If you googled “how to make a resume for my first job”, you probably need help writing and designing your first resume. Don’t worry if you don’t have work experience, because for everything there is always a first time and we will be your guide.
Whoever said that it is not possible to get a job without experience, it is because they did not learn how to make a resume for a first job.
And yes, we know that most job offers require years of experience, postgraduate degrees and that you know how to revive dinosaurs. all this at a young age!
However, you don’t have to wait to meet all the requirements to face the job market, because even if you have recently graduated from high school or college, you can learn how to make a professional resume without experience to take the plunge.
In this article you will learn how to make a resume for the first time to get the dream interview that will give you the golden ticket to a job without experience. In addition, at the end we leave you a list of resources that will help you learn how to look for a job, and an example of a resume without experience model. start your career off on the right foot!
1. Write an attractive headline
To know how to craft a resume for your first job, you must keep one thing in mind: enamoring recruiters with the details. In addition to including your first name – not the nickname your friends have given you – be creative and use the headline of a resume to sell yourself.
For a resume with no work experience, you have 2 options:
If you just graduated from college, you can put a description related to the position you aspire to for your first job. You can also use what you learned during your social service and that, of course, is relevant to the job offer you are applying for.
For example, if you are looking for a job in a bookstore in your city, the headline of your CV without experience would look like this:
Tatiana Forero Rubiano, Spanish tutor with studies in Latin American literature.
Now, if you have completed your degree or professional career, you can use in your resume without work experience what you learned in your internship. You can also make a description of the specialization towards which you want to shape your career.
For example, if you are looking for a job in a startup, you can put this in your CV without experience:
Tatiana Forero Rubiano Professional in Business with emphasis in Creative Industries.
Avoid leaving only your name or putting a very generic headline for your CV without experience, such as “Bachelor” or “Professional” without a complement.
Pro tip for making a resume for your first job. Include a photo.
Although not a mandatory requirement on a resume with no experience, including a well-lit profile photo that shows a friendly expression can make a greater impact on the recruiter. To know what photo to put on your resume, look for one that is of quality and, depending on the job, has a certain formality to it.
Source: Pexels
2. Include your personal and contact information
Learning how to make a resume for your first job requires you to put your personal and contact information. Only then will recruiters be able to contact you to schedule an interview.
The personal data that cannot be missing in a resume without experience are:
Full name.
Contact telephone number.
E-mail address.
LinkedIn profile -this is optional, but it is very useful to get a job without experience, especially if you know this social network and have more or less idea of how to search for a job on LinkedIn-.
To know how to make a resume without work experience, make sure the information is updated. If you have an email you created when you were 8 years old with the name of your favorite animated series, open a new one to convey professionalism.
Also, keep in mind that most companies today are not interested in your address, age or marital status. You can omit these fields from a resume with no experience, as long as they are not a requirement for the job opening.
This section of your resume without work experience should look like this:
Tatiana Forero Rubiano.
+57 320 246 6357.
tatiana_forero@gmail.com.
LinkedIn: @tatianaforerororubiano.
Avoid this on a CV with no experience:
Tatiana Forero Rubiano.
Single.
18 years old.
princesadelrock@gmail.com.
Pro tip for making a resume for your first job. Link your portfolio.
what to put on a resume with no experience to make more of an impact? You can create a portfolio with the jobs, assignments and writings you did in high school or college. This way you will practice show not tell and the recruiter will see, for themselves, what you are capable of.
3. Detail your professional profile, with professional goals and objectives
In a CV without experience you can take advantage of this section to comment on your areas of professional interest, in which aspects you are strong, how you can add value and what you want to achieve professionally in the short and medium term.
Here is a good example of a student resume:
Undergraduate business student looking for career opportunities in marketing or advertising projects. Informed about market trends. Looking to develop myself in creative teams and contribute to create campaigns that increase the company’s return on investment.
And here is an example of a student resume that you should not follow:
Responsible business student looking for their first job to apply their market knowledge and gain more work experience.
Pro tip for making a resume for your first job. Avoid cliché phrases.
Adjectives like “responsible” or statements like “work under pressure” don’t make the impact you expect, because if you’re applying for a job with no experience, recruiters already expect that from you.
use adjectives and phrases that describe your particular strengths!
4. Describe your educational background
Knowing how to write a resume for your first job means that you should pay the most attention to the educational background section, especially if you have no experience.
In the educational background section of a resume with no experience you should include:
Name of your educational institution (college or university).
Name of the degree you attended if you went to college or university.
