Your first resume when you have no work experience

Most new graduates and freshers open a blank document and stare at it. The only thing they know for sure is that they have nothing to put under "Work experience", so they pad the page with a long objective and a list of hobbies and hope for the best.

You can skip that. A first resume is not a record of jobs. It is a short, honest case that you can do the work, and you already have more material for that case than you think.

What a recruiter can judge when there is no job history

With no employer names to go on, the person reading your resume looks for proof that you have done something, finished it and can explain it. Proof comes from places you have already been: your degree, a project you built, an internship, a competition, a certificate you earned by actually sitting through the course, a part-time job.

So the job of the page is simple. Put the strongest proof near the top, say what you did in plain words, and stop before it gets padded.

The order that works for a first resume

Without work history, education usually goes first, because it is your most recent and most solid fact. Then, roughly in this order:

1. Your name and contact details (a professional email, a phone number, your city and region, and a LinkedIn link if the profile is in decent shape)
2. A two-line summary, only if you can make it specific
3. Education
4. Projects
5. Internships or training, if you have them
6. Skills
7. Achievements and certifications

After your first job, flip it: experience goes above education. Until then, education leads.

On a real page, that order looks like this:

Writing a project so it sounds like work

Most project descriptions say what the project was about and nothing about what the person did. A line that names only the topic tells a recruiter what the project was. It does not tell them whether you wrote the code, copied a tutorial or sat at the back of a team of four.

A better description answers four things: what you built, with which tools, what it could do, and which part was yours.

Notice there is no made-up number in it. If you do have a real one, such as how many records the system handled in testing or how many people used the app you built, add it. If you don't, leave it out. A plain true sentence beats a made-up statistic every time, and you will be asked about it in the interview.

(The student above is fictional, like every sample in these guides.) The bullet point guide explains how to turn each line into a result.

Part-time and holiday jobs count

Plenty of students have worked: a till at weekends, food deliveries in the evening, a summer in a warehouse or on a farm, tutoring younger children. Many leave it off because it has nothing to do with the job they want next. Put it back.

A part-time job shows that someone trusted you with money, customers, a schedule or a van, and that you turned up when you said you would. Every first employer wants to know that. Give it a short entry under a heading such as Work experience, after your projects. One or two lines are enough, written like anything else on the page: what you did, how much of it, and anything you were trusted with.

If the job is close to the role you want, such as café work when you are applying to hotels, it can move higher, straight after education.

Grades, marks and what to do about them

Write your grade with its scale, for example 8.2/10 or 3.4/4.0, or your percentage, and do the same for your school results if the application asks for them. Some companies do set a cut-off on marks, so a missing number can look like a hidden one.

If your marks are on the lower side, don't try to disguise them. Keep them accurate and move your projects and skills higher on the page so that the reader sees your work first. For what each entry needs and where the section goes, see the education section guide.

What to leave out

An objective that says you are seeking "a challenging position in a leading organization" can be pasted onto anyone's resume, which is exactly why it tells the reader nothing. Either write two specific lines about the kind of role you want and what you can already do, or skip the section.

Skip the long hobbies list too. One line is fine if a hobby connects to the job, such as running a college coding club or writing a technical blog. "Reading, music, traveling" fills space and nothing else.

Keep it to one page

One page is the norm for a first resume, and it is worth being strict about it. If it spills over, you have probably explained something twice or included a project that does not support the role. Cut that before you shrink the font.

If your college or university gives you a required format, follow it. Then check that the text is plain and selectable, because a resume stuffed into tables and boxes can come out jumbled when software reads it.

Before you send it

Read it once as a stranger. Can you tell what role you want, what you have built and where you studied within about ten seconds? If yes, you are done. If not, the fix is almost always to cut, not to add.

Open the Builder when you are ready and write your first draft there. The "How software reads it" view shows how a reader will see your text, so you can catch jumbled lines before anyone else does.