sample resume for second job out of college

Career Advice for Job Seekers

8 resume writing tips for that second job search out of college

Whenever possible, include numbers and statistics, says McGuiness. These jump out to a recruiter and are a quick way to indicate your impact and value in previous positions. “Increased donations by 30% after implementing an annual silent auction” or “Managed a call center that received over 1,000 calls daily.”

4. Highlight certifications, training programs, stretch assignments and ongoing career or professional development

“It’s important for employers to know that you are invested in your career and are hungry to keep learning and developing,” says Eison.

If you attended a key industry conference, completed a certification or training class (whether online or in-person), reference this. For example, if you work in digital marketing and became Google AdWords Certified, or if you were trained on Adobe Experience Manager, list that. Better yet, list that with a success story/project example using those skills/programs.

In addition, recruiters are looking for candidates with great leadership skills. If you have taken on any additional responsibilities, projects or stretch assignments at your first job, you should include this on your resume.

“Companies are looking for ambitious leaders who are eager to learn and grow with their organizations,” says Eison

5. Highlight soft skills

Listing soft skills is important when writing a resume, because if a company is going to hire you, they will often train you using their own, unique processes.

“Those soft skills – like leadership, communication and team work – are harder to train, so companies want people that have those skills coming into the role,” says McGuiness.

But don’t just say you’re a “strong communicator” on your resume. Instead, show how you’re a strong communicator: “Presented quarterly earnings to senior directors and relayed their recommendations back to the team.”

Related: Communication skills factor into who gets promoted

6. Write the resume to fit the job description

“When applying for any position, at any level in your career, scan the job description and mimic frequently used keywords,” says McGuiness. “Most large employer utilize applicant tracking systems to help them sort hundreds, sometimes thousands of resumes to find the strongest candidates.”

The resumes that are a match to that job description, get noticed.

Related: Avoid common resume mistakes and stand out

7. Open with a strong summary statement

Take the guess work out of the recruiters hands and let them know what position you are interested in based on your skill sets, goals and passion, by creating a strong opening summary statement, says Eison. This isn’t a long-winded paragraph. This is short and to the point, like this:

Seeking financial analyst role where 2+ years of experience at a Fortune 100 organization will add value.

Bold the key terms, results, and language in that summary, and throughout the resume.

“Your resume will be skimmed at first, so make sure to bold your titles and other areas where you want to capture the hiring manager’s attention,” says McGuiness. “If they are intrigued, they’ll read more.”

Said Eison: “If you don’t have a clear summary, recruiters may wrongly assume the role you are applying to or they may not be able to decide where your skills would be an asset for the organization and your resume may be placed in the no pile.”

8. Proofread proofread proofread

“My biggest pet peeve is misspelled words and grammatical errors on resumes,” says Eison.

But it’s difficult to catch your own resume writing mistakes, so have a career coach, trusted colleague, roommate, significant other, or family member proofread your resume. Let’s be clear though: Asking someone (other than a career coach or recruiter whom you may know) to review your resume in terms of resume format or resume layout, is asking for trouble. Your roommate may be a great salesperson, but that doesn’t mean they are skilled at critiquing resumes. Your mom or dad be able to catch grammatical errors, but unless they work in HR, hire, recruit, or manage employees, their specialty is not “critiquing resumes” so save that for the professionals. But proofreading, that’s important. And anyone who can assist reading/reviewing the resume can catch mistakes.

Go to the last page of your resume and read it from the bottom to the top. Looking at it this way can give you another view and help provide clarity to each sentence and give one final proof for spelling, grammar, and/or formatting issues.

“The attention to detail in formatting, spelling, and grammar may seem trivial, but it can certainly make a huge difference and this may help you land an interview and ultimately getting your next job,” says Eison.

Use these resume writing tips to stand out, get noticed, and get an interview. Then in time, you’ll land that second job out of college, and continue to advance in your career.

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20 College Student Resumes + Complete Guide

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Writing Your College Student Resume

Companies sometimes require that entry-level candidates have experience, but how do you get experience when even entry-level jobs make it difficult to apply?

Getting that first job or internship can be the most challenging part of your career. Fortunately, as a college student, you’re in a great position to get that first break you need. Once you get your degree, you’ll have the experience employers are seeking, but until then, how can you build an effective resume or write a cover letter as a college student?

After reviewing countless  resume samples , we’ve determined what types employers want to see from college students. Furthermore, we used that knowledge to create  20 college student resume examples to help inspire your resume in 2024 .

College Student Resume Example

or download as PDF

Why this resume works

• This lets employers know when you can work full-time. Whatever you do, be honest. Stretching the truth won’t get you any points with employers. It’s better to be upfront and willing to learn a skill rather than try to succeed by the skin of your teeth.
• The golden rule on your college student resume is to lead with your strengths. If you’ve got a relevant internship, add it. If you’ve done any related class projects, list them. No matter what you include, make sure to highlight transferable skills.

Undergraduate Student Resume

• To impress the recruiter, demonstrate the dedication you have had in your previous posts despite minimal experience.

University Student Resume

• In that case, your university student resume can capitalize on your analytical skills, which helped identify cost-saving opportunities and cut overall expenses by six percent.

College Student No Experience Resume

• Luckily, there are a host of  resume templates  you can use to format your experience well, so long as you adjust based on your qualifications.
• For example, you can add or remove sections based on the amount of work history you have (or don’t have).
• For example, being on the club basketball team may feel irrelevant to business analysis. But by focusing on how you’ve organized practices and led a local volunteer effort, your  college student no experience resume  can point to qualities that might appeal to a thoughtful employer.

Current College Student Resume

• A reverse-chronological format is still the most accepted, but if you want to highlight your skills, try using a functional format instead.
• Adding relevant metrics shows that you know what matters to your employer and you’ve positively impacted your previous workplace.

College Student for Internship Resume

• That’s okay—you can weave in other things, like projects and part-time jobs. Of course, if you do have internship or job experience, put that at the top.
• It’s as easy as checking the  job description . Then just list your relevant abilities according to what matches the keywords listed by the employer.

College Student Assistant Medical Laboratory Technician Resume Example

• Do you have a unique interest related to science? Are you involved in a sport? Do you volunteer? All of these hobbies are great additions to your resume.
• If you’ve just graduated, you can bulk up your education section.
• Feel free to add any college awards you won and your GPA (if it’s higher than 3.5).

College Student HR Executive Assistant Resume

• As a rule of thumb, we recommend including one if you’re light on experience or are going through a substantial career change. Otherwise, leave it out in favor of work experience. 
• Good skills to include on an HR executive assistant resume are “talent acquisition,” “conflict resolution,” “legal compliance,” and “compensation/benefits.”
• An even more effective way to breathe life into your skills is to weave them into your work history or project bullet points.

