How to write a resume with no experience

What counts as experience on a first resume?

Anything where you did real work for someone or for something you cared about: internships and co-ops, part-time and summer jobs, volunteering, student clubs, school and group projects, and things you built on your own. An employer reading a graduate's resume looks for what you can do, so a café job where you trained new starters is evidence, as long as you name it for what it is.

• Internships, co-ops and apprenticeships go under Experience, with the word Intern or Co-op in the title.
• Part-time, weekend and summer jobs stay on the page. Serving customers, handling cash and training others are skills every employer understands.
• Volunteering and student clubs count when you held a role with responsibility, such as treasurer or events lead.
• School, group and personal projects get their own Projects section, each labeled with its kind.
• Never relabel: a school project stays a school project, and an unpaid role keeps its real title.

Which section goes first on a resume with no experience?

Education goes first while it is your strongest evidence, followed by Experience, Projects, Skills and Activities. Once you hold a role that says more about you than your degree, Experience moves up.

• Header: name, city, email, phone, and a LinkedIn or portfolio link if it shows your work.
• Education: degree, school, dates or expected graduation date, and the coursework, thesis or capstone that matches the job.
• Experience: internships, co-ops, part-time jobs and volunteering roles, newest first.
• Projects: two or three, each with what you did and what came of it.
• Skills: the tools and languages you can use today, with your level where it matters.
• One page. A graduate resume that runs to two pages usually repeats itself.

Do you need a summary or an objective?

A two-line summary helps when it names the job you want and the two things that make you credible for it. Skip the generic objective, such as "seeking a challenging role": it tells the reader nothing they could not guess.

• Say the role you are aiming for, your degree or field, and one proof point.
• Example: "Business graduate aiming for a junior marketing role. Ran social media for a student club of 300 members and co-wrote a pricing study for a local shop."
• Rewrite it for each job, using the posting's words where they are true for you.

How do you write bullet points when you have never had a full-time job?

Use the same pattern as any bullet: start with what you did, say how much or how many, and end on what changed. A school project or a part-time job has all three, even when the numbers are small.

• Start with a verb: organized, built, trained, analyzed, wrote.
• Add the scale you know: how many people, customers, hours or pages.
• End on the result: what got done, decided, sold or learned.
• Use only figures you can stand behind in an interview. An honest small number beats an invented big one.

Which skills should a graduate put on a resume?

The ones the posting asks for that you can show somewhere else on the page. In NACE's Job Outlook 2025 survey, nearly 90% of employers said they look for evidence of problem-solving skills on a student's resume, and nearly 80% for teamwork, so point to where you did both.

• Hard skills: software, languages and methods, such as Excel, Python, Figma, SQL or Spanish, each one you can use today.
• Soft skills: do not just list them. Show them in a bullet, such as a group project you led or a rush you handled.
• Use the posting's words when they are true for you, so a search for that skill finds you.

What mistakes make a graduate resume look weak?

Most weak graduate resumes hide what the person did. They list duties instead of work, drop part-time jobs out of embarrassment, or pad the page with vague skills.

• Leaving out part-time or unpaid work because it feels unrelated.
• Listing course titles without saying what you produced in them.
• Inventing figures or titles. Interviewers ask about every line.
• Using a two-column template with icons and skill bars, which applicant tracking systems often read badly.
• Sending the same resume to every posting.

Entry-level postings

Should you apply if you don't meet every requirement?

Apply when you meet the required items. On an entry-level posting, the preferred list describes the ideal hire, and employers rarely expect a graduate to have all of it. Cover every required item, show the preferred ones you have, and say how you would learn the rest.

What is the difference between required and preferred on a job posting?

Required items, often under "requirements", "must have" or "you have", are the ones an employer screens on: a degree in a field, a language, a work permit, sometimes a license. Preferred items, under "nice to have", "a plus" or "bonus", describe the ideal hire. An entry-level employer expects to teach many of them, especially tools, software and internal processes.

A junior posting asks for 1 to 2 years of experience. Should I still apply?

Usually, yes, if you meet the other required items. On an entry-level posting, a year or two of experience is often a wish rather than a filter, and internships, co-ops, part-time work and projects count toward it. When a junior title asks for five years or more, the title and the requirements disagree, and your time is usually better spent on another posting.

How do I show a required item I only have from school?

Say where you got it. If the posting requires Excel and you used it for a statistics project, list Excel under Skills and write the project bullet so it shows what you did with it. A required item you can point to is covered, wherever you learned it.

When you add a posting to the JobMentis job tracker during a first job search, it sorts the requirements into Required, Preferred and Often learned on the job, and shows a must-have that only asks for a year or two of experience as preferred, with a note that says why.