story of value, keeping in mind that your resume is supposed to do a few things for you:

Introduce you to a new company

Underscore how your experiences and education are relevant

Showcase how your skills and competencies will benefit the new company's team

Win interviews

Avoid rejection by the ATS 

What do you know about applicant tracking systems? Job seeking can be compared to throwing your resume into a black hole. You can go through 100 listings on any job search website and complete the online application with zero results. 

Ever had that happen? It's okay, it happens to everyone at some point or another! 

The problem is that you're probably not putting the correct keywords into your resume. When you hit “Submit” on an online application, it isn't magically emailed to the hiring manager. 

Oh, no! 

It goes through a computer system that scans your resume for specific keywords that can be found in the job description posted by the company. And, just so you know, approximately 90% of companies use ATS scans , including everything from mom-and-pop shops to Fortune 500 companies. 

The companies use these programs because they just don't have time for a human to go through all the resumes they receive. Depending on the job opening, a company can get between  250 and 500 applicants . Can you imagine being the person who has to sift through all those resumes? 

Here is where the ATS steps in. It's designed to weed through candidates to narrow the applicant pool, so that the human hiring manager has a more reasonable resume load to go through. It ranks the remaining candidates in order based on how much of a match they are for the position that's open. 

Being overlooked by the ATS is one of the number one reasons job seekers get ghosted by companies.

Once your resume makes it through the ATS and gets into the hands of a hiring manager, don't think they're going to sit down and read each one. Who has that kind of time? You should expect that the first round of resume sorting will consist of them flipping through the stack to pick the ones that stand out within about 6 seconds of glancing at them. 

PRO TIP: Put your resume on a table, stand up, and look at it from a little distance. Is it eye-catching? Can you tell the position you're seeking just by glancing at it? Set a timer if you have to, but no more than 10 seconds.

Speaking of eye-catching, don't make the same mistake as a lot of your rival job seekers by being too generic with your resume. It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that being non-specific will open doors to more opportunities. The problem is that the hiring manager won't be able to tell exactly where you'll fit within their organization. 

The first step in winning an interview is being sure that your resume actually makes it into the hands of a human being at the company you apply to. Start by defining what you want to do.

So the first, and most important, step in crafting the perfect resume is to narrow down your target career path. The more specific you are with this first step, the more response you'll receive from hiring managers because they'll be able to tell exactly how you fit within their organization. There are four areas to focus on as you begin to chart your career path:

Industry: Do you want to work in private sector, nonprofit, government, or public roles?

Geography: This one is more in-depth than choosing rural vs urban. It also includes whether you want to work in a dynamic or static environment.

Company size: You may not think it, but having an idea about whether you want to work in a small company or one with thousands of employees is important. 

Role: Saving the best for last, you have to know what position you want.

On the surface, it may seem like these things are only important for the job search aspect of landing a new position, but you have to know what voice to write your resume in, too. Part of that is knowing your audience. When you understand your audience, you can build a personal brand that resonates with what they're looking for in a new staff member.

Now that you've gotten your target career path nailed down, the next step is to brand you. Think of yourself as a product and your resume is the packaging. Companies spend a lot of time on their branding and packaging - you have to do the same thing.

The best place to start is with a  career assessment . Taking one of these tests can help you to identify your strengths, what sets you apart from others, and key themes of your professional identity. Just like Nike and Coca-Cola have timeless taglines and catchphrases that succinctly define what they have to offer to consumers, your personal brand has to tell a concise, yet compelling, story. This is where your resume comes in.

Your resume isn't just a piece of paper you give to a hiring manager or upload to a website that says, “I'm interested in this job.” Your resume is a personal marketing tool. You shape that tool with words that describe your experiences and achievements, to impress and grab the attention of the hiring manager. 

Unlike Nike's “Just Do It” phrase, your personal brand isn't something you build and forget. It is fluid and should be revisited and refined as you gain new skills, experiences, and achievements. Weave the elements of your brand into every section of your resume.

There is a common misconception that entry-level resumes look different than executive resumes. The reality is that the only difference is how much content is available to write about. 

Obviously, someone who has little to no experience will have a  short resume  – generally one page. 

When you start to get up to 10 years of experience, then you've earned the second page, so go ahead and use it. 

It's not incremental though

Just because you have 20 years of experience doesn't mean you can have a three-page resume. As you work through how to make a resume, remember that a three-page resume should be avoided, unless you have a lot of career extras like publications, research, patents, publications, or public speaking engagements to talk about. 

Other than the number of pages, your resume should use the same format and layout no matter if you're applying to a job as someone fresh out of college or seeking to be the CEO of a company. 

Chronological resume 

The  reverse-chronological  is the most popular, traditional, and well-known resume format. Its focus is placed on achievements from your career history and is defined by listing your work history starting with your current or most recent job and working backward 10-15 years. 

Employers like this type of resume because it tells them what, when, and where you worked. It's best to use this if your work history is steady and shows growth and development. If you're looking to make a career change, have had frequent job changes, or if you're seeking your first job, this may not be the best format to use.

Pro Tip: You could also get lost in the ATS if your  resume is over-designed . Many resume writers will tell you that you need to stand out in the sea of sameness by adding some personality to your resume through design. While that's true, you need to avoid heavily formatted resumes which are often rejected by computer scanners as being illegible.

Functional resume 

This resume type focuses more on skills and experiences rather than on your work history. It's more of a “what you know and how you apply that knowledge” than a simple list of where you got the knowledge. It plays down gaps in work history and makes frequent job changes less noticeable. If it isn't done properly, though, it can be confusing for the hiring manager to read and understand. There's also a bit of a stigma behind it, because employers know that job seekers use this style to downplay job-hopping. So, the first thing they do when they get a functional resume is check employment dates. If you can avoid using this style, it's best to do so.

Combination resume 

There is another resume format that focuses on skills first and then experience last. It's the combination resume, which is sometimes called a hybrid resume. This is the most complex resume type and the best resume for mid-career professionals who are transitioning into another career or for people who have special skills and a strong track record of accomplishments. These types of resumes do take a long time to read and some hiring managers won't take the time unless they're looking to fill a hard-to-fill position.

Curriculum Vitae

Curriculum Vitae (CV) is Latin and means “course of life.” It's a little different from a resume, but some positions require a CV over a resume. The first thing you would notice is that a CV is significantly longer than a resume.  A resume is a self-branding document meant to portray your experience and achievements in a concise and easy-to-read format. A CV goes much further into the depth of your education and accomplishments (think publications, awards, and honors) and even has a section for you to include "Areas of Interest."

The best way to describe a CV is that it's a career biography. The biggest significant difference is that a CV is arranged chronologically in a way that gives a complete overview of your full working career. It also doesn't change based on the career or position for which you're applying.

Layout 

To make things easier for the hiring manager to digest the content of your resume, it should be laid out in a specific way to ensure that the right information is in the right place. 

Hiring managers don't  READ  resumes. They skim through until they find something that piques their interest and then they stop to read

Contact information

Title 

Professional summary , core competencies, experience , education and credentials , awards, certificates, and volunteer work .

Since the reverse-chronological resume is the one that the majority of people will use to apply for jobs, and because it's the format that hiring managers want to see, we'll focus this article on showing you how to make a resume using that style. 

Current contact information 

Location | Phone | Email | LinkedIn | Portfolio (if applicable)

You can be creative and use bold font in your  contact information  and even put a border under it to separate it from the body of your resume. 

• Name: Be sure to list your name the same across all professional documents (e.g., resume, cover letter, thank you note, LinkedIn profile). Don't get hung up with whether to use your legal name (i.e. the name on your birth certificate or driver's license). Write your name in the manner you want people to address you. Also, if you use any abbreviated credentials after your name (e.g. Jane Smith, MD), remember to include them on all professional documents.  You can also include any shortened versions of your name in quotations (e.g. Christopher "Chris" Smith). Just make sure to list it the same way everywhere you put your name.
• Address: It is no longer customary to include your full address on your resume. There have been instances of discrimination against job seekers based on their address. As far as your address is concerned, all you need is the City, State, and Zip Code. A lot of people leave off the Zip Code; however, hiring managers can query the ATS for all resumes within a radius of a Zip Code. If you exclude the Zip Code or put something like, "Greater New York Metro Area," your resume won't be included in the query.
• Phone and email: Put the telephone number and email address where you can easily be reached. Also, be sure that your email address is professional. Using something like [email protected] just won't cut it. The best idea is to use some form of your name. If you're paranoid about having your name in your email address, then you can use some form of the type of position you seek, like [email protected].
• LinkedIn URL: You don't have to spell out the entire URL on the contact line. You can put the words “LinkedIn URL” and hyperlink those words. Before you include your LinkedIn URL, be sure that your LinkedIn profile is optimized for the career you want - because you can bet if they have access to it, the hiring manager will look at it. 
• Portfolio: If you're applying for a position like Graphic Designer or Software Designer, you may have a portfolio of work that you want to make available to someone reviewing your application for employment. Include a hyperlink to the portfolio in your contact information. 
• Headshot / photo: There is no reason to include a  headshot on your resume . Actually, it's seen as taboo and could be the thing that gets your resume rejected, because the hiring manager might assume you think you can get the job based on your looks. However, there are some exceptions, like if you're applying to be a model or actor. 