Period in which you were a student (if you are an active university student, include the semester you are currently studying).
If your level of study is higher and includes undergraduate or graduate degrees, it is not necessary to include secondary education to make a resume for the first time, as it is understood that you have already gone through it.
Pro tip for making a resume for your first job. Take your CV to the top with your recognitions and achievements.
If you took a summer course, got an honorable mention, won a scholarship or were part of a special project, don’t hesitate to include it on a resume without work experience to show yourself more competent!
Here are two examples of educational backgrounds for a resume with no work experience:
Liceo Santa Paula, Colombia
Bachelor’s degree with emphasis in business management (2015-2020).
Full scholarship.
Grade point average: 4.3/5.0.
La Salle University, Colombia
Business Professional (2012-2017).
Honorable mention for the Best Entrepreneurship Project.
Average grade: 4.6/5.0.
Source: Pexels
5. Describe your complementary education
One way to successfully complement your academic profile in a CV without work experience is with complementary training. In this section you can include information about the congresses, seminars, courses, diplomas or certifications you have completed.
Pro tip to make a resume for your first job. Enroll in virtual courses.
The advantage of online courses is that you can learn the skills of your interest at your own pace. At WP you find online courses in creativity, business, lifestyle and more.
This is a sample student resume for the further education section:
Digital Marketing Certification – WP
Google Analytics Certification – WP
6. Briefly explain your extracurricular activities
While you may not have had formal professional experience, you have surely faced other challenges that have helped you develop skills and build your professional profile. include them in your resume format without work experience!
You can include activities such as social service, internships, volunteering, working in a family business, participating in research groups or research groups to get a job without experience. Order them chronologically from the most recent experience to the oldest.
Write your experience in extracurricular activities including the following information in your CV without experience:
Name of position.
Name of the organization or company.
Period in which you performed the activity.
Brief description of your duties.
Digital Marketing Assistant
Communications department of Liceo Santa Paula (2019-2020).
Content creation for the blog and social networks.
Prospecting and lead qualification.
Volunteer
red Cross (March 2017).
Management of 5 playful writing activities for children.
Preparation of weekly management reports.
Here’s what you should avoid for your first resume format:
Digital Marketing Assistant at Liceo Santa Paula
Volunteer at Red Cross
Pro tip for making a resume for your first job. Mention your responsibilities and accomplishments.
To complement your resume without experience, detail the activities in which you participated and show your accomplishments with numbers whenever possible. this will make you stand out from other candidates!
Source: Freepik.
7. Highlight your skills, abilities and knowledge
Knowing how to make a resume for your first job involves you “throwing in some flowers”. You can make a section to highlight your skills and abilities like:
Proficiency in a second language.
Programs you know how to use.
Competencies and skills related to the job offer.
Pro tip to make a resume for your first job. Specify your level of proficiency.
For your skills and knowledge, it is advisable to include a percentage to determine your level of mastery of these skills. Include only the skills that you have developed from an intermediate level onwards. If you are a beginner, it is better to avoid them.
Here is a good example of skills and abilities for a resume without experience:
Skills
Teamwork.
Creativity.
Assertive communication.
Skills and knowledge
English – Advanced.
Adobe Suite – Intermediate.
Google Analytics – Advanced.
And here’s what to avoid on your CV without experience:
Skills
Responsible.
Punctual.
Skills and knowledge
Chinese – Beginner.
Microsoft Excel – Basic.
8. Include information about your interests and hobbies
If you have hobbies and interests that may be relevant to the job you are applying for or that are in tune with the company, feel free to include them when making your resume for the first time.
For example:
Interests and hobbies
Digital illustration with Photoshop.
Portrait photography.
Here’s what you should avoid for your first resume format:
Interests and hobbies
Soccer.
Painting.
Cooking.
Pro tip for making a resume for your first job. Don’t overdo the list of interests and hobbies.
Don’t add more than 4 interests, especially if they are unrelated.
Source: Pexels
9. Attach a letter of recommendation
Finally, you can give more relevance to your CV without experience if you include a letter of recommendation from a teacher or project manager in which you have worked.
No matter if you want to learn how to make a resume to attach to your LinkedIn profile or if you want to print it out to hand out on some sites you know, recommendations often have a positive effect on the opinion of recruiters.
If it’s your first resume you probably won’t have many recommendations to include, but you can certainly check with teachers of some subjects you’ve excelled in and see if they can make a letter of recommendation to highlight your skills.