College Student Case Assistant Resume

• Show off your personality using contrasting colors, classic fonts, and well-organized layouts. Our ready-to-build  resume templates  or handy  Google Docs interactive resumes  can help you keep your resume both tasteful and personable.
• If you don’t have certification, then now’s the best time to get it. Better late than never!

College Student Resident Assistant Resume

• Though an objective isn’t required, it can help employers see your skills and experience straight away.
• Just make sure to tailor it for every job you apply for by including the name of the employer, the position you’re seeking, and some matching keyword skills (that are true about you) gleaned from the  job description . 
• You also shouldn’t feel limited by your work experience. If you’ve done any relevant projects or have volunteered, include them! Employers love to see transferrable skills like collaboration, a good work ethic, and organization.

College Student Warehouse Worker Resume

• If you’re struggling to get going, consider using a  resume outline  to help you structure your experience—just don’t forget to fill out all the sections thoroughly!
• While it’s not impossible to land an excellent job without internships or experience, having some kind of work history, even in the form of projects, will allow you to be more picky and skim from the top of warehouse positions.

College Student Teacher Assistant Resume

• Adjusting formatting details, like the layout and header colors, can make your resume pop and reveal a bit about yourself. (Red and pink are bold, daring colors, while blue and green are calming.)
• Adding a  hobbies and interests section to your resume  can also help catch the eye of employers, provided you list hobbies that are relevant to the desired job, such as creative pursuits, volunteering, or research.
• Even if you’ve never had experience as a teacher assistant, you can instill confidence by demonstrating the impact of your communication skills. Did you effectively resolve an issue using negotiation? Write something that added helpful clarity? Show how you used communication to affect others positively!

College Student Biology Lab Technician Resume

• Don’t get too carried away here; after all, it’s still a resume and not a flier for a Wednesday Night Disco. But, one to two colors can be appropriate for all but the most conservative working environments. 
• Numbers can be frustrating to calculate and add to your resume, but trust us when we tell you that they make a world of difference. Hiring managers are consistently more willing to interview people with metrics on their resumes, as they convey job competence and confidence.

College Student English Tutor Resume

• Breaking up each work experience into bullet points can make your resume both easier to read (with fewer blocks of dense text) and easier to write.
• Instead of writing one big chunk of cohesive text, you can focus on pulling out as many highlights about your work history at each job as possible. 
• A project can be anything. Seriously, your final group project from that writing seminar counts, or you could highlight a blog you’ve been working on in your free time.
• Hint: Projects also make great stories to discuss on your college student cover letter .

College Application Resume

• Suppose you’re applying for a Bachelor of Arts in education. Express your passion for teaching and eagerness to advance your knowledge of education theories and practices. Even better, emphasize your long-term ambition to shape future generations through innovative education methods.

College Admission Resume

• Take a leaf from how Brian narrates his stints as a restaurant server, project presenter, and volunteer. Well-described, such experiences paint a picture of a well-rounded character who can take on varied challenges of an engineering program, enhancing their appeal in the eyes of the college admissions committee.

College Freshman Resume

• Use past projects to advantage here even if they’re only a year long. Clearly state how you used skills such as Canva and Microsoft Teams to make specific impacts during this time. Another great addition to your college freshman resume is any work experience under your belt.

College Student Academic Highlights Resume

• Say you have some work experience, but it’s not relevant to the job. That’s okay—instead of trying in vain to match the  job description , focus on transferable skills like customer service, organization, event planning, public speaking, and computer literacy.
• If you lack much work history, adding projects, coursework, or volunteer experience is the next best way to showcase your potential. You can also list your involvement in clubs, organizations, or peer mentorship.
• Write them like you’d write work experience by using active verbs and incorporating metrics (numbers).

First Year College Student Resume

• Your time contributing to a project is tangible evidence of your skills and experiences. Depending on what you include, it could showcase your communication and organizational skills or more technical abilities, like your proficiency with Microsoft Office.

Freshman College Student Resume

• Do you love gardening or nature photography? Awesome, it shows you’re inherently passionate about biology. Do you spend your time baking as well? It’s a sign that you know how to follow instructions and observe changes over time—skills that will come in handy as a lab assistant.

Related resume guides

• College Graduate
• Grad School
• Entry level

Before we dive into the difference between a  resume objective  vs. a  resume summary , let’s get some definitions out of the way:

• Resume objective : A statement of your qualifications, interests, and skills that make you a good fit for the role to which you’re applying.
• Resume summary : A summary of your past experience detailing your high-level accomplishments and projects.

When you’re applying for a job or internship as a college student, you likely won’t have extensive work experience. So, we’d recommend including a resume objective instead of a resume summary.

The goal of your resume objective is to set the stage for your resume. It should highlight your skills applicable to the job at hand, and it should be specific for each job to which you’re applying.

Most resume objectives are boring and generic. By taking the time to craft a customized and effective resume objective, you give yourself an edge over other applicants and increase your chances of getting an interview.

Before we dive into the rules for creating a strong resume objective, let’s look at some examples.

Sample college student resume objectives

• “Recent college graduate with a degree in marketing looking for a full-time role where I can utilize my experience in social media and paid advertising to help an up-and-coming brand like Club Z! Inc. spread awareness and acquire more users.”
• “Diligent college student at the University of Pittsburgh who is equally committed to academic excellence (3.8 GPA) and service (student leader at the local food shelter) looking for an opportunity at Unidos as a part-time employee to utilize these talents to improve customer satisfaction.”
• “Recent graduate with a Masters of Business Administration (MBA) seeking an opportunity within an established management organization to utilize my organizational and quantitative abilities. Epic seems to have a culture of empowering employees to have ownership over their problems, and that culture fits my work style perfectly.”

You can see that all of these resume objectives specifically mention the company that the student is applying to. Tailoring is the golden rule of resume objectives.

Here are some other rules to make your objective the best it can be:

• Again, take the time to  customize your resume objective for each company to which you’re applying .
• Don’t be afraid to inject your personality. Making an impression will help you stand out among the hundreds of other applicants.
• Keep it to two to three sentences.
• Mention any relevant skills or certifications you have for the role to which you’re applying.

College Student Resume Formats

One of the hardest parts of using a resume maker  as a college student is the blank page. The “getting started” part is overwhelming—you’re unsure what your resume should look like, let alone what should be in it!

When it comes to formatting your resume, the best advice is to keep it  simple . You need to convincingly make the case that you deserve an interview for the role to which you’re applying.