Do you want a hiring manager to be able to tell immediately what type of candidate you are? Put a title at the top of your resume. Center the text on the line, put it in bold font, and put a blank space above and below. The white space and the small amount of words will help it to jump off the page and immediately be noticed. It will also be the first step in helping you stand out in the sea of sameness.

Also, be sure the title on your resume mirrors the title on the job description that you're applying to, but add a bit of panache to it so that it's not too boring. For example, instead of writing “Financial Services Associate,” write “Client-Centric Financial Services Associate Dedicated to Customer Engagement and Revenue Growth.” Just remember to keep it on one line. 

The very next thing on the page should always be your Professional Summary. But how do you write a summary for a resume?

It's a three to five-sentence statement about you. Where you've been in your career, where you're going, and how you'll use your experience to get there. 

While the professional summary is sometimes referred to as the resume objective , you must remember that the days of writing a  resume objective are dead . Never, ever include an objective on your resume. They are a waste of space and don't relay any information that markets you as the best candidate for an open position. 

Let's take a look at an example of each:

Sales Representative seeking a challenging position that will use my skills and provide opportunities for growth in a dynamic and rewarding company. 

As you can see, the objective is very inward-facing and only talks about what you want out of your career. It provides no value to the hiring manager and eliminates any possibility for them to be able to tell what you bring to the table for them. 

Professional Summary:

Ambitious sales professional offering 10+ years' experience in customer retention and aggressive revenue growth. Conquers goals and quotas through a keen awareness of the human buying motive that allows for quickly overcoming objections. Used historical data and consumer trends to reach new customers and grow territory by 24%. Innate ability to work independently or as a member of a cross-functional team.

The best use of resume space is to write a summary of your career. The effectiveness of this summary comes from the fusing of three things:

Relevant keywords – customer retention, revenue growth, and quotas 

Hard and soft skills – overcoming objections and working independently

An achievement – 24% territory growth

With this professional summary, the hiring manager will be able to tell in an instant what you have to offer their team. 

Even though the skills section of your resume is small, it packs a powerful punch! The skills you list in this section highlight your key abilities and show potential employers what you bring to the table. 

It should contain approximately 12 ATS-friendly keywords and phrases that align with the keywords in the job description. Meaning, this is a fluid section that will need to be  tailored to every job  that you apply to. Technically speaking, your entire resume should be customized to align with each job description. That's one thing that will help you get past the ATS. 

Be sure to include a good mix of  hard and soft skills  because prospective employers not only want to know that you can perform the tasks related to your job (hard skills), but they also want to gain a clear understanding of how you'll fit within the culture of the company (soft skills). 

Tips for building your Core Competencies section:

Include skills that are relevant to the job that you're applying to

Avoid creating a laundry list of everything you know how to do – be selective so that the section is more impactful

Group similar competencies together using categories – technical skills, soft skills, and languages

Prioritize your top skills based on their relevance to the job you want

Update frequently

Be consistent with the formatting

Here is a sample Core Competencies list that contains both hard and soft skills:

Core Competencies

Project Management | Data Analysis | Cross-Functional Collaboration | Digital Marketing Strategy | Python Programming | Customer Relationship Management (CRM) | Negotiation | Team Leadership | Business Development | Financial Modeling | Articulate Communication

This section is meant to show how your career history lends itself to the skills you have that make you the perfect candidate for a given job. There are some general rules of thumb on how to make a resume with a great professional experience section:

Don't go further back than 10 to 15 years

Use no more than 3 to 5 bullets per work listing

Incorporate at least 5 measurable achievements per 10 years of experience (the more the better)

Use stacking for companies where you held more than one role

10-15 Years

The 10-15 years of experience is the most relevant – you can list more than that, but avoid using bullet points for roles over 10 years old. Begin by listing your most recent position first and work your way backward to your oldest position, within that 10-15-year range. If you have 30 years of experience, you can use achievements or skills you learned during that time as talking points during the interview. Listing those older experiences on your resume will only dilute the content.

As you write out your bullet points, keep two words in mind: “so what?” The hiring manager is going to be thinking it, you might as well be thinking it, too. Every time you write something on your resume, think, “So what? Why am I writing this? What value will it bring to my new employer? Will this be THE THING that lands me an interview?"

Achievements

Remove “Responsible for…” from your resume-writing vocabulary. That's because it's crucial that you talk about what you achieved, instead of just what your responsibilities were. Let's face it, there are a lot of things that people are “responsible for” that never get done. So, be sure to talk about things you actually accomplished, as that will be the proof the hiring manager needs to take the next step and call you for an interview.

1. Use numbers whenever possible

The best way to call attention to your career accomplishments is to use numbers. Numbers add credibility to your claims and provide a clear picture of what you bring to the table. 

Don't write this:

• Conducted cold calls to expand client base

Write this instead:

• Increased sales by 15% by making approximately 20 cold calls per day to expand the client base

The latter makes an unmistakable assertion that you had a positive impact, not only in your role but on the company as a whole. You can take it a step further and talk about things like problem-solving skills and how you addressed challenges to lead to team success. These types of  soft skills are highly valued by employers  and could be the thing that lands you an interview.

PRO TIP: Use the  CAR method  for building achievement statements into your resume.

2. Use action words to convey accomplishment

A lot of people make the mistake of copying bullet points from the job descriptions of the roles they've held. This practice makes you sound detached from achievements and focuses more on responsibilities. Using passive language is too generic and doesn't allow a hiring manager to see what you'll be able to accomplish in the new role. 

It's better to use action language to show that you're an achiever rather than a doer. Here are some examples of action words you can use on your resume: 

Worked with others: Advised, Aided, Assisted, Chaired, Coached, Collaborated with, Consulted with, Helped, Instructed, Interacted with, Mentored, Motivated, Supported

Communicated: Addressed, Advertised, Answered, Briefed, Corresponded with, Debated, Explained, Facilitated, Informed, Interpreted, Interviewed, Persuaded, Responded to

Analyzed data: Assessed, Appraised, Audited, Calculated, Computed, Estimated, Evaluated, Forecast, Inspected, Measured, Researched, Surveyed, Tested

Operated equipment: Installed, Maintained, Programmed, Ran, Serviced, Used

Worked with money or contracts: Administered, Appropriated, Authorized, Balanced, Controlled, Directed, Enforced, Financed, Funded, Governed, Invested, Monitored, Oversaw, Purchased

Organized something: Arranged, Assembled, Catalogued, Compiled, Coordinated, Itemized, Routed, Scheduled, Stocked, Tracked

Created: Composed, Customized, Designed, Directed, Established, Founded, Illustrated, Originated, Shaped

Researched: Analyzed, Collected, Criticized, Detected, Diagnosed, Evaluated, Tested

How to make your professional experience section: The formula

There's a formula for writing your professional experience section in a way that focuses on achievements. You'll start by asking yourself these questions about every job you've had:

What was the name of the company?

What was the title of your role?

What dates were you employed? (*Hint: use the MM/YYYY format for your dates)

What did you do every day? (*Example: Leveraged management skills to direct operations of 5 separate but concurrent projects by delegating tasks to staff based on employee acumen and monitoring / controlling budgets)

What is one thing you did at the company that you're really proud of?

What is another thing you're really proud of?

What is one more thing you did that you're really proud of?

When you put all of that together, it should look like this:

Company Name | MM/YYYY to Present

Position Title

Balanced competing priorities on multiple and concurrent projects and program management initiatives using data-driven strategies in Agile environments. Managed key accounts, onboarded new accounts, and oversaw organizational process adoption for nursing facilities, emergency departments, and pharmacies.

Developed $2M Provider Incentive Program that increased community provider partnerships

Saved $800K by using Six Sigma skills to implement DMAIC approach

Coached and mentored 2 direct reports, creating an open environment of communication that facilitated future-facing decision-making

Many people will create separate sections for education history and certifications. That's not necessary. You can include all of it in one section. You can also include extras like  relevant coursework , projects, and achievements. These extras can be truly beneficial for your application if you have little to no work experience. 

There are some general rules of thumb for the education section: 

Spell out acronyms (BS, MS, PhD) and school abbreviations

It is no longer customary to include graduation dates unless you're still in school or graduated within the last year

Never include high school, unless you're still in high school - listing high school doesn't say “ I finished high school, ” it says, “ I didn't go to college .” 

List your degree first and then your school, unless you've obtained multiple degrees at the same institution. 

Here's what a regular education section looks like:

EDUCATION AND CREDENTIALS

Master of Business Administration (MBA) | ABC University

Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) | XYZ University

Six Sigma Black Belt | Council for Six Sigma Certification

If you don't have a lot of experience and need to include some relevant coursework or major projects to inject relevant keywords into your resume, then this is what that would look like:

Relevant coursework:  Marketing, Operations Management, Accounting, Corporate Finance

Capstone project:  Let a team of 4 to execute a market analysis project to expand the Brooms and Handles company into new regions. Used market and consumer analysis data to identify gaps and achieve a 15% projected revenue increase and a 20% increase in customer satisfaction within the pilot program. 