Other tips for making a professional resume without experience
A curriculum vitae (CV) is a resume that evidences your experiences, skills, knowledge and professional interests. It is your first contact with job offers without experience.
But to get a job without experience, especially when we are recent graduates, we have to face the following paradox: no experience means no job, but no job means no experience.
The question is: how to make a resume without work experience?
don’t worry! There is a light at the end of the tunnel.
You just have to remember everything you did in your student years – not at parties – to accomplish the mission of getting a job with no experience. anything relevant to the position and of interest to the company is welcome!
Next, we ‘ll tell you about some other things to keep in mind when learning how to make a resume for your first job.
Keep it short. Don’t try to compensate for a lack of experience with a treatise of irrelevant information about why you are the ideal candidate for a certain job.
In a CV with no experience you should highlight your professional training. If you don’t have too much, give priority to your skills and abilities, or better, complement it with free WP courses.
Look for opportunities to gain more experience before applying for a job offer: volunteering, internships or unpaid internships.
To make a resume for the first time, keep it short, 1 or maximum 2 sheets.
Be precise. Include only relevant information, as recruiters can receive hundreds of resumes and, therefore, they want to know everything about the candidates in the shortest possible time.
Before sending the CV to get a job without experience, check your writing and spelling.
Source: Pexels
Sample resume with no work experience
No one is completely inexperienced. So the trick to learning how to make a resume for your first job is to highlight your strengths, so they shine brighter than your weaknesses.
Let’s say you want to enter the Digital Marketing market and you find the following job offer:
Profile. A communications assistant is required to support the creation of graphic and written content pieces, manage campaigns and fetch coffee for team members. (Ok, maybe not the latter, but you know there’s no shortage of hazing in the workplace).
Salary. US$2/hour.
Schedule. Monday to Saturday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
With the number of unemployed in Latin America reaching 47 million by the end of 2020, you need the job! What, come on, it’s not too bad to be the first one either. Remember, the point is to gain experience.
For now, here’s a sample resume for your first job:
Tatiana Forero Rubiano
Spanish tutor with studies in Latin American literature.
Contact information
+57 320 246 6357.
tatiana_forero@gmail.com.
LinkedIn: @tatianaforerorubiano.
Professional profile
Business degree student looking for opportunities in creative, communication, marketing or advertising projects. Graduated from Liceo Santa Paula with the highest grade of the course. Knowledge in traditional marketing, project management and digital communication. Seeks to support content creation and increase ROI with generated campaigns.
Academic background
La Salle University, Colombia.
Second semester business student (2020 – present).
Instructor of the Logistics course.
Average grade: 4.6/5.0.
Complementary training
Certificate in Digital Marketing – WP.
Certificate in Google Analytics – WP.
Extracurricular experience
Digital Marketing Assistant.
Communications department of Liceo Santa Paula (2019-2020).
Content creation for blog and social media.
Prospecting and lead qualification.
Volunteer.
Red Cross (March 2017).
Management of 5 playful writing activities for children.
Preparation of weekly management reports.
Skills
Leadership.
Good spelling.
Communication skills.
Skills and knowledge
English – Advanced.
Adobe Suite – Intermediate.
Google Analytics – Advanced.
Interests and Hobbies
Creative writing.
Participant of the book club at La Salle University.
Source: Pexels
Resources for writing a resume with no work experience
You probably already have the knowledge you needed to create your first resume, but you don’t have to do everything from scratch. The WP Creative team has designed a package of very useful resources for those who want to write a resume and prefer to save time and effort.
At this point we will share with you resume templates, cover letters and personal reference formats. Each of them was designed taking into account all the tips we gave you on how to make a resume for the first time, so you can be sure that with them you will manage to create an effective resume.
In addition, we cannot fail to emphasize that all these resources to polish your professional profile and make your resume are totally free. you can download them at no cost whenever you need them and as many times as you want!
We know that creating a resume without experience can be challenging. don’t panic! With this list of resources making your first resume will be a piece of cake.
Creative Resume Pack
Your first time job seeker resume has to be awesome, meaning it should not only have the must-have information, but it should also have a good design. But don’t worry if you are not good at using graphic design programs, because with this creative resume pack you will find the ideal template to make your first resume.
The download file includes a total of three creative resume templates that you can customize according to your tastes and needs. The resume templates are designed in Adobe Illustrator, so you must have the program installed on your computer to be able to edit them.
To use it you only need to download the file and open the PDF document with Illustrator, to be able to make the editions of your first resume. Since it is in this format, the download is very fast, it will only take you a couple of seconds.