In short, your resume should likely contain the following sections:

• Header: This is your name and job title. Have your job title match the job title to which you’re applying.
• Resume objective: We talked about this above, a quick summary of your skills and what you’re seeking.
• Education: As a college student, this should include your anticipated graduation date, the field of study, and relevant classes.
• Skills: List six to ten technical skills relevant to your career.
• Work experience: If you have any relevant internships or part-time jobs, mention them here.
• Projects: Did you do any side projects that demonstrate your competency? Include them!

Not all of these sections need to be included in your resume.  Your resume should focus on your strengths.

If you don’t have much relevant work experience, you can omit that section in favor of discussing your projects or classwork.

However, no matter what format you choose, there are a few writing guidelines you should adhere to throughout your resume.

Formatting guidelines for your resume

• Keep your resume to one page! Your resume should only extend to a second page when you have 10+ years of experience.
• Avoid any spelling or grammar errors by double-checking your text and having a friend review your resume. Don’t let typos be the reason why you don’t get an interview.
• Break up your work experience into small, consumable bullet points. Nothing is harder to read than a big wall of text.
• Use reverse-chronological order to keep your most recent experience/projects at the top.
• Don’t include fancy images or graphics. It’s highly likely a computer will read your resume before a human ever does, and images are hard for computers to scan.
• Don’t list more than ten skills on your resume. (We’ll expand on this below.)

Skills to pay the bills

When building your skills section, it can be tempting to list any and every skill you know. You’ll have to resist this temptation.

Before a human reviews your resume, an automated system called an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) will score your resume based on whether or not it includes the “right” keywords. These filters are largely screening for specific skills.

Doesn’t this mean that you should include as many skills as possible to beat the ATS? Unfortunately, you need to make your resume appealing to both the ATS and a human, and nothing is a bigger red flag to a hiring manager than a candidate with a laundry list of skills!

You’re much better off focusing on  six to ten skills you’re an expert in  than including more that you kind of know. Generally, if you wouldn’t be comfortable being interviewed on a given skill, don’t include it on your resume. 

Work Experience and Projects

In any resume, no matter the career stage, your work experience and projects should take up at least 70 percent of the overall space. These will decide whether you get an interview or not.

Once you have a few years of experience, then the size of your projects section will decrease as the size of your work experience section expands.

If you have an internship relevant to the job you’re applying for, this should be listed in your “work experience” section. As a college student, your work experience can also contain any part-time jobs you had while in school, even if they don’t seem relevant to the position to which you’re applying.

It’s not easy to balance work and school, so having a part-time job demonstrates responsibility and drive.

When talking about your work experience, there are a few key tips you should follow:

• Mention the skills you demonstrated on the job.
• Quantify the impact of your work whenever possible.
• Talk specifically about your role; avoid being too general.
• Use action verbs like “owned” or “led” to highlight your leadership abilities.

Numbers truly speak louder than words, especially on your resume. By providing numerical context around your work, you show your ability to contribute meaningfully to your workplace.

Compare these two descriptions of an internship. Which do you think would be more compelling to a hiring manager?

WRONG – general work experience descriptions

Marketing Science Associates April 2020 – Current, New York NY Digital Marketing Intern

• Created testing plan for Facebook ad copy
• Built key reports for the executive team around KPIs
• Oversaw the creation of the blog for SEO purposes
• Worked closely with clients to understand their product positioning to incorporate into ad copy

RIGHT – specific, quantified descriptions

• Created A/B testing plan for Facebook ad copy, improving ROI by 15%
• Built key reports for the executive team around KPIs such as marketing spend, new leads, revenue generated, and ROI
• Oversaw the creation of the blog for SEO purposes which grew from 1,000 to 5,000 monthly organic visitors
• Worked closely with clients to understand their product positioning to incorporate into ad copy, leading to client satisfaction of 99%

Projects can be anything

If you don’t have much (or any) relevant work experience for your resume, don’t fret. You can still  create a highly effective resume  by showcasing your projects.

As a college student, you’ve likely done a lot of class projects that are relevant to the job or internship you’re looking to get. This is the perfect place to talk about those projects. You can even mention projects you completed outside of class. Talk about your goals, the methods/skills you used, and the project’s outcome.

The key is to include anything that will convince the hiring manager you have the drive, skills, and ability to translate your academic knowledge to the real world and contribute to the roles for which you’re applying.

Here are some potential projects you can work on for different majors:

Project ideas for college students

• Are you a business student? Detail a case study that you analyzed and presented in a class.
• If you’re a marketing student, you can write a short blog post about how you’d improve the paid marketing strategy for a company you admire.
• As a graphic designer, this is a great opportunity to talk about some of the projects in your portfolio.
• If you’re looking for a data analyst role, talk about how you analyzed stock data to determine areas of opportunity.
• As a human resources major, you’ve likely created processes for companies as part of a class, so talk about that.
• Software engineering students complete meaningful coding assignments all the time. Discuss one of those or talk about your side project.
• If you’re looking to break into product management, discuss a hackathon you were part of or create a case study for a feature your favorite product is missing.

Basically, the projects you include on your resume can be just about anything. They simply have to demonstrate you know what is required of the kind of role you’re applying to, and that you can meet those requirements.

Your Education Section

As a college student, it should go without saying that you need to include an education section on your resume.

Here’s what you need to include in your education section no matter what:

• The school you’re currently attending (or recently graduated from). You do not need to include your high school.
• Your graduation date (or expected graduation date). You can give just the month and year.
• The kind of degree you’re working toward (bachelor of arts, bachelor of science, master’s, etc.).
• Your field of study.

Once you include all that, there’s more flexibility. If you have a strong GPA (greater than 3.5), you should include it, too.

If you don’t have much experience yet, then you can add relevant courses or awards to your education section, provided they’re relevant to the job for which you’re applying.

For example, if you’re applying for a role as a data scientist, then it makes sense to include any math, economics, or programming classes you completed.

Here’s an example of an effective education section for a college student looking for a marketing role:

If you received any awards or honors during your time in college, list them here. These can include getting on the Dean’s List, any department-specific awards relevant to your major, or formal recognition for your work or volunteer efforts.

Resume Builder for College Students

There you have it—we’ve discussed the building blocks to help you land a job or internship as a college student!

In summary, here are the keys to making an effective resume as a college student:

• Inject your personality into your resume objective and customize it for each company to which you apply.
• Your resume format should include a header, resume objective, skills section, education, and work/ project experience.
• Include any relevant internships or part-time jobs you’ve had during college and quantify the impact of your work.
• If you don’t have much working experience, include relevant projects you’ve completed either in the classroom or on your own time.
• Your education section is your chance to highlight classes you’ve completed that will convince the hiring manager you have the right tools for the job.

