How to Write a Resume with No Job Experience

By Stacey Wonder16 July 2015

How to Write a Resume with No Job Experience

Very often university graduates are afraid to apply for a job, even if they have enough theoretical knowledge in the field. The reason is that they lack work experience and think they’re not good enough for the position. Graduate students are not sure what to write in their resume, because it’s the first time they’re applying for a job! Therefore, some of them might need help from professional writers, others would just need to read several guides on top resources about resume writing. So what should you include in your resume if you don’t have any real work experience? Here are some tips that will help you out!

Academic Strengths, Achievements and Skills

Write more about your education. Let the potential employer know more about the courses you took and your highest achievements on some of them. And what’s more important – describe the skills you’ve gained at school that will be helpful in your future work. It would be better to tell more about real-life situations, when you actually applied those skills.

• Attach your GPA, if it’s high.
• Add the topic of your thesis – your employer would want to know.
• Include information about internships, summer jobs and other activities.
• Include all your internships and part-time jobs. Even if you worked for free, such jobs still count! Describe your main responsibilities and tasks. It would be great if you could write more about new practical knowledge you got when doing these jobs.
• If you worked as a volunteer – include this information as well. It will show your personal attributes better.

Recommendations

If you had a part-time job or did an internship, ask your employer to write you a letter of recommendation. It will be great to include some examples, when you showed excellent communication skills or leadership.

Also you can ask your professor to give feedback on your studies. Professor’s recommendations can prove you were a hardworking student, who was eager to learn new things. Such people are great for the job!

Be Specific

It would be much better to write a different resume for each job opening. You can include only relevant information and needed skills for the specific job.In the title mention the position you are applying to. Your resume shouldn’t be too general. You can’t possibly apply to 100 jobs with the same resume, it wouldn’t be impressive at all.

Courses, Online Specializations and Languages

Do not forget to mention your foreign language proficiency. It will make your resume look much better. Even if you’re not an expert in the language and know only the basics, mention it.

Also, if you have any certificates from the courses you took – include the information about them as well. Mention new skills you’ve got and how useful they are for the position.

Write about online courses and specializations (for example Coursera) you took. Since you’re writing a resume for a specific job, include only those courses which will be great for it.

Personal Traits

Don’t include this section in your resume or make it as short as you can. No one will spend some time on reading the essay, where you describe your character. You can use a cover letter to tell more about yourself.

In your cover letter you can describe the qualities you think are the most important for the employer. Are you an honest and reliable person? Or maybe you can communicate with people very well? Or you’re great at time-management and can do a lot of tasks at the same time? Be specific.

Layout

• Make sure it is not too long. HR specialists don’t spend a lot of time on a resume. They see hundreds of them all the time. One page would be great. Describe only the relevant information, that will be interesting for the employer.
• Don’t write too many general paragraphs just to compensate the lack of work experience. You need to keep everything short, so the HR could see only key info.
• Don’t send your resume in rare formats. It would be better to use .doc or .pdf.

Now you know how to write a good resume without any work experience! We would also recommend you to read our blog post on basic resume rules and step-by-step guide on writing a resume one need to follow to create a great resume. If you are a graduate student without any experience, you still can impress your potential employer. Be creative and let them see how awesome you are!