You can include educational information about a degree program even if it's still in progress. Here's what that would look like:

Expected completion:  05/2024

Capstone project:  Let a team of 4 to execute a market analysis project to expand the Brooms and Handles company into new regions. Used market and consumer analysis data to identify gaps and achieve a 15% projected revenue increase and a 20% increase in customer satisfaction within the pilot program.

It is important to list what you do outside of work and school. It helps to demonstrate that you're a well-rounded person. 

Were you the president of a fraternity or sorority? 

Did you get involved with showing new students around campus? 

Have you headed a sales team that produced top awards? 

Were you an employee of the month? 

Do you speak multiple languages?

Did you volunteer for an organization?

Did you perform some major research that ended up being published?

All of these extras allow prospective employers a sneak peek into your life outside of work. They can also go a long way to breaking the ice during an interview, especially if something you do outside work is important or interesting to the hiring manager. 

Keep in mind to list only those volunteer positions, projects, or affiliations that are related to your career goals. 

How long does it take to make a resume?

If you're going to use the resume wizard that MS Word has, you can slap your information together in a day or two. It will get to employers. The bad thing is that it probably won't get a whole lot of attention. 

The "just right resume" can take weeks, because of how much background work goes into it. You'll write it, rewrite it, and write it again, and may even have multiple versions. Ultimately, the exact amount of time that goes into putting your resume together depends on your level of experience, how complex your history is, and the specificity of the job you're applying to. 

Entry-level resumes take the least amount of time, simply because there's less information to include

Mid-level resumes take a few days because of the amount of detail in your work history

Executive resumes, or those for specialized positions, can take weeks - especially if you have to do some digging to come up with accomplishments from your previous positions

Updating an existing resume that's well-maintained can be done in just a few hours

While the time spent can seem like a lot, if you're truly marketing yourself for that “just right” position, do you want your resume to say “This was thrown together in a couple of hours using a template” OR do you want it to say “I know this document is important and a significant amount of time was spent on it to make it perfect?”

The first and foremost thing that will get your resume tossed in the garbage can are typos. The number of resumes with errors that are turned in every day to employers across the globe is so astounding that it bears discussing. 

You must proofread your resume!

The major problem with typos and grammatical boo-boos is that your eyes will read what you intended to type. So, after you've read through your resume a few times and think it's perfect, get a friend to read it. Make sure the friend is one of those brutally honest types. It's better to get it back marked all over with bright red ink so you can fix it before you send it out, than to send it out and then realize there's a mistake in it.

How to make your resume seem more professional

Lazy words: Do you see words like "etc" or “other duties as required” on your resume? Delete them immediately. If you take shortcuts in the language of your resume, hiring managers will wonder if you'll be taking shortcuts at work. 

Cookie cutter resumes: Your resume has to stand out. Because of that, you should avoid throwing something together that you find a sample of online. Make it yours, make it represent you. Many people rely on the resume wizard that comes loaded with MS Word and, while that is a good tool to use to help you remember the sections to include, it shouldn't be the end-all-and-be-all of your resume design. 

Specificity: You've had three jobs in the last 10 years and you've listed every detail of everything you've done during your tenure at those jobs. That makes you a Jack (or Jackie) of all trades, but a master of nothing. You have to be specific to the job for which you're applying. What value do you bring to that employer for that job? What achievements can you highlight?

Tailoring: Considering the rampant use of ATS by companies big and small, you have to take the time to customize your resume so that it gets past those scanners. Remember to use relevant keywords from the job descriptions throughout your resume. 

PRO TIP: You can check to see how to make your resume better! Have it checked against an ATS and get a free, personalized, and  professional resume review . 

Theory in practice – 10 resume examples

It's one thing to have someone tell you how to make a resume, it's another thing to see an example – proof that all of this information can come together in a practical way that makes sense. 

1. Software Engineer resume example

Click here for an example of a Software Engineer resume.

2. Data Scientist resume example

Click here for an example of a Data Scientist resume.

3. Cybersecurity resume example

Click here for an example of a cybersecurity resume.

4. Digital Marketing Manager resume example

Click here for an example of a Digital Marketing Manager resume.

5. Nurse Practitioner resume example

Click here for an example of a Nurse Practitioner resume. 

6. Finance Director resume example

Click here for an example of a Finance Director resume. 

7. Attorney resume example

Click here for an example of a Attorney resume.

8. Administrative Office Assistant resume example

Click here for an example of an Administrative Office Assistant resume. 

9. Information Technology Expert resume example

Click here for an example of an Information Technology Expert resume. 

10. Chief Executive Officer resume example

Click here for an example of a CEO resume. 

Now you know how to make a resume for your next job!

It may seem like it takes a lot of work to make a good resume, but if you've followed along this far there are a few things that should be ingrained in you that will help you write a professional resume:

Know what you want to do – be specific

Make your resume with the right format 

Use a standard layout, whether you are writing your first resume or 50th

Use action words to make your resume stand out

Quantify your achievements to prove that you have what it takes to succeed in a new role

Tailor your new resume to each job

Double and triple-check for errors, typos, and grammar mistakes

If you're still unsure how to make a perfect resume, TopResume has you covered. Our team of  professional resume writers  has the know-how and experience to write a resume for you that will win interviews.

Recommended reading: 

Resume Tricks That Don't Work

What Does Your Resume Really Say About You?

Bad Resume Advice You Should Completely Ignore

Related Articles:

Do Hiring Managers Actually Read Cover Letters?

How to Create a Resume With No Education

Why You Lose When You Lie on Your Resume: Learning From Mina Chang

See how your resume stacks up.

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How to Write a Resume for Today’s Job Market

To get more job interviews, you must create a resume that is optimized for applicant tracking systems (ATS). Learn how in this step-by-step guide.

Customers Interviewed by:

Learning how to write a resume is a crucial skill for job seekers—it’s how you market yourself to potential employers.

A well-crafted resume summarizes your professional experience, skills, and achievements. It should grab the hiring manager’s attention and show them them why:

• You’re the perfect match for the job.
• The skills you have will make the company money.
• You’re qualified to solve the company’s problems.
• You’ll be worth your salary.
• Your accomplishments can be measured and verified.

But in today’s job market, it’s not enough to write an effective resume. You must also tailor each one to the job you’re applying for. Why? Because most companies today use applicant tracking systems, or ATS, to sort and filter the large volume of resumes they receive.

If you’re resume doesn’t contain the specific keywords hiring managers are searching for, it won’t be found—even if you’re qualified for the job!

In this guide, you’ll learn how to write a resume that stands out in today’s job market. We’ll show you how to present yourself as the ideal candidate, highlight the skills that will benefit potential employers, and ensure your resume is compatible with ATS.

How to write a resume that gets interviews

Here’s a quick overview of the basic steps for writing a professional resume. Follow these steps to make your resume clear, concise, and appealing.

Gather all relevant data about your work experience, skills, achievements, and education.

Select a format that’s right for you, whether it’s chronological, functional, or hybrid., clearly list your name, phone number, email, and key social media profiles., create a compelling headline that includes the job title you’re applying for., write a brief statement that summarizes your key achievements and value you offer., list the skills you have that align closely with the job requirements., detail your past job roles, responsibilities, and accomplishments., include your educational degrees, certifications, and relevant training., showcase any relevant honors, awards, and volunteer work., tailor your resume by focusing on the experiences and skills that are most relevant to the job..

Before you start working on your resume, remember that your resume is not your biography. You’re not telling the story of your life. Instead, your resume should be a targeted document meant to showcase the skills and experiences that match the job you want .

This means that if something is not relevant to your targeted job, leave it out . With this in mind, let’s start building your resume!

1. Gather your essential information before you start

Before diving into the actual resume writing, it’s crucial to collect all the necessary information you’ll need. This preparatory step ensures that the resume writing process is smooth and that you don’t miss any important details.

• Significant achievements : List standout accomplishments from previous roles that demonstrate your contributions and successes.
• Skills : Compile a list of your soft, hard, and technical skills that align with those required by the job you’re targeting.
• Employment history : Provide detailed information about past employers, including their names, your dates of employment, locations, job titles, and a clear description of your duties.
• Education : Document your academic qualifications like college degrees, certifications, or licenses that prove your expertise in relevant fields.
• Volunteer work : Include any voluntary engagements where you developed skills pertinent to the job you are seeking.
• Awards and honors : Mention any notable recognitions you’ve received that underscore your exceptional talents and commitment.

When you gather your information, include everything you can think of. You can cut information that’s not relevant to a specific job later.

2. Choose a resume format that’s right for you

A  resume format  is the way you organize, or lay out, your information. There is no one-size fits all resume format. Instead, there are three different types of formats to choose from – chronological, functional, and hybrid. Which format you choose depends on your particular situation.

The chronological resume format

This is the most traditional resume format, especially for job seekers with lots of relevant experience.

The chronological resume format lists your work history in reverse chronological order , with your most recent jobs listed first. Your skills and education should come after your work history in this format.