Finding a job or internship as a college student can be incredibly stressful. Building an AI resume  is a huge first step, so pat yourself on the back. After you’re done with the writing, you can  check your resume  against our AI-powered tips to see how your resume matches up.

Just remember, it does get easier after you get some experience first. We can’t wait to see where you’ll go!

• We’ll show you how, step-by-step • Real, practical tips and tools • 100% free

More From Forbes

How to write a resume when you're just out of college.

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The University of South Florida junior felt like she had nothing to put on her résumé. She had only held down one job, for three years, working part-time at a K-Mart while she was in school. What employer would hire her based on that bottom-rung work experience? But Bobbie Muir, a career counselor in the placement office at USF in Tampa, saw it differently. The student had worked on the store's returns desk, which Muir thought gave her a long list of marketable skills. “She had to listen to unhappy customers for many hours, she dealt with high volume, she was a problem solver within limits, she mastered company policy, and she had to know when to turn over her work to a supervisor,” says Muir. All of those skills went into a strong entry on the student’s résumé.

Like that USF junior, many new graduates find themselves staring at a blank screen when they sit down to write a résumé. But career coaches, professional résumé writers and college placement officers say that with some effort, students will discover that they have accumulated plenty of experience and know-how to put together a convincing document that will land them a job, even if they haven’t interned in the White House or worked at a top law firm. One encouraging statistic for grads to keep in mind: For those with a bachelor’s degree, the unemployment rate is 4%, less than half the national average of 8.1%.

Ideally, a new grad’s résumé is a focused one-page marketing document, with a succinct job goal that molds the résumé writer’s descriptions of each previous job and related experience. But many students and new grads haven’t figured out what they want to do, or even the broad area in which they want to work. If you can’t come up with a specific goal, you can still benefit from assessing your life up to this point, and pulling out details, like the K-Mart job, that will make you look like a strong candidate.

As for format, there are two approaches for new grads. One is the conventional, with an objective at the top, then education and relevant coursework, and after that, experience and skills. Another format, advocated by Laura DeCarlo, executive director of Career Directors International , a trade association for résumé writers and career coaches, and the former director of career planning at a for-profit school called Herzing University, lists skills and training at the top, then education, and after that, experience and employment.

I lean toward the conventional, because I find it simpler and easier to take in. But both formats have their merits, and putting them together involves a similar exercise. I’ll lay that out here:

1. List a career objective if you’re clear on what you want to do or you’re applying to a specific job.

Katharine Brooks, director of liberal arts career services at the University of Texas at Austin and author of You Majored in What? Mapping Your Path from Chaos to Career , says you should only list a career objective if you’re crystal clear on what it is, like “entry level management position in the banking industry.” If you are vague about your goals, you will do more harm than good if you list something like, “promising position in a forward-looking company.” Of course if you are applying for a specific job, it’s easy enough to amend a résumé to include an objective that matches the job description.

2. List your school, degree year, and any honors, including your grade point average if it’s high.

Unlike experienced workers, who put their education at the end of their résumé, soon-to-be and recent graduates list it at the top. Include your school, your major, the degree you expect to earn and the year you will graduate. If you’ve achieved academic honors like the dean’s list or phi beta kappa , include that as well. Some coaches think you should list your GPA if it’s higher than 3.0. Others think you should only include it if it’s quite high, like 3.8 or above. San Francisco résumé writer Beth Brown, co-author of The Damn Good Résumé Guide: A Crash Course In Résumé Writing, also recommends including a list of course work that’s relevant to your major and career objective. For instance, if you majored in accounting and you want to work at an accounting firm, you could include a table of accounting courses you took, like tax accounting, GAAP, and public accounting.

3. Consider listing additional coursework outside your major.

If your career objective differs from your major, but you took courses directly related to the career you want, it makes sense to list those courses in your education section, suggests Brooks. For instance, if you majored in history but you want to work in a counseling center for troubled youth, you could add, “Coursework included child psychology, developmental psychology and child development theory.”

4. Take a fresh look at what you may think are menial jobs.

Like the USF student’s K-Mart experience, many jobs you may think of as low-level can be cast in a light that is appealing to employers. Brooks, Muir, DeCarlo and Brown all work with their counselees to draw out exactly what they did while waitressing or babysitting. For instance, did you babysit for five different families in your neighborhood? That can be framed as managing a child care business, working with children aged 2-10, providing recreational activities and nutritional snacks. If you mowed lawns over the summer for ten different clients, you ran a garden care business.

Brooks encourages students to loosen up a little and take an expansive view of what they’ve done. She counseled one student who had worked at Hershey Park in Hershey, Pa. Her résumé’s first draft listed the job as “customer relations representative.” When Brooks queried her, she learned that the young woman had dressed up as a Krackel Bar and walked around the grounds. The student wound up doing everything from giving directions to helping an elderly gentleman who had collapsed from exhaustion. Brooks advised her to list her job as “Krackel Bar,” and then include bullet points that described how she provided tourist information including accommodations and restaurants, and interacted with at least 100,000 visitors.

5. Scrutinize your extra-curricular activities and think about how they might relate to a real-world job.

Students often dismiss their experiences if they didn’t come in the form of an internship or a formal job. But involvement in extra-curricular activities, like clubs, social groups and sports, can demonstrate that you have valuable expertise. For instance, if you were the event coordinator at your sorority fundraiser, that can impress hiring managers, especially if you want to work in non-profit fundraising or event management. Beth Brown recommends listing your job as “Student, full time, Florida State University ,” and in your bullet points, saying something like, “coordinated logistics for annual fundraising resulting in raising $35,000 for the local Red Cross chapter.” You could also say you managed 57 volunteers, secured donations for a silent auction, and designed and orchestrated a theme. All of those details could impress a potential employer.

6. Think about whether your coursework could be considered work experience.

Many students handle work in courses that equates to a demanding job. For instance, you may have taken an urban planning course where you collaborated with seven team members to come up with a design for a new development in a blighted part of New Orleans. Résumé writer Brown suggests students list such experience as though they comprised a job. The title would be, “full-time student, University of South Florida,” and the job description would describe what you did in the course. Brooks had a student who had taken an American studies class that required her to interview five elderly people about their experiences during the Depression, compile the information, and write and publish a 20-page report. She recommended the student include the online link to the final report.