Remember all the tips we told you about how to make a resume for the first time, so that you can include all the information of interest to recruiters. If you have some experience using Illustrator you can also combine the elements of the templates and come up with your own design.
creative resume pack
Creative resume templates
These resume templates will also surprise you, since they were also designed taking into account each of the elements that recruiters review when viewing a resume. To use them you don’t have to have any knowledge of how to make a resume in Illustrator either, because all you have to do is edit and replace the information to your liking.
The download package includes three different resume templates in PDF and .ai format in case you want to edit them directly in Illustrator without opening the PDF.
Additionally, you will also find a folder with 10 fonts that will help you to style your first resume.
When you download you will realize that there is nothing as easy as making a resume for the first time. In total, you won’t spend more than 10 minutes customizing your resume.
Pro tip for making your first resume with these templates: take advantage of the photo space to make your profile attractive, use an image with good resolution.
resume templates
Simple resume templates in Word
The formats we will talk about here are simpler and simpler than the previous ones, but they are no less effective for that. If you are looking for something more sober and consider that your profile does not need colors and shapes to attract attention, then these resume templates in Word are ideal for you.
The best thing about these Word resume formats is that you can download and edit them from your phone. Surely when you searched “how to make a resume for my first job” on Google you didn’t imagine that you could learn how to make them using your cell phone, but not only is it possible, but it’s also a good way to solve in case you don’t have a computer available to do it.
The download package includes three Word resume formats, each of which is designed so that you can include information about your educational background, your experience, your skills and your contact details. In addition, they are designed so that you can make your first resume without the need to include additional photos or images.
word resume formats
Personal references format
Well, you already have enough resume templates to look for a job for the first time. So at this point we will leave you with the format of a document that we told you about when we explained how to make a resume: the letter of recommendation or personal references.
With this resource you will be able to optimize your professional profile, especially if you have aspects to highlight from your academic background, or if you have participated in volunteer work or projects with NGOs.
The format is in Word, and you can edit it to include it in your resume, or attach it as an additional document. take advantage of this opportunity to boost your first resume!
personal references form
Cover letter template for a job
The cover letter functions as an extension of your resume, so if you want to know how to make a resume for first time job seekers, you should also be interested in finding out how to make a cover letter for a job.
This document serves to generate more interest in recruiters, and give your resume more chances to pass through the human resources selection filters. In the download file there are three cover letter templates that will be very useful for you.
Downloading and using the templates is very easy, just click on the download link and edit the documents with Word or Google Docs.
cover letter template
Bonus: How to get my first job?
The question how to make a resume for my first job comes along with doubts about how to get the first work experience. Making your resume is just one side of the coin, and what comes next, is knowing how to use it to get hired.
Going out to look for a job can be easier if you take into account some recommendations, especially if it is the first time.
Below we will tell you what options you have, and what you can do to increase the chances of your resume getting into the right hands.
Search for your first job through social networks
The world in which your parents met no longer exists, and traditional methods of job hunting are long gone for good reason.
Even if you have an inexperienced resume, one of your best options is to look for a job through social media.
To do this, we recommend that you create a LinkedIn profile, where you can upload your resume, or search for jobs through Facebook Jobs.
Both options represent good opportunities for those who are just entering the labor market.
Source: Facebook Jobs
Find jobs on job boards
Taking advantage of the benefits of the digital world, we also recommend that you get your resume without experience into the right hands through virtual job boards.
There are many pages specialized in publishing job offers and, basically, they serve as intermediaries between companies looking for workers and people looking for jobs.
If you have already followed our instructions and built a powerful resume, the next step is to upload it to the following job portals.
Bumeran
The Bumeran job board is a classic within the online job search. In addition, many people have been able to get their resume to the right company to land their first job.
Although the platform was launched more than a decade ago, it is still operational and fulfills its purpose of uniting job seekers and job seekers in good working relationships.
Workana
In Workana you can use your resume to get your first job, although the modalities in which the page works are mainly focused on freelance work.
All you have to do is create a profile with all the relevant data for employers. Depending on how interesting you are to those who are looking for workers for specific tasks, you are likely to get a job that fits your needs.
If you didn’t click with any of the options we recommended, maybe your path is to have your own business and you could try entrepreneurship.
We know that making a resume for your first job is not easy, but these tips will be the master key that will open the doors to the job market.
Source: Pexels
We hope you find all our tips helpful, and if you meet a friend who wonders how to make a resume for my first job, you can recommend this post and, by the way, our guide on how to make a successful CV in 2022.