• Have a strong work history showing steady career growth without significant employment gaps.
• Are staying in the same field and want to highlight your experience and advancements within that field.
• Want to highlight career progression and professional achievements over time.

The functional resume format

This resume format focuses on your skills rather than your work history. It helps you downplay your lack of experience in a particular field.

In this format, your skills and education should be emphasized over your work history.

• Are changing careers and want to emphasize transferable skills over past job titles.
• Have gaps in employment and want to focus on skills rather than work experience.
• Are new to the workforce and want to highlight skills, coursework, and internships.

NOTE : Generally speaking, we don’t recommend the functional resume format . Recruiters want to see some kind of work history. Instead of the functional format, try the next resume format—the hybrid.

The hybrid resume format

A hybrid resume is a combination of the chronological resume and the functional resume. It showcases both your work history and your skills.

In this format, your skills comes before your work history. But your work history is still the heart of your resume, just like in the chronological format.

• Have lots of skills that are relevant to the job you are targeting.
• Are climbing the career ladder within the same field.
• Are changing roles within the same industry and want to highlight your relevant skills.

We like the hybrid resume  because it offers the best of both worlds, combining the strengths of the chronological and the functional resume formats.

3. Put your contact information at the top of your resume

This section might appear simple, but it’s important. If hiring managers can’t contact you, you won’t get an interview.

• Phone number
• Location (City, State, Zip Code)
• Email Address
• LinkedIn profile URL

It’s surprising how often job seekers forget a crucial piece of contact information. Double-check to make sure it’s as easy as possible for recruiters to contact you for a job interview.

Here’s an example:

Contact information do’s and don’ts

• Include your full name, including your middle initial.
• Include a link to your professional website or online portfolio.
• Create a strong LinkedIn profile and be sure to include the URL on your resume.
• Don’t write your full address; only your city, state, and zip code.
• Don’t include a work phone number; only your personal number.
• Don’t add a photo of yourself . This can lead to bias or discrimination.

4. Create a compelling resume headline

Your resume headline comes right after your contact information. At the very least, your headline should clearly identify the title of the job you’re applying for.

Is putting the job title in the headline necessary? Yes! “Think of your resume as a maze,” says resume expert Laura DeCarlo . “It has to have a visible entrance or no one would ever get started.” Without a headline, “the prospective employer won’t know for which position you are applying.”

Your headline can also include years of experience and key qualifications. Here’s an example:

Resume headline do’s and don’ts

• Tailor your headline to each job you apply for.
• Keep your headline under ten words to make sure it packs a punch.
• Position yourself as an expert in your field.
• Don’t use clichés such as “hard worker” or “team player.” Be specific.
• Don’t be too salesy. Focus on giving a snapshot of your skills and experience.
• Don’t make your headline too long. Cut to the chase.

5. Write your resume summary

A resume summary is a brief paragraph that provides an overview of your qualifications for the role you’re applying for. Most expert resume writers today highly recommend using a summary.

“One of the most common mistakes I see in resumes is the absence of a targeted introductory paragraph at the beginning of the resume,” says career coach Suzanne Berger . “Keep in mind that recruiters or hiring managers only spend 10 to 20 seconds reviewing your resume, so it is important to make an impact from the start.”

As you can see from the following example, your summary goes right under your resume headline:

Your resume summary should include a concise overview of your key qualifications, professional achievements, and skills that are relevant to the job you are applying for.

Here’s a formula you can use to write your summary, followed by an example:

[Your Professional Title] with [Years of Experience] years of experience. Proven track record in [Top Achievement 1] and [Top Achievement 2] . Skilled in [Skill 1] , [Skill 2] , and [Skill 3] . Known for [Unique Value or Strength] .

Marketing Manager with 8 years of experience . Proven track record in increasing online engagement by 40% and boosting lead generation by 30% . Skilled in content creation, data analysis, and strategic planning . Known for exceptional organizational skills and the ability to manage and inspire teams to exceed corporate objectives .

Resume summary do’s and don’ts

• Use numbers to show that you are able to produce tangible outcomes.
• Incorporate keywords from the job description whenever possible.
• Write your resume summary last because you’ll then have a fuller picture of your experiences and skills.
• Don’t just list your job duties; instead focus on your accomplishments.
• Don’t use personal pronouns (I, me, or my).
• Don’t make your summary too long; keep it to no more than 3-4 sentences.

6. Create your skills section

When we talk about keywords, we are mostly talking about skills .

There are two main types of skills— hard and soft . Hard skills are specific abilities you learn through education or training, like using certain software or speaking a foreign language. Soft skills are more about how you work and interact with others, such as teamwork, communication , and flexibility.

You should place your skills section under your resume summary. List your skill set using bullet points, either in columns or in a bullet-point format. Try to include 10 to 20 key skills in this section.

IMPORTANT! The way the same skill is worded in a job description can vary from company to company. This is why it’s crucial to tailor each resume to the job you’re applying to.

For example, here are three different ways of listing essentially the same skill:

• Customer Service
• Client Relations
• Customer Support

If the job description lists “customer support” and you have “customer service” on your resume, the hiring manager might not find your resume when searching through the ATS database — even though you do have that skill.

To make sure you’re using the right keyword skills, run your resume through Jobscan’s resume scanner . It compares your resume to the job description and tells you which skills to use.

You’ll also receive a resume score which tells you how closely your resume matches the job description. The higher your score the more likely you are to get an interview. Here’s an example of the report you’ll receive from the resume scanner:

The skills in red are missing from the resume. Add them to increase the resume score. You can read more about Jobscan’s resume scanner and how to try it for free here .

7. Create a compelling work history section

Now it’s time to get to the heart of your resume – the  work experience  section. This is the section employers will spend the most time looking at when they consider your resume.

Why is this section so critical? Because it’s where you provide the proof to support what you said about yourself in your resume headline, summary, and skills section.

Each job should include the following information and be listed in reverse-chronological order (latest job first).

• Company name and location – Include the full name of the company you worked for followed by the city and state of its location.
• Job title – Be as specific as possible to ensure that employers know exactly what your role was within the company.
• Start and end dates – Include the month and year for each position. If you only list the year, it may appear as though you are omitting information.
• Achievements and responsibilities – These can be listed using bullet points. Include hard numbers and metrics wherever possible.

One of the biggest mistakes people make when writing a resume is only listing their job responsibilities. These are tasks that you’re expected to perform as part of your job.

Listing your job responsibilities gives a potential employer an idea of what you did day-to-day. But it doesn’t reveal  how well you did it.

This is why it’s important to highlight your specific accomplishments. For example, if you increased sales, reduced costs, or implemented new processes or technologies, be sure to mention these accomplishments.

Here’s an example of a work experience section with measurable achievements :

To write strong bullet points for your work experience section, use Jobscan’s AI-powered bullet point generator. It creates bullet points based on the skills in the job description, highlighting your relevant qualifications. Try it for free here .

Work experience do’s and don’ts

• Use numbers to quantify your achievements whenever possible.
• Use action verbs to describe how you did something.
• Use the mm/yyyy format for resume dates .
• Don’t list more than 10 years of work experience unless it’s highly relevant.
• Don’t use the passive phrase “responsible for.” Instead, use active voice.
• Don’t list every single task you worked on; include only the most relevant.

8. Create your education and certification section

Your education section should appear after your work experience. If you’re applying to a job that requires extensive education (like medicine, law, or academia), you’ll need to be more detailed. But most job seekers can get away with providing only the following information on their resume:

• Name of the degree/certification: Write the full name of the degree or certification. Use commonly accepted abbreviations (e.g., B.A. in English, MBA, PMP).
• Institution name: Include the name of the university or institution that awarded the degree or certification.
• Location (optional): List the city and state if the location is relevant to the job or if the institution is well-known.
• Graduation date: Mention the month and year of graduation. For certifications, you can also include an expiration date if applicable.

Here’s an example of an education section on a resume:

Education section do’s and don’ts

• Bold your degree so that it stands out.
• List your education in reverse-chronological order.
• Include any relevant coursework, skills training, licenses, and certifications .
• Don’t mention your high school if you have a college degree.
• Don’t disclose your GPA unless you graduated recently and had a very impressive academic career (3.5 GPA plus).
• Don’t list an advanced degree if the job doesn’t require it.

9. Showcase honors, awards, and volunteer work

The key to this section is to only include honors and awards that are relevant to the job you’re applying to.

This can get a little tricky because if you do have honors or awards that are highly relevant, consider including them in your summary section. Otherwise, hiring managers might miss them if you only list them at the bottom of your resume.

If you have any  volunteer experience , it’s generally a good idea to add it to your resume.

According to a LinkedIn survey , 20% of employers say they have hired a candidate because of their volunteer experience. The survey also showed that job seekers who volunteer are 27% more likely to be hired than non-volunteers!

• The name of the organization.
• The dates of your service.
• A brief description of your duties and responsibilities.

Here’s an example of what this section of your resume can look like:

10. How can you tailor your resume to a specific job position?

Tailoring your resume to each specific job is not just recommended; it’s imperative . This is because most companies today use ATS computer software to manage and filter the enormous amount of resumes they receive.