7. Use active verbs.

A widespread affliction among résumé writers of all ages is the tendency to use dull verbs like “assisted” or “helped.” Instead, translate your experience into active language. At the University of Texas, Brooks created a list of résumé action verbs here . They include “collaborate,” “consolidate,” “convince,” “promote,” “publicize” and “persuade.” As for tense, use the past unless your experience is ongoing, in which case you should use the simple present tense, instead of passive verbs ending in “ing.”

8. Be specific in your descriptions and quantify with numbers wherever possible.

This is another way to transform what may seem like a menial job into an impressive résumé entry. For instance, you may have run the cash register at your local Dairy Queen for the summer. But if it was a busy place that  served 5,000 customers a day at a restaurant that racked up $10,000 in daily sales, then it sounds more impressive. Ask yourself how your approach to the job may have been different from others who worked at the chain. Did the boss have you tally up the day’s receipts and deposit them in the bank? Then say so. Or perhaps you organized a local talent show for fun. If you can say that the event attracted 600 people and you maintained a budget of $3,000, then it sounds more impressive.

9. Try a “brain dump” of your work, schooling and other experiences.

When DeCarlo used to work with students, she had them talk to her for up to four hours about everything they had done that could remotely relate to work experience, including volunteer work, courses, extra-curricular activities and sports. She asked them what they found memorable about each experience, whether they enjoyed it, and to relate as many details as possible about what they did. Brooks, Muir and Brown all use variations on this approach. The goal is to get the student to review their experiences and by identifying what they enjoyed about each, to arrive at a career objective that will help focus the résumé. You can do this exercise yourself, or with the help of a friend.

For more focused students, the brain dump can also reveal experiences that may not seem like obvious résumé additions, but can be framed in a positive light when described concretely. For instance, DeCarlo counseled a student who wanted to work in pharmaceutical sales. As they talked, DeCarlo learned that the young man had won a boat in a local fishing competition. His father, who was a doctor, said he could only keep the boat if he found a way to pay for the berth. The student set up an informal chartering business, tapping his father’s physician friends to rent out the boat on weekends. It turned out the student had developed a strong network of local doctors, a great qualification for pharmaceutical sales. He could use all that as an entry that emphasized how he had set up his own charter business catering to doctors.

10. Consider an alternative format.

Instead of the standard objective, education, experience and skills layout, you might want to compose a résumé that lists skills and training at the top, with bullet points, and then lists education, and after that experience, with one line for each job. Underneath that, you would include two-line descriptions of the work you performed in each job. DeCarlo likes this format, and she offers an example of it here . For this student, an aspiring engineer, she had gleaned that he had accumulated skills in 27 different areas, from fluid mechanics to electromagnetic waves. DeCarlo says it would have been tough to lay out all those skills through job descriptions, and the list at the top has the advantage of including many so-called key words, or descriptive terms that an employer may put in a job listing. Nowadays, big companies screen résumés by computer, and the skills list has the advantage of including many of those key phrases. Though DeCarlo swears by this approach, and insists her counselees have landed many jobs with these types of résumés, I remain ambivalent. The listing of 27 skills seems cluttered and like data overload to me, and I find it confusing to list job descriptions separate from specific jobs.

The University of Texas gives examples of résumé templates here . One of the words that makes my skin crawl, but seems common in résumé -writing: “relevant,” as in “relevant experience.” Why would you include experience if it weren’t relevant? But Brown says this is part of the rhetoric of résumé writing.

The best résumés are carefully thought-through marketing documents, with a clear career objective and detailed, vivid descriptions of coursework, work experience and other activities that are relevant to your dream job. But focus is the toughest part of résumé-writing. Résumé writer Brown notes that you can start with an archival document that lists what you’ve done, in vivid, concrete language. Then as you focus on what you want to do, you can edit it to reflect that. “Let your résumé be a living document that changes as your needs and opportunities change,” she says.

You might also like,   When An Employer Requires Experience And You Have None

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• How to Write a Resume When You’re Just Out of College

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I was there quite recently… Fresh out of college: mum and dad were so proud, I was happy, life was good.

Unfortunately, in my case this blessed state lasted for about five minutes.

I soon realized that my college education took approximately four years of my life, that I need to find a job and that I have absolutely no idea how to do this.

Don’t get me wrong… I knew what I should be doing, but for some reason, I found every step of this process extremely exhausting and even, depressive.

Resume drafting turned out to be a complete challenge but not for reasons you’ll probably think of intuitively…

For me, the hardest part was to let go of my idea of a resume and how it should look like.

Namely, I believed that a resume with no relevant work experience is not a resume at all ! So, I knew I needed a resume but couldn’t get myself to ignore this annoying voice telling me that I do not have anything relevant to put there.

I seriously didn’t know where to start but I knew there must be a solution!

So, I did what any other average person in the 21 st century would do… I googled this situation and tried to find answers for myself and my jobless misery.

As you may presume, I found many hacks, tips and tricks one can use to draft a good resume even if lacking work experience.

Having collected much of this wisdom, I decided to try to sum up some of those advices I myself found most useful or interesting…

Therefore, bear with me and do not despair! Definitely do not hate yourself for “throwing away” 3-5 years on your college education.

You didn’t “throw away” anything and nothing is lost. You simply need to learn to…

WORK AROUND THE LACK OF EXPERIENCE!

Easier said than done. You are probably thinking: what is there to work around?

I totally understand. I thought the exact same thing while reading similar advices.

But then I started wondering… What was I doing for the past couple of years if not investing into myself? I wasn’t working full time, that is true.

However, I wasn’t having the time of my life either… I was studying like crazy, doing major and elective courses, trying to squeeze in sport and languages and fun was really at the bottom of my endless ‘to-do list’.

And thinking about all of this made me realize: I was, in fact, working during my college years. I was working on myself while obtaining priceless education. I was developing useful skills and valuable abilities and economically speaking, was investing into myself.

The idea behind it all was to utilize the obtained knowledge on the job market when the time comes and while studying, I never got the impression I was wasting my time.

So, this was a first step towards the shift in a perspective…Understanding that I really wasn’t fooling around or wasting anything.

The other thing which helped me change my perspective was imagining my resume without my education section.

I imagined work experience on that place, but the work experience I could have obtained solely with High school was not really something I would be aiming at long term.

I already had a few part-time jobs of this kind, but it was really my education that had the biggest significance on my resume.

This made my proud and partially returned my self-confidence. And that is how I actually realized what it means to work around your lack of experience.

Don’t focus on it! Don’t insist on what’s missing, highlight assets you already have.

Focus on your strengths. And definitely, try to stay confident!

Tell the world (and recruiters) what you have been doing for the past couple of years. Not everyone decides to sacrifice their time, energy and free time to commit to studying.

