Writing your first resume can feel like a trap: employers want experience, but you need a job to get experience. The good news is that "no experience" rarely means "nothing to show." Coursework, personal projects, volunteering, part-time jobs, sports, caring responsibilities and student societies all build skills that employers value.
The challenge is presenting them in a way that reads as professional rather than padded. This guide shows you how to structure a resume when you are just starting out, what to include, and how to describe it.
Change what "experience" means
Recruiters hiring for entry-level roles know that candidates have limited work history. What they want to see is evidence that you can learn, show up reliably, work with others and take initiative. That evidence can come from many places:
- Academic projects, especially group work or anything with a real deliverable
- Part-time or seasonal jobs, even in areas unrelated to your target role
- Volunteering for a charity, a community group or a local event
- Personal projects: a website, an app, a blog, a small online shop, a podcast
- Student societies or clubs, particularly if you held a role such as treasurer or event organizer
- Competitions, hackathons or challenges
- Caring or family responsibilities that required organization and reliability
The key is to describe these activities with the same rigor you would apply to a job: what you did, how you did it, and what came of it.
Choose the right structure
For a first resume, the traditional layout where work experience comes first often works against you. Instead, put your strongest material near the top.
A structure that works for most beginners:
- Header: name, city, phone, email, and optionally a link to a portfolio or professional profile.
- Summary: two or three lines about who you are and what you are looking for.
- Education: degree or diploma, institution, dates, and relevant modules or grades if they help.
- Projects: two to four projects with short descriptions.
- Experience: part-time jobs, internships, volunteering.
- Skills: technical skills, tools, languages.
- Additional information (optional): certifications, or interests that say something relevant about you.
If your projects are more impressive than your education, swap sections 3 and 4. There is no fixed rule; the order should reflect what is most relevant to the job.
Keep it to one page
With limited experience, one page is plenty. A beginner resume stretched to two pages usually signals padding, and a clean, well-spaced layout is more effective than cramming. Our resume templates include compact options designed to stay readable on a single page.
How to describe projects and activities
Treat each project or activity like a job entry. Give it a title, a context and two or three bullet points.
Weak version:
Group project for marketing class.
Stronger version:
Brand launch plan, Marketing Strategy module, Westbrook University, Spring 2026
- Researched the local coffee market and surveyed 60 fellow students to identify gaps in the offer.
- Co-wrote a 20-page launch plan covering positioning, pricing and a three-month social media calendar.
- Presented the plan to a panel of lecturers; the project received one of the top grades in the cohort.
This fictional example shows research, writing, teamwork and presentation skills, which are exactly what an entry-level marketing employer looks for.
The same logic applies to a weekend retail job. Instead of just "Sales assistant," describe what you handled: opening and closing the till, restocking, dealing with customer questions during busy periods, showing new seasonal staff the ropes.
Highlight transferable skills without clichés
Transferable skills are abilities you can carry from one context to another: communication, organization, problem-solving, customer service, basic data handling. Listing them in a skills section is not enough, because anyone can type "excellent communicator."
Instead, show them in your bullet points:
- Rather than "good time management," write "balanced a 15-hour weekly job with full-time studies."
- Rather than "teamwork," write "coordinated tasks between five volunteers for a charity book sale."
- Rather than "IT skills," name what you actually use: spreadsheet functions, a design tool, a programming language.
Reserve the skills section for concrete, checkable items: software, languages with a level, certifications, or a driving licence if the job requires one.
Write a summary that looks forward
For beginners, the summary should frame your profile and point towards the role. Keep it short and specific:
Business administration graduate with hands-on experience in customer service and event organization. Comfortable with spreadsheets and scheduling tools. Looking for an entry-level operations role with a focus on process improvement.
For more structures and examples, see our guide on writing a resume summary.
Mistakes beginners often make
- Listing every school subject. Keep only what relates to the job.
- Including a photo, date of birth or marital status when applying in the US or UK. These are generally not expected, partly because of fair hiring practices. Norms differ in other countries, so check local expectations.
- Using an unprofessional email address. Create a simple one based on your name.
- Writing "References available on request." It is assumed and takes up space.
- Sending the same resume everywhere. Even small adjustments to the summary and skills to match each job ad make a difference.
- Exaggerating. Calling a two-week job shadowing placement "consulting experience" will fall apart in an interview.
US and UK differences for first-time applicants
In the US, the document is usually called a resume and should be concise, typically one page for early-career candidates. In the UK, it is usually called a CV, and while two pages is common for experienced candidates, one page is perfectly fine for school leavers and graduates. UK applicants often mention predicted or achieved grades, while US applicants may include a GPA if it is strong. In both markets, a short summary or personal statement at the top is common.
Before you send it
Run through a final check:
- Spelling and grammar reviewed, ideally by someone else as well.
- Consistent formatting for dates, headings and bullet points.
- Contact details correct, with links clickable in the PDF.
- File named clearly, for example "Firstname-Lastname-Resume.pdf."
- Keywords from the job ad present where they genuinely apply. An ATS checker can help you verify this.
Your first resume will not be your last. Update it after every new project, job or course, while the details are still fresh, and it will grow with you.
Key takeaways
- "No experience" usually means no full-time job, not nothing to show.
- Put your strongest material, such as education or projects, near the top.
- Describe projects and activities with the same detail you would give a job.
- Prove transferable skills with examples instead of listing adjectives.
- Keep it to one clean page and tailor it to each application.