When you submit your resume, it goes into an ATS database . Hiring managers search the ATS database for suitable resumes by typing keywords, or skills, into the ATS search bar. If your resume contains these keywords it will be found. If it doesn’t contain the right keywords, your resume will remain in the ATS database, unseen.

To tailor your resume, you must first read the job description. This is where you’ll find the keywords to add to your resume. Make sure you add those keywords exactly as they are written in the job description .

Unfortunately, tailoring each resume to the job description takes time and effort. The best way to speed up this process is to use an online tool like Jobscan’s resume scanner .

Just paste in your resume and the job description and click scan. You’ll receive a match report telling you how closely your resume matches the job ad. The report also tells you exactly which keywords to add to your resume to optimize it for the ATS. Try the scanner for free below:

Effective resume formatting tips

Properly formatting your resume makes it easy for hiring managers to find what they’re looking for. At the same time, good formatting helps the ATS understand your resume.

Remember, if the ATS can’t read your resume you won’t get the job!

Choose a professional, easy-to-read font like Arial, Calibri, or Times New Roman in size 10 to 12 for text and 14 to 16 for headings.

Clearly distinguish section headings with a larger font size, bold text, or underlining to guide the reader’s eye effectively through your resume., set your margins to at least 0.7 inches all around, ensuring that your resume looks balanced and does not appear overcrowded., avoid complex graphics, tables, headers, and footers, which can confuse ats software., break up blocks of text. a paragraph should never be longer than 5 lines., use standard headings like “work experience,” “education,” and “skills.” these are immediately recognizable to both hiring managers and ats., use the same style of bullets, text alignment, and line spacing throughout your document., align your text to the left. right-aligned or justified text can create irregular spacing between words, making your resume harder to read., save your resume file as a pdf to preserve your formatting across different platforms., proofread carefully one grammatical error can ruin your chances of getting a job., how to write a resume for students with no experience.

Creating a good resume without any work experience might seem tough, but you can still make a strong impression on employers by highlighting your skills and activities. Here’s how:

• Focus on your education : Put your education section at the top. Include details like your degree, major, relevant coursework, academic honors, and GPA if it’s above average.
• Include extracurricular activities : List any activities outside of class, like clubs, sports, or student government. Mention any leadership roles or responsibilities you’ve had.
• Add volunteer work and internships : Don’t forget to include volunteer positions, internships, or community service. These experiences show your willingness to work and learn.
• Highlight projects and academic achievements : Talk about any major projects or research you’ve done, especially if they relate to the job you want. Describe what you did and what you achieved.
• Skills section : Make a list of your skills, including technical skills (like computer software) and soft skills (like teamwork and communication).
• Professional summary : Start with a short summary that explains your career goals and your best qualities. Make it clear why you’d be a great fit for the job.

Here’s a sample of a resume for students with no experience:

How to match your cover letter to your resume

Matching your cover letter with your resume helps create a polished and cohesive application. Here’s how:

• Consistent formatting : Use the same font, header, and layout from your resume for your cover letter. This helps create a professional and unified appearance.
• Use similar language : Pick out key skills and phrases from your resume and include them in your cover letter. This reinforces your qualifications and aligns your application with the job requirements.
• Expand on key points : Choose one or two major achievements listed on your resume and elaborate on them in your cover letter. Explain how these experiences have equipped you for the job.
• Keep the tone the same : If your resume is formal, your cover letter should be too. If it’s more casual, your cover letter can be less formal as well.
• Address the job’s needs : Demonstrate how your experiences make you a good fit for the job. Show that you understand what the job involves and explain why you’re the right candidate.
• End with a call to action : Conclude by expressing your enthusiasm for the role and suggesting they look at your resume for more details. Ask them to contact you for an interview.

When you’re done writing your cover letter, run it through Jobscan’s  cover letter checker . This tool will tell you how to improve your cover letter. 

Hate writing cover letters? Use Jobscan’s  cover letter builder . This tool uses AI technology to generate an ATS-friendly cover letter with just one click.

10 standout resume examples to inspire you

These samples showcase a variety of styles and formats suited for different industries and career stages, giving you ideas on how to write a resume.

1. Sales manager resume example

2. Accountant resume example

3. Recruiter resume example

4. Bookkeeper resume sample

5. Digital marketing resume example

6. Teacher resume example

7. Customer service resume example

8. Office assistant resume example

9. Operations manager resume example

10. Technical writer resume example

Key takeaways

• Optimize for ATS : Today’s resumes must be tailored to pass through Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) by including specific keywords related to the job you’re applying for. This ensures your resume is seen by hiring managers.
• Tailored Resumes : Each resume should be customized to the job description, emphasizing relevant experiences and skills. This enhances your chances of standing out in a competitive job market.
• Resume Formats : Choose between chronological, functional, or hybrid formats based on your career history and the job requirements. Chronological is suitable for those with a strong, relevant job history; functional is best for career changers or those with gaps in employment; hybrid combines the strengths of both.
• Essential Elements : A resume should include a clear headline, a compelling summary, a detailed work history, relevant skills, and educational credentials. Each section should be crafted to showcase your qualifications and fit for the role.
• Skills and Keywords : Highlight both hard and soft skills that are directly relevant to the job. Using precise keywords from the job description in your resume ensures compatibility with ATS and increases the likelihood of your resume being selected.
• Quantifiable Achievements : Where possible, use metrics to quantify your accomplishments. This provides concrete evidence of your capabilities and impact in previous roles.
• Additional Sections : Including volunteer work, awards, and certifications can differentiate your resume. Ensure these are relevant to the job to keep the resume focused and impactful.
• Resume Building Tools : Utilize tools like resume builders and scanners (e.g., Jobscan) to construct a resume that matches job descriptions and optimizes for ATS, saving time and improving effectiveness.
• Format and Proofread : Proper formatting and thorough proofreading are essential to maintain professionalism. Ensure the resume is easy to read and free from errors, which can detract from your credibility.

Beginners can use the chronological format if they have some work experience, even if it’s part-time jobs, internships, or volunteer work. However, if a beginner has little to no work experience, a functional format might be better. Include essential resume sections like contact information, a summary, education, and any relevant work experience or skills. Tailor your resume to the job by incorporating keywords from the job description. If you lack work experience, emphasize volunteer work, internships, and extracurricular activities that demonstrate your skills and commitment. Always proofread for errors before submitting your resume.

To make your resume stand out to recruiters, start by tailoring it specifically for each job application, incorporating keywords from the job description to align closely with the requirements. Highlight your achievements by quantifying them with specific numbers and outcomes, such as “increased sales by 20%” or “reduced processing time by 30%,” to demonstrate measurable success. Begin with a compelling professional summary that succinctly outlines your key qualifications and what you bring to the role, clearly establishing why you are the ideal candidate. Ensure your resume has a clean and professional layout, with logical sections and easy-to-read fonts, to facilitate quick review and make a strong first impression.

1) Gather information 2) Choose a format 3) Write contact information 4) Craft a headline and summary 5) Detail your experience and education 6) Highlight skills 7) Add additional sections 8) Tailor for the job 9) Proofread and edit 10) Finalize and save

To create a resume with no work experience , start with a functional format that emphasizes your skills and education. Begin with a strong summary statement that highlights your career goals and key skills. Place your education section prominently, including any relevant coursework or projects. List both hard and soft skills applicable to the job, and include any internships, volunteer work, or extracurricular activities that demonstrate your abilities and work ethic. Mention any significant projects or achievements, especially those relevant to your desired job. Also, include any professional affiliations that show your interest in the industry. Ensure the resume is well-organized and clearly formatted to highlight your qualifications effectively.

Use Jobscan’s resume builder , which is specifically designed to help you craft an AI resume that is both appealing to hiring managers and optimized for Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS). This tool provides templates and real-time content suggestions, helping you tailor your resume effectively for each job application. You can also use ChatGPT to write a resume for free . Just be sure to edit and personalize the results you get.

1) Log into your Google account, go to Google Docs, and either start a new document or use the template gallery. Jobscan also offers free Google Docs resume templates . 2) Select a resume template that fits the job you’re applying for from the template gallery. 3) Replace the template’s placeholder text with your personal information, including contact details, educational background, work experience, and skills. 4) Tailor the content to the job by adding relevant keywords from the job description and adjusting the format—like fonts and spacing—for clarity and appeal. 5) Double-check your resume for any errors and consider having someone else review it too. 6) Once satisfied, download your resume as a PDF or DOCX file , or share it directly via email or a shareable link.

1) Start the program and select “New” from the file menu to access templates. 2) Type “resume” in the template search bar to see available resume designs. 3) Choose a template that suits your needs, then replace the placeholder text with your personal details, including work experience, education, and skills. 4) Adjust the content to match the job description, using relevant keywords and highlighting your qualifications. 5) Modify font size, style, and colors to ensure the resume is clean and professional. 6) Check for any errors, and consider having someone else review it. 7) Save your resume as a PDF to maintain formatting and make sharing easy. 8) Print for physical submissions or save digitally for online applications.