Therefore, you will want to elaborate on your sense of commitment but also everything you have learned during this time.

You are unique and worthy, but it is only after you realize it and learn how to market your assets, you can hope for others to realize this as well.

So, let me help you to a successful career start with a set of helpful tipps…

BEGINNING OF A RESUME: RESUME SUMMARY OR RESUME OBJECTIVE

The first inevitable question is: How do I begin? What do I write after personal information section (you always need this one)?

Resume summary or resume objective . Both are equally good and/or useful, the important question is: which one works better for you?

• Resume summary is a short summary of your background, most important strengths and simply, a way to explain what you can offer to the employer. A good summary should not be more than 5 sentences and it can also be presented in a form of bullet points as well, e.g.: “An experienced English translator with over 10 years of experience. Motivated, inter-cultural and flexible. Excited for new challenges and opportunities, especially interested in alternative learning methods.”
• A resume objective is a way to convince an employer/s you know what you want in your career. It should be a clear, structured message, e.g.: “An experienced English translator with over 10 years of experience, actively searching for opportunities in international corporations.”

If written well, both resume and objective, can and should spark recruiter’s attention and lure him/her to take a closer look at your application.

If you have a really clear career perspective or you know exactly what you want, a career objective may be better suited for you.

Also, it may be better suited for beginners because it states what you want or are aiming at and is not stressing out your prior achievements/experience.

Naturally, it is not written in stone that a career resume must focus on ones’ professional achievements. It can be a subtle way to stress out some of your soft-skills and personal qualities .

Some people like to use a quote which describes them well instead of a conventional resume summary… Personally, this doesn’t work for me as I don’t feel comfortable or professional quoting other people on my resume.

Nevertheless, I did come across a few examples where this kind of beginning made a truly strong impression and was very successful with recruiters.

Therefore, there are no strict rules.

You should decide what works better for you by taking your personality and a concrete job application into consideration… Test a few options out and simply decide what you like best!

ORDER: EDUCATION FIRST, PRIOR EXPERIENCE SECOND

Your resume should focus on stressing out your most important achievements.

For highly skilled professionals with 20+ years of experience, prior work experience is, naturally, more valuable than their university education.

The education was, of course, a necessary step but since they already got there where they are now, a future company will be much more interested to hear about what they actually did, not studied.

And this is exactly why they put their work experience section first and elaborate on that in a lot more detail than their education (except in certain very specific cases: researchers, PhD candidates etc.).

In your case, being a fresh-out-of-college candidate, you won’t have any relevant work experience to elaborate on.

Your biggest asset is your education! And this is by no means a bad thing.

Everybody must start somewhere and being a holder of an academic title is already a huge thing. For this reason, you will want a recruiter to pay attention to your education, rather than your work experience.

How will you do this?

Well, first of all, you will put it higher on your resume.

So, the next section following resume objection or summary will be the education section. And yes, this is perfectly fine and in fact, advisable for juniors, recent graduates and/or students.

With time, this order may and will change. The more experience you gain, the more important your experience section will be and at one point, you will only mention your education in a few short bullet points, below the work experience section.

Nevertheless, for now, you will want to follow this order: education first, experience second .

EDUCATIONAL FOCUS INSTEAD OF WORK EXPERIENCE FOCUS

When speaking of education, we are not done with this topic just yet…

You now know that you can place focus on your education by putting it higher on a resume, but you can additionally highlight it by adding more details and by elaborating your achievements thoroughly.

Try looking at it this way: space on your resume is limited, you need to use it wisely. Therefore, you will focus only on things that look good for you.

Here are a few things you can consider mentioning:

• Include your majors and electives , especially those courses which could be useful for the job you are applying for. Naturally, you shouldn’t list all courses you ever took and passed but you should be able to distinct a few specific employer would find useful or interesting.
• You can mention interesting courses you took during your studies: Art courses, languages, sport team memberships… Something that can draw attention to your resume.
• If you had a scholarship , you can put that in your resume as well. And especially if a scholarship depended on high performance in a specific field (grades, sports etc.).
• You can and should mention any volunteering work or membership in college organizations . Recruiters tend to find these very interesting. This shows that you have interests, organizational skills and dedication which is directed not only towards books and good grades.
• When it comes to grades average , opinions are divided. Some say you should disclose it, others that you shouldn’t. Basically, if you feel very confident about your average, I don’t see a reason why you shouldn’t disclose it.

Personally, I always considered my average good but not excellent which is why I only mentioned that I graduated with honors and skipped the exact numbers.

Furthermore, if you are applying in different countries or places where you aren’t sure they will understand how good or bad your grades average is, it may be simpler to just skip this information.

Finally: When in doubt whether an information is worth sharing, you may consider asking a skilled professional you know or a friend with more experience in this field to check your resume. A fresh perspective can’t hurt!

In any event, do make sure to stress out how valuable your education was, everything you learned and highlight anything that could present you as more qualified or skilled (in employer’s view).

ELABORATE PRIOR EXPERIENCE (EVEN IF IT SEEMS IRRELEVANT)

I have no work experience. This is such a common phrase, right? I (regularly) used it for quite a while after my graduation.

However, this phrase is rarely completely true…And I will explain why in a minute.

Part-time jobs and jobs unrelated to your studies can be a valuable experience as well. They may not sound fancy and may seem irrelevant to you now but try looking at it from a different perspective.

• A job at a bar or a coffee shop shows dedication, patience, people and communication skills.
• A job in McDonalds shows the same, plus, a very stress-resistant personality and the ability to react quickly.
• And don’t even get me started about tutoring jobs or part-time jobs on campus. The name of the institution is already sufficient to boost your profile.

Most importantly, all jobs you ever held demonstrate two remarkable qualities: Consciousness and readiness to work.

And trust me, employers do appreciate these. You may think it is completely normal to work during studies, but some people actually feel they should not be working at all during their college years.

Furthermore, people who have no prior work experience have more issues with organization, commitments and hierarchies. And employers are aware of this.

It is very simple really: Every new experience is hard. Past experiences help you predict what is going to happen and deal with new challenges easier.

If a person has no previous experience whatsoever, he/she may experience potential anxiety and will, most probably, get familiar with the job and obligations later.

Don’t get me wrong, I do not want to discourage candidates with absolutely no experience from applying for jobs.

I rather wish to say that having a work experience, regardless of what it is, can be an extremely valuable asset, both on a resume and in practice.

Therefore, if you are a student or a recent graduate, reconsider whether there is not some past experience you failed to mention.

