How to Help Your Resume When You Have Little Experience

How to have good resume with little experience: 

Name 

Email 

Contact Phone Number 

Education 

Explain where you are currently studying, expected year to graduate, and your degree. This should be straight to the point about where you are in your life, though you can add any Dean’s List or other awards. If you studied abroad, don’t forget to add that school to your list. You can add your cumulative GPA if you want to, but I would only do so if it is high enough to make you stand out. Otherwise, it is unnecessary.   

Activities & Societies  

Are you in Greek life, a club, or sports team? Are you a part of an academic society at school? Did you receive any scholarships or awards for your involvement or performance? Mention all of these things. You can also say what your position is, or what you do in order to be a part of said activity.  If you have any long-term public service you could outline this as well in either hours or specific services.   

Experience  

If it is something you do not have much of, that’s okay! You can stretch even a quick job you had over summer to something that was life changing (or close to it). If you were helping out in an office doing odd jobs for someone, name yourself a personal assistant. These small changes can make the job sound worthwhile and you can also personalized to the job you’re applying for. When listing what your tasks were for each job, remember to mix up your verbs so you don’t sound repetitive– the thesaurus is your friend!  After reading the description of the job or internship, if you can update the descriptions on your resume it would make you seem like a better fit for the position.  

If you were in any customer service roles you can discuss your strengths in hospitality. Mention what you learned in each position and especially how you grew to showcase your development.   

Core Qualifications 

I’m sure you have multiple social media accounts and that would make you proficient, right? Where did you get your leadership skills? Here you can discuss why you’re different and what makes you stand out. You only want to list skills that would be relevant to the job you are applying for. If you are applying to be a waitress for example, how many words a minute you can type would not be relevant.  

Other Tips

Remember, resumes are all different and there are plenty of ways to format them. You may want to include more volunteer work if you have little work experience and vice-versa. This is essentially an outline of your strengths so don’t be shy mentioning everything! There are a ton of templates online, so get to googling and find the one that fits you best. Don’t be afraid to be bold, but keep it simple and straight forward. You want to make sure that whoever is reading your resume can easily identify the sections and that it is easy to read. When listing your descriptions, whether it be for work experience, volunteer experience, or activities, use bullets instead of paragraphs as they are easier on the eyes.  You want to keep your resume at one page, however, you also don’t want to have a lot of blank space. So, make sure you really stretch out your tasks and roles.  

Also, before you send your resume in do not forget to save it as a PDF file and save it under your name. You want to make sure that no matter what computer they are on, your file will open correctly.   

Good luck, it’s tough out there!