In 2024, resumes should be designed for clarity and ATS compatibility . Start with a professional layout that includes plenty of white space and a logical structure. The top should have your contact information—just your name, phone number, email, and LinkedIn URL , omitting a full address for privacy. Follow this with a concise professional summary, then list your work experience, skills, and education. The format should ensure easy readability for both human recruiters and Applicant Tracking Systems, emphasizing a clean design without complex graphics or tables that could confuse the ATS software.

Choosing the right resume format depends on your career background: Chronological: Lists your work history in reverse chronological order, ideal for those with a solid work history. Functional: Focuses on skills rather than work history, suitable for career changers or those with gaps in employment. Combination: Mixes elements of both chronological and functional formats, highlighting skills followed by work history in reverse order. Good for those with significant skills and experiences.

The number of jobs you should include on your resume depends on your experience level and relevance to the role. Typically, if you’re early in your career with less than 10 years of experience, aim for 2-3 recent and relevant positions. For mid-career professionals, around 3-4 positions spanning the last 10-15 years is common. Experienced professionals may include the most pertinent roles from their extensive history, focusing on the past 10-15 years. Ensure each listed job directly relates to the position you’re applying for, prioritizing relevancy over quantity to present a focused and impactful resume.

A resume should typically be one to two pages long, with rare exceptions for highly experienced individuals or those in certain industries. Aim to keep it concise and focused on highlighting your most relevant qualifications and experiences for the position you’re applying for.

AI and machine learning have revolutionized resume screening by automating the process. Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) use these technologies to quickly analyze resumes, searching for relevant keywords and qualifications. This saves recruiters time and ensures a more efficient screening process, helping them identify top candidates more effectively.

When writing a resume summary with no experience, focus on your education, relevant skills, and career goals. Highlight any coursework, projects, or extracurricular activities that demonstrate skills applicable to the job. Emphasize your enthusiasm, work ethic, and eagerness to learn. Keep it concise and impactful, showcasing how your background aligns with the position and company’s needs.

Crafting a simple resume involves starting with your contact information, followed by a brief summary statement. List your work experience, education, and relevant skills, ensuring consistency in formatting. Consider including optional sections like volunteer experience or honors/awards. Proofread carefully and tailor your resume to each job application.

Robert Henderson, CPRW, is a career advice writer and a resume expert at Jobscan.

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How to Write a Professional Resume Summary? [+Examples]

Do you want to land more job interviews? The easiest way to achieve this is by attracting a recruiter’s attention straight away by summarizing the highlights of your career right at the start of your resume — in a section called the resume summary. 

The purpose of this resume section, which is also known as a professional summary or resume statement, is to create a good first impression. It sums up your work experience , skills, and achievements into a short and concise sales pitch where you are the product. 

Do it well, and your future employers will be more inclined to read the rest of your resume.

Without further ado, let’s show you how to write an exceptional professional summary that will not only get you to more job interviews but will also help you land a job. 

This guide will show you:

What is a professional summary?

Why do you need a professional summary, how to write a professional summary.

• What to do when you don’t have any experience in the field?
• What are a resume objective and a resume profile?
• Examples of professional summaries from real professionals.

TL;DR video guide: How to write a professional summary for a resume 

A professional summary gives the hiring manager a quick overview of your skills and achievements without them having to dive into the rest of your resume. It sits at the top of your resume, beneath your name and contact information. You can think of it as a teaser for the rest of your resume.

It should sum up your top skills, experiences, and achievements as they pertain to the job description.

Take a look at the sample below to see what it looks like in practice: 

The professional summary section is also known as a:  

• Resume summary 
• Qualifications summary 
• Resume statement 
• Heading statement 
• Competencies 
• Career summary
• Experience summary
• Personal statement 

However, don’t mistake a professional summary for a resume objective or profile . We’ll discuss the differences between them later in this guide. 

How long should a professional summary be? 

Generally speaking, a resume summary should be quite short. The most common length is 3-5 sentences or bullet points. It shouldn't be longer than 5-6 concise bullet points , but it also shouldn't be shorter than 2 bullet points. 

You can also replace the first bullet point with a short introductory paragraph that includes your job title, years of experience, and specialization. 

While many people still don't include the resume profile section in their resumes, it's a mistake. But why is it a mistake?

• You want to grab the recruiter's attention from the get-go.
• You'll make their life a bit easier because you'll immediately tell them who you are.

The thing is, recruiters are busy people , they go through dozens, sometimes hundreds of resumes before they can find a few qualified candidates. 

Do you know what this means? Shortcuts. At first, recruiters will be skimming resumes in search of specific keywords and phrases that align with what the company is searching for.

That’s why you want to include the best resume summary you can come up with because a good summary section consists of nothing but these juicy bite-size phrases and keywords that a recruiter can spot at a glance. 

In short, a professional summary allows you to turn a recruiter's time limitation into an advantage. 

Christy's word of advice

While recruiters are indeed busy, did you know that the information that recruiters only give each resume 6 seconds of their time isn't true? 

“This one's a little bit of a myth. It takes about six seconds to screen the resume for the key information that I'm looking for, such as location, summary, keywords, or if there's a skills section. Within this time frame, I should be able to get a feel for who you are and what you're looking for. But it's mainly about six seconds for me to pick out the basic information I need. It doesn't mean that I'm going to spend just six seconds on it or that I won't continue reading after. ” —   Christy Morgan , Kickresume's Resident HR Expert

As we said before, a good professional summary should compel an employer to read the next section of your resume — that’s all. If it manages to do that, then it has accomplished its purpose. 

However, doing this is easier said than done, as it can be tricky to cram the most exciting bits of your career into a 3-5 bullet points summary. 

Luckily, there are a few tips and tricks you can use to craft an impressive resume summary.

Before you start writing:

• Write other resume sections, and then write your professional summary last. It’s surprisingly easy once you’ve already written other sections of your resume. All you have to do is cherry-pick the most impressive facts and stats.
• Pick the essential keywords from the job listing, so you can tailor your summary. Start with the job listing that made you apply for the job. Carefully reread it and find the most important keywords. These are the nouns or phrases that best describe the job position, related skills, as well as the ideal candidate. Before you begin to write, think about how they intersect with your own skills and experiences. In this way, you also have a higher chance to get through the ATS systems which companies use .

Once you start writing:

• In the first bullet point, write your professional title. Don’t forget to add the number of years of experience. You want to communicate your professional identity immediately. You can also write it in bold. It can look something like this: “Certified Project Management Professional with over 4 years of experience”.
• Pick the 3-4 most impressive parts of your resume and reword them into snappy bullet points. Tease your potential employer into reading further. Did you earn a recognition for the best customer service? Or hit 95% of sales targets for five consecutive years? These are the things that deserve a mention at the top of your resume!
• Translate each achievement into numbers. Each bullet point should contain at least one piece of quantifiable data. Use percentages, numbers, or impressive sales figures. It gives the hiring manager a better idea of how you performed in your previous jobs. Numbers attract attention. Take advantage of that.
• Sum up what you have to offer. Instead of saying what you want, keep in mind what they want. Make clear what values you can bring to the company. Look for common threads in your work history and for skills that apply most to the job.

How to use keywords in a resume summary

A professional summary can do more than catch the attention of the recruiter. It can also make your resume more ATS-friendly. 

It's a great place where you can squeeze in one or two ATS-friendly keywords , and it will still look natural.

Such keywords can be your industry-relevant hard skills, previous job positions, notable clients, certificates and courses from notable institutions, or a note-worthy university (if you recently finished your degree). 

Moreover, you should add keywords and relevant skills from the job listing.

Don't get too creative with the heading, though. While replacing the professional summary headline with “Snapshot” sounds great, ATS doesn't know what it means and therefore wouldn't recognize it.

Pro tip: Remember, while it's important to incorporate keywords into your resume summary, it's crucial to ensure these keywords align with your abilities and experiences. The ATS might shortlist your resume, but the hiring manager will quickly realize in an interview if those keywords were merely resume filler. Always maintain honesty and authenticity while drafting your summary.

Professional resume summary examples for most common careers

Now that you know the ins and outs of writing a resume summary, here are a few examples that can inspire you when writing your summary:

Professional summary example for customer service

Performance-driven and motivated customer service rep offering 4+ years of relevant experience. Eager to join the Techia team and contribute to the growth of the company. In the previous role, the ability to make customers comfortable and relaxed allowed for 98% customer service survey results and had 25% more sales than the average employer. 

Professional resume summary example for retail

Dedicated and hard-working storekeeper with a Business Administration degree. Eager to bring my strong attention to detail and accuracy to J&R inc. Adept at communicating with vendors and suppliers, coordinating various business operations, and maintaining documents and files in order. In the past jobs brought an extra $50k of sales per quarter and increased customer satisfaction by 20%. 

Professional summary example for nursing resume

Motivational and resourceful Orthopedic Nurse with 10 years of experience with in-depth knowledge in trauma recovery, aggressive pain management techniques, and post-surgical recovery. Especially proficient in providing external fixation care and continuous motion therapy along with neuromuscular status monitoring. Committed to work as an orthopedic nurse for people who are struggling with mobility issues due to accidental injuries and degenerative disease affecting bones and muscles.