I was a waitress, a babysitter and a tutor during my studies and no, these positions weren’t directly contributing to my long-term goals. They also weren’t very prestigious either!

Nevertheless, these jobs demonstrated my readiness to finance my studies and a few other qualities, such as: responsibility, communication skills, organizational skills and teaching abilities.

Therefore, despite my worries about some of my friends having high-scale, prestigious internships, I still decided to mention these jobs on my first resume.

There will always be someone better or more experienced than you. Nevertheless, you should always try to focus on your experience, your story and what you can offer to the employer .

Don’t be too hard on yourself. Even employers in big and fancy companies know how hard a job of a waitress or a bartender can be and they will appreciate your effort and responsibility.

Chances are they were also there once.

ELABORATE ON RELEVANT EXTRACURRICULARS, HOBBIES AND SKILLS

Having my resume updated recently, someone advised me to delete my hobbies / extracurriculars (not the skills section though).

To be honest, I am still thinking about it because the advice came from a person highly skilled in these matters while I personally, lean in favor of this section. I think it adds a bit of a personal touch and can make you “stand out” in the crowd.

Now, I am still a recent graduate but I do have a couple of work experiences and relevant skills to put on my resume so I am a slightly different category.

For those of you who do not have major work experience and are worried about what to put in there, definitely consider hobbies and extracurriculars as a separate section.

It will show your interests, it will demonstrate that you manage to find time for different things and recruiters may even feel drawn to your profile owing to common interests!

People tend to prefer similar people and a common hobby / interest could be a good starting point.

If a recruiter shares your passion, being a semi-professional cyclist can easily be a big plusfor your application, regardless of the fact you are applying for a position of a junior accountant.

It happened to me that I was chatting about my hobbies and interests on my first job interview… A recruiter asked me to elaborate my “interest in history and art” and we actually ended up discussing WW 2.

This is a true story and I did ultimately get this job!

Regardless of how insecure you may feel, you are not just your studies or your previous experience. Employers are generally interested about other things you can bring to the table and they love seeing someone with a wide range of interests, hobbies and ultimately, knowledge.

Additional Tipp : You may want to find a bit more about a recruiter or a manager you may end up dealing with in an interview. If you can find out a few things about his/hers interests and hobbies, it may be wise to consider matching these.

Of course, I would never say I like football regardless of anything. Do try to keep it real!

When speaking of skills section , this one is pretty much mandatory for both, experienced professionals and entry level candidates.

You will want to include both, “hard” and “soft” skills :

• Include anything that makes sense: languages, computer skills (esp. programming, coding, working in specific programs), driver’s license, debating skills, public speaking and writing skills etc.
• The more leverage you can provide, the better. If you participated in debate clubs, if you are publishing articles in the university papers or are writing a blog… Don’t be shy, put it all out there!
• Soft skills are also useful, and they are surely worth mentioning, especially when you have a relevant experience to back this up. This means that you should briefly elaborate why you consider yourself to be organized, flexible or inter-cultural and this is especially important in cases of candidates with little or no experience. At least think about it before an interview, recruiter will most probably ask you for examples or explanations.

Therefore, both hobbies/interests and skills sections are very useful and should be used wisely by entry level candidates.

What do you consider your genuine strengths are? What do you think other people would consider interesting about you? What is it about you that makes you proud other and people could consider price worthy?

I always mention jogging and I proudly stress out that I ran a half-marathon.

Some recruiters couldn’t care less, some love it, but most importantly, this kind of information will rarely work against you, while at the same time, can easily work in your favor.

CONSIDER ALTERNATIVE FORMATTING

Apart from minding the order in your resume (education first), you may want to think about its format as well.

There are specific resume formats customized for people with little or no experience.

Why am I stressing formatting out?

Because you can really use this to your advantage and make your resume stand out with the help of interesting templates or color use. And this can be a big advantage for junior level candidates!

It can be relevant for senior level candidates as well, however, they usually manage to stand out with the help of their experience and recruiters are generally more interested in hunting them than the other way around.

That is why you generally notice experienced professionals rather modest and plain resumes while junior level candidates appear to have dedicated a lot more attention to the resume looks and format.

This is true and it is so for the above-mentioned reason.

So, think about tricks which will help you highlight your assets not only verbally but visually as well.

Furthermore, think about the company you are applying for: You may consider customizing your resume so that colors on it match the logo or official colors of the company.

Of course, this shouldn’t be too obvious, but such subtle cues may trigger a subconscious impression that you are already fitting with the company’s image.

Finally, while still at the beginning, you may want to keep your resume shorter, so one is fine and definitely do not write more than two A4 pages. Quality should always prevail over quantity.

Give it a nice format and keep it clear and concrete .

FINAL TOUCHES AND TIPPS

You should definitely pay attention to the content of your resume, but this is not the only thing you will be focusing on.

As already mentioned, the resume looks can make a significant difference and basically, everything is important.

• Pay attention to the picture ! If you decide to put it on a resume, you will want a picture to present you in the best way possible. It should be nice and professional: you should be presented on an above waist portrait with a pleasant smile, wearing a professional outfit. From my experience, investing in a resume photo done by a professional really pays off, but of course, the choice is up to you.
• Next thing: Pay attention to the font you choose for the text. Although, there are hundreds of fonts you can use, I think it is better to stick to conventional ones (e.g. Times new roman, Calibri, Ariel, Georgia etc.). It may not look so interesting but keeping it simple tends to be smarter.
• Extra Tipp : When submitting both, Cover Letter and a resume, it may be advisable to use the same font on both documents . It looks neater and demonstrates attention to detail.
• Extra Tipp 1 : Even though you are still a beginner, do consider making a LinkedIn profile and using this tool to connect with potential recruiters and colleagues.

It can be a very useful tool, especially when considering the importance of reference and connections by the job hunt.

At the beginning, you will probably use it to just connect with university classmates and acquaintances but with time, recruiters may start approaching you.

Attach your resume to your LinkedIn profile and let them notice you!

Also, there are a lot of interesting articles, courses and job postings that you can check out on LinkedIn and finally, this network can help you when researching for a concrete job application.

Finally, this is something rather intuitive and logical, however, it may be useful to repeat it just in case.

• You will need to update your resume with every relevant experience or change which happens on a professional plan… Any relevant trainings, projects or successes, make sure you include it!

Also, you will want to revisit your resume with every new job application and think about what you wish to highlight and point out for that particular vacancy…

Still, let us not get too unrealistic. Rare are those who really modify a resume with every job application and especially in the case of beginners, there is really nottoo much information or experience to play with anyway…

Nevertheless, do make sure to remember that your resume can and should undergo modifications, hence, that you should update it following relevant developments in your career.