Professional summary example for administrative assistant

Self-driven and accurate Executive Assistant skilled at performing various office/administrative duties, such as coordinating meetings, maintaining calendar and schedule, filing documents, and managing company correspondence. Highly self-motivated with a solid work ethic and multitasking abilities.

Professional summary example for data analyst

A graduate in Information Systems with two years of hands-on data analytics experience. Passionate about working with large amounts of data and to turn this data into information, information into insight and insight into business decisions. I also have a keen interest in the field of data visualization and am fascinated by the power to compress complex datasets into approachable and appealing graphics.

Professional summary example for warehouse worker

Hard-working and dedicated Warehouse Worker with 2+ years of extensive experience in inspecting incoming shipments, preparing and processing orders, and performing various administrative duties. The Employee of the Month Award winner with a strong attention to detail and accuracy and determination to achieve exceptional results. Offers excellent time management skills and important ability to work independently or in a team.

Professional summary example for receptionist 

Customer-oriented and performance-driven Front Desk Assistant skilled at performing various administrative tasks, improving all office processes and procedures, and providing support to Office Managers. Great communicator with a Business Administration degree from a well-known university and an exceptional ability to remain calm in stressful situations. Possess well-developed communication skills and excellent time management abilities.

Resume summary example for management

A Project Manager with 16 years of experience in IT projects. Responsible for the management of teams of up to 15 direct and 7 indirect employees. Has High level knowledge in project execution using best practices of waterfall and agile methodologies. High level knowledge of Jupyter Notebook, MS Project, MS Excel, MS Word. 

Professional summary example for project manager

Logistics & Planning PMO for Anheuser-Busch InBev with +7 years of experience in Supply Chain Operations & Project Management. Lived and worked for ABI in 6 cities in past years, managed +300 direct & indirect employees and +0.5 billion BRL over the years. At ABI experienced the routines in breweries operations & urban distribution. As Project Manager build the Zone Logistics Project area for ABI LAN, being responsible for 4.0 Supply Chain, integrating the technologies WMS, YMS, TMS and Tracking.

Resume summary example for stay-at-home mother

Performance-driven and knowledgeable Stay At Home Mother skilled at conducting detailed market research, developing new sales tools, creating reports, and promoting products and services. Certified Marketing Management Professional with an extensive knowledge of multiple marketing software programmes, great communication skills, and excellent teamwork abilities. Currently looking for any Marketing related remote part-time job.

Professional summary example for student

Self-driven and knowledgeable computer science student with demonstrated experience in developing user-friendly software applications, coding and testing features, and providing engineering support. Oracle Certified Professional with extensive knowledge of multiple programming languages and software development tools, excellent problem-solving skills, and ability to perform well in a team.

How to write a resume summary if you're a fresh graduate/student?

If you’re a student or a fresh graduate, you probably don’t have much to brag about in your resume yet.

But that’s true only to some extent. Even as an entry-level candidate, you already have at least some experience and skills. You just have to find the right way to articulate them.

What’s more, it’s quite likely that the other candidates are just as inexperienced as you are. After all, experienced professionals rarely apply for entry-level positions. 

Because of that, your primary goal is to stand out and make the employer remember you . And you can do that even if your experience is limited.

It’s not like you’ve just spent most of your life at school and learned nothing. You just need to understand how your studies intersect with the job’s requirements.

 Here’s how you can write your professional resume summary as a student/fresh graduate:

• State your field of study, degree, and GPA (if it’s above 3.0).
• Mention relevant skills gained in internships, part-time jobs, and volunteer work.
• Add related coursework or school projects.
• Also, try to translate your most notable achievements into numbers. Maybe you were on the student council. You can mention how you received 800 votes and helped organize 5 large school events that were attended by 2,000 students.

In the end, a fresh graduate resume summary should look a bit like this: 

Hired by Bupa — Business Administration Intern

• An adaptable and responsible graduate seeking an entry-level position in the Business Analytics market, Business Consultancy or Financial market.
• My double degree in Business and Law and my previous job as a financial controller have provided me with a well-rounded background and enabled me to develop an analytical/logical approach to tasks, software skills, and the ability to work under pressure.
• In short, I am reliable, hard-working with strong attention to detail and eager to learn about new technologies and business issues. I am able to work well both on my own initiative and as a part of a team. I’m also able to travel abroad.

How to write a resume summary as an experienced professional?

If you have 10 to 15 years of professional experience under your belt, you’ve probably developed a long list of job-related accomplishments. Your qualifications summary is the ideal place to showcase the most impressive of them. 

On the other, with that extent of experience, it may be quite challenging to pick and choose the right information for your professional summary. 

So what should you do? 

• Start by carefully rereading the job advertisement.
• Highlight any skills you already possess that match this job offer.
• See if you can think of any past accomplishments that show how you successfully used those skills in your previous job.

For instance, are you an experienced sales and customer service professional? Sell it. Mention how you developed strategies that resulted in an over 15 % increase in new customers. Or how your rewards program reached a customer success rate of over 45 %. Numbers can be much more persuasive than words . 

Also, always remember to use action words and relevant keywords.

Here’s a professional summary resume example from an experienced professional: 

HubSpot — Director of Business Development Resume Summary Example

• Passionate Business Amplifier.
• Thrives in complex market segment entry and sales and marketing launch plans for technical products and services. Founder of the highly-impactful "HubSpot for Veterans" initiative. 
• Proven Growth Consultant and Entrepreneurial Coach for over 200 organizations. Advocate of lean startup and data-backed strategy. 
• Leadership spans career with direct application towards startups, Techstar accelerators, corporate business development, and government. ROI-focused relationship builder.
• Lifelong teacher and learner: Startup Institute, Techstarts, HubSpot Partner programs.

How to write a professional summary if you’re changing careers?

As a career changer , try to show how your past experience relates to the position you’re applying for or how it can help your future employer grow.

Are you a software developer who wants to work with a new programming language, let’s say Python? You can mention how you’ve already developed 7 mobile apps using JavaScript and HTML. Even something as small as completing a Python online course on CodeAcademy can work wonders.

But if you still feel like you don’t have any relevant job experience, consider writing a resume objective instead. Instead of past achievements and experiences, it highlights your transferable skills and motivation. Moreover, it explains why you seek to switch to a different industry.

On the other hand, make sure that you have absolutely no other solution, as a resume summary always makes a better impression than a resume objective . To learn more about a resume objective just scroll to the following chapter. 

Here’s an example of a professional summary for someone changing careers:

• Marketing professional with over three years of experience in digital advertising, aiming to transition from marketing to human resources
• Certified Human Resources Assistant with a working knowledge of all software programs needed for the position such as Bamboo HR and Zenefits.
• Was in charge of recruiting and supervising summer interns and co-managing marketing budgets.
• Won the Employee of the Month Award for completing all assigned tasks and projects in a timely manner.

How to write a professional summary for a resume with no work experience? 

A lot of people with no work experience default to writing a resume objective because they think they have nothing to summarize.

However, this usually ends up backfiring as the resume objective brings little to the table. That’s because the resume objective’s main focus is on you as opposed to a professional summary which focuses on solving the needs of a company.

Also, writing a summary objective can make you appear more inexperienced than you truly are. 

Instead, as someone with no work experience, you can write a professional summary by including: 

• Your education level;
• Adjectives that emphasize your work ethic (such as competent, decisive, and accountable);
• Relevant skills gained at school, volunteering , or internships; 
• Professional hobbies (for example if applying for an IT position, include that app side project you worked on). 

In addition, if you have volunteered or interned, know that regardless of whether they were paid or not, they're still considered work experience. As the skills and knowledge gained as a volunteer or intern can be quite valuable to an employer. 

With that said, here’s an example of a professional summary for someone with no work experience:

People United Foundation – Fundraiser Volunteer 

• Resourceful and talented fundraiser who uses new forms of technology and existing techniques to help raise money for organizations and groups. 
• Experienced in raising funds for various charitable and nonprofit institutes. 
• Adept at researching and presenting an array of innovative fundraising ideas to a variety of donor audiences. 
• Keen negotiator with exceptional communication time management and networking abilities. 

Resume summary vs resume objective and resume profile

While these terms are often interchangeable, a resume summary, a resume objective, and a resume profile are all slightly different things. Scroll below to see how. 

What is a resume objective?

First of all, a resume objective isn't the same thing as a resume summary. They share several common features but each serves a different purpose.

Like a resume summary, a resume objective also sits at the top of your resume. Though, it’s a bit shorter — usually about one to two sentences long . 

The biggest difference is that instead of your past accomplishments, it details your future goals.

Although a resume objective might not help hiring managers decide whether you’re qualified enough to solve their company’s problems, it may help you shift their attention away from your lack of experience.

With that said, resume objectives are a bit old-fashioned as they used to be more common in past. So it should only be written as a last resort.

What is a resume profile?

Most people think that the resume profile and resume summary are the same exact thing. And they aren't that wrong. 

However, there are some slight differences between the two. 

A resume profile tends to be a little longer than a resume summary. Still, you should try to keep it under 500 characters. Additionally, while a resume summary is simply a condensed version of your resume placed at the top of it, a resume profile focuses more on your professional accomplishments and successes. 

Still — a resume summary and a resume profile are basically the same thing. So don't worry too much about the difference between the two. Just make sure you'll include either of them in your resume. 

Final tips and tricks

We've already mentioned almost everything you need to write an effective professional summary. These are some of the final tips that didn't fit anywhere else in this guide:

• Emphasize proven experience. Instead of simply listing your skills , mention your previous accomplishments. For example, it’s much more impactful to say that you had your articles published in Forbes than to plainly claim that you’re a skilled writer.
• Try to avoid using the word “I” . It's not really necessary, especially if you write in bullet points. 
• Structure it well. Take it from a professional writer — bullet points are a godsend when you need to structure your text clearly without giving it too much effort. Not only will they naturally order your resume statement into clearly delineated logical parts, but they'll also make it look good and read well. Also, make sure to write your current job title in bold.
• Keep it short. Your summary shouldn’t be longer than 5 short sentences (or bullet points). Having a long summary sort of defeats the point of having a resume summary at all. Don’t add random things. The key is to be specific.
• Read it after yourself. When you’re finished writing, read through your summary from the perspective of a hiring manager, asking “Why should we hire you?” .

Oh, and if you want to turn your LinkedIn profile into a polished resume with just one click, we've got you covered.

How to write a resume summary?

Write your professional summary last. It’s surprisingly easy once you’ve already written other sections of your resume. In the first bullet point, include your job title and years of experience. Then cherry-pick the most impressive achievements and cram them into 4–5 bullet points.

There are some slight differences between a resume profile and a resume summary. A resume profile tends to be a little longer than a resume summary. Still, you should try to keep it under 500 characters. A resume profile also focuses more on your professional accomplishments and successes than a resume summary. 

Kaja Jurčišinová

Kaja Jurcisinova is a fresh graduate and a junior copywriter at Kickresume. Kaja completed her undergraduate degree in Art History at the University of St Andrews in 2018 and graduated with a Master’s in Arts and Culture from the University of Groningen in 2021. She was an intern at multiple cultural institutions across Europe, including the Dutch Museum Association in Amsterdam, the Matter of Art Biennale in Prague, and the European Cultural Centre in Venice. At the moment, she resides in Visby on the Swedish island of Gotland.

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Apple Intelligence Preview

AI for the rest of us.

Coming in beta this fall *

Built into your iPhone, iPad, and Mac to help you write, express yourself, and get things done effortlessly.

Draws on your personal context while setting a brand-new standard for privacy in AI.

Write with intelligent new tools. Everywhere words matter.

Apple Intelligence powers new Writing Tools, which help you find just the right words virtually everywhere you write. With enhanced language capabilities, you can summarize an entire lecture in seconds, get the short version of a long group thread, and minimize unnecessary distractions with prioritized notifications.

Explore new features for writing, focus, and communication.

Transform how you communicate using intelligent Writing Tools that can proofread your text, rewrite different versions until the tone and wording are just right, and summarize selected text with a tap. Writing Tools are available nearly everywhere you write, including third-party apps.

Priority notifications appear at the top of the stack, letting you know what to pay attention to at a glance. And notifications are summarized, so you can scan them faster.

Priority messages in Mail elevate time-sensitive messages to the top of your inbox — like an invitation that has a deadline today or a check-in reminder for your flight this afternoon.

Tap to reveal a summary of a long email in the Mail app and cut to the chase. You can also view summaries of email right from your inbox.

Just hit record in the Notes or Phone apps to capture audio recordings and transcripts. Apple Intelligence generates summaries of your transcripts, so you can get to the most important information at a glance.

Reduce Interruptions is an all-new Focus that understands the content of your notifications and shows you the ones that might need immediate attention, like a text about picking up your child from daycare later today.

Use a Smart Reply in Mail to quickly draft an email response with all the right details. Apple Intelligence can identify questions you were asked in an email and offer relevant selections to include in your response. With a few taps you’re ready to send a reply with key questions answered.

Delightful images created just for you.

Apple Intelligence enables delightful new ways to express yourself visually. Create fun, original images and brand-new Genmoji that are truly personal to you. Turn a rough sketch into a related image that complements your notes with Image Wand. And make a custom memory movie based on the description you provide.

Create expressive images, unique Genmoji, and custom memory movies.

Produce fun, original images in seconds with the Image Playground experience right in your apps. Create an entirely new image based on a description, suggested concepts, and even a person from your Photos library. You can easily adjust the style and make changes to match a Messages thread, your Freeform board, or a slide in Keynote.

Experiment with different concepts and try out image styles like animation, illustration, and sketch in the dedicated Image Playground app . Create custom images to share with friends in other apps or on social media.

Make a brand-new Genmoji right in the keyboard to match any conversation. Provide a description to see a preview, and adjust your description until it’s perfect. You can even pick someone from your Photos library and create a Genmoji that looks like them.

Image Wand can transform your rough sketch into a related image in the Notes app. Use your finger or Apple Pencil to draw a circle around your sketch, and Image Wand will analyze the content around it to produce a complementary visual. You can even circle an empty space, and Image Wand will use the surrounding context to create a picture.

Create a custom memory movie of the story you want to see, right in Photos. Enter a description, and Apple Intelligence finds the best photos and videos that match. It then crafts a storyline with unique chapters based on themes it identifies and arranges your photos into a movie with its own narrative arc.

Search for photos and videos in the Photos app simply by describing what you’re looking for. Apple Intelligence can even find a particular moment in a video clip that fits your search description and take you right to it.

Remove distractions in your photos with the Clean Up tool in the Photos app. Apple Intelligence identifies background objects so you can remove them with a tap and perfect your shot — while staying true to the original image.

The start of a new era for Siri.

Siri draws on Apple Intelligence for all-new superpowers. With an all-new design, richer language understanding, and the ability to type to Siri whenever it’s convenient for you, communicating with Siri is more natural than ever. Equipped with awareness of your personal context, the ability to take action in and across apps, and product knowledge about your devices’ features and settings, Siri will be able to assist you like never before.

Discover an even more capable, integrated, personal Siri.

Siri has an all-new design that’s even more deeply integrated into the system experience, with an elegant, glowing light that wraps around the edge of your screen.

With a double tap on the bottom of your iPhone or iPad screen, you can type to Siri from anywhere in the system when you don’t want to speak out loud.

Tap into the expansive product knowledge Siri has about your devices’ features and settings. You can ask questions when you’re learning how to do something new on your iPhone, iPad, and Mac, and Siri can give you step-by-step directions in a flash.

Siri, set an alarm for — oh wait no, set a timer for 10 minutes. Actually, make that 5.

Richer language understanding and an enhanced voice make communicating with Siri even more natural. And when you refer to something you mentioned in a previous request, like the location of a calendar event you just created, and ask ”What will the weather be like there?” Siri knows what you’re talking about.

Apple Intelligence empowers Siri with onscreen awareness , so it can understand and take action with things on your screen. If a friend texts you their new address, you can say “Add this address to their contact card,” and Siri will take care of it.

Awareness of your personal context enables Siri to help you in ways that are unique to you. Can’t remember if a friend shared that recipe with you in a note, a text, or an email? Need your passport number while booking a flight? Siri can use its knowledge of the information on your device to help find what you’re looking for, without compromising your privacy.

Seamlessly take action in and across apps with Siri. You can make a request like “Send the email I drafted to April and Lilly” and Siri knows which email you’re referencing and which app it’s in. And Siri can take actions across apps, so after you ask Siri to enhance a photo for you by saying “Make this photo pop,” you can ask Siri to drop it in a specific note in the Notes app — without lifting a finger.

Great powers come with great privacy.

Apple Intelligence is designed to protect your privacy at every step. It’s integrated into the core of your iPhone, iPad, and Mac through on-device processing. So it’s aware of your personal information without collecting your personal information. And with groundbreaking Private Cloud Compute, Apple Intelligence can draw on larger server-based models, running on Apple silicon, to handle more complex requests for you while protecting your privacy.

Private Cloud Compute

• Your data is never stored
• Used only for your requests
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ChatGPT, seamlessly integrated.

With ChatGPT from OpenAI integrated into Siri and Writing Tools, you get even more expertise when it might be helpful for you — no need to jump between tools. Siri can tap into ChatGPT for certain requests, including questions about photos or documents. And with Compose in Writing Tools, you can create and illustrate original content from scratch.

You control when ChatGPT is used and will be asked before any of your information is shared. Anyone can access ChatGPT for free, without creating an account. ChatGPT subscribers can connect accounts to access paid features within these experiences.

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New App Intents, APIs, and frameworks make it incredibly easy for developers to integrate system-level features like Siri, Writing Tools, and Image Playground into your favorite apps.

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Apple Intelligence is compatible with these devices.

Apple Intelligence is free to use and will initially be available in U.S. English. Coming in beta this fall. *

• iPhone 15 Pro Max A17 Pro
• iPhone 15 Pro A17 Pro
• iPad Pro M1 and later
• iPad Air M1 and later
• MacBook Air M1 and later
• MacBook Pro M1 and later
• iMac M1 and later
• Mac mini M1 and later
• Mac Studio M1 Max and later
• Mac Pro M2 Ultra