• And my final and most important advice would be: keep it positive and do not give up! Job hunt is hard, rejections are painful, and you probably already wondered whether the whole struggle is worth it.

I want to tell you that it is… Once you get where you want to be, this will all seem ridiculous and funny and you will perceive your beginner’s struggles in a different light.

Keep up the confident attitude and remember that someone out there needs someone just like you and that your worth and qualities will be recognized when the time is right.

Your only job is to present yourself in the best way possible and you can start doing that right now, by drafting or updating your resume.

Get to work, there are so many exciting opportunities waiting for you!

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What should a resume look like after college?

Joining the job market after college is tough. Most grads can’t find a job after college because they lack the experience that employers expect these days. There are more bachelor degree holders on the job market than ever before, and even entry-level roles require an unprecedented level of technical skills.

Your resume is your single best tool to help you overcome that challenge, which is why it’s so important to know what a resume should look like after college.

Your first resume after college

The truth is that most people’s first resumes after college aren’t very good. I’ve hired my fair share of people out of college and also struggled to find a job as a recent graduate, so I would know!

Most resumes after graduation are pretty rough around the edges for a few reasons:

• Students often lack relevant job experience for white-collar jobs.
• Young people tend to stuff resumes with keywords to appease application tracking systems.
• New grads don’t always have a career direction, and their resumes reflect that.
• Most resumes from young people tend to lack visual flair.
• Most of the work experience they list is just fluff to inflate the resume page count.

Even just one of those mistakes can get your resume tossed into the recycling bin. Here’s why:

• The average corporate job posting receives 250 applications , but only 4-6 resumes are selected for interviews.
• Employers only take about 6 seconds to scan a resume , so it needs to be good .
• Only ⅓ of employers think applicants are honest about their resumes, so your resume can’t give off one whiff of exaggeration.

That means you have about a 2.5% chance to be selected for an interview in any given job application, and that decision happens in about 6 seconds—with a low tolerance for stretching the truth.

Many people in your life will tell you to customize each and every resume you send for every job posting. Many websites do this, too—and they mean well, but they’re missing the mark.

What they fail to realize is that customized resumes don’t mean anything when those resumes lack legitimate and relevant experience for a given job. Building experience and networking in one area first is how you find a job after college .

What should be on your first resume after college?

I know that’s a lot of doom and gloom, but you can definitely overcome those odds and get a job with a powerful resume . Let’s start at the top!

Here’s the experience that should be on it for recent graduates:

• Retail work experience
• Internship experience ( getting an internship after college works, too)
• Extracurricular experience
• Volunteer experience
• Contributions to student journals, if applicable

Your resume should also have these sections:

• Easily identifiable personal information
• Clearly defined skills
• Software familiarity
• Certifications in progress

How to write a resume after college

An eye-tracking study from The Ladders showed that resumes identified for “keyword stuffing” were among the worst-performing resumes in the eyes of the hiring managers. Think about that the next time someone tells you to “mirror the job posting’s language” closely as possible.

Application tracking systems are a reality of job searching these days, but you can usually accomplish that by tweaking the titles of your past jobs (which are also among the first things that employers scan on your resume).

Remember to keep everything honest and above-board. If you tweak a past job title to reflect experience you never gained in that role, then you’ve gone too far.

Quantify your work experience

Aside from tweaking your job titles (within reason), the next thing you should do is quantify your experience with results.

This is the single best way to land the best jobs after college , because quality matters .

Start with your tasks and responsibilities. Instead of simply listing “stuff you did,” focus on the result that you created.

Here’s how I revamped my experience as a teaching assistant:

• “Led seminars every week”
• “Marked student essays”
• “Mentored students with assignments”
• “Highly positive teaching reviews”

It’s all true and gave me experience, but none of those bullet points convey the scope of the work or the results that I achieved. I changed it because employers look for quantifiable results.

Look at this study from CareerBuilder : out of 1,100 hiring managers and HR professionals surveyed (all employed full-time), a lack of quantifiable results was the third-highest reason why they rejected resumes.

Clearly, this is an important part of what your resume should look like after college. Here’s what that same job looks like with quantified work and results in mind:

• “Mentored 40 students per semester, leading two seminars per week”
• “Raised a class average from C+ to B+ in one semester”
• “Marked, edited, and proofread 400+ pages of student work under tight deadlines”
• “Received highly positive teaching reviews for all 3 semesters of teaching”

It’s much more compelling, isn’t it? Hiring managers will notice, too.

The trick is to attach a number to the task or responsibility, which accomplishes one of several things:

• Establish the scope of the work.
• Create a metric-based result (e.g. gaining website traffic).
• Create a financial or business result.

Underrated tips for writing a resume after college

We tend to think about writing our resumes in a backward sense. Recent graduates in particular tend to fret over the design first, and then cram the work experience section with as many bullet points as possible to inflate their resume’s page count.

They think it makes them seem more experienced than they really are, but it actually hurts their chances. If you’re still deciding what to do after college , then reserve some time to revamp your resume to improve your career prospects in the short and mid-term.

Here’s the process you need to follow:

• Focus on job titles first
• Quantify your work experience second
• Frame your skills with care
• Include volunteer and extracurricular experience
• Worry about designing your resume last

Bells and whistles add a nice touch to resumes, but they are just small visual flairs. Design is the “sizzle,” but what your resume actually says is the “steak.”

Once you’ve finished including what you actually want to say, you can get designs for your resume from these sources:

• Google Docs

Evaluating your resume after college

“The first draft of anything is shit.” – Ernest Hemingway

Don’t worry about making your resume perfect. You just need to focus on making it the best possible representation of your experience today . You’ll update this document dozens of times in your life.

Remember: “done” is better than “perfect.”

Stay in that mentality as you evaluate your own resume. Use this checklist to revise, massage, or fix anything that needs work, but never forget that this serves a job search that needs to begin sooner than later.

Without further ado, here’s how to evaluate your resume after college:

Introduction

• Full name is present and spelled correctly
• Email address is present without typos
• LinkedIn profile is present (and ideally hyperlinked)
• Phone number is present and formatted cleanly
• Address, city, and postal code are present and without errors
• Profile photo is clean and professional (photos are optional)
• Core skills are listed
• Recent job titles are listed
• Professional certificates are listed
• Technology proficiency is listed
• Education is listed (briefly)
• Work experience is no more than 2 pages
• 3-4 most recent positions are listed
• All bullets are quantified or explain business value

Pro tip: If you’re living at home after college , then ask your parents to review your resume.

Don’t stress over fitting everything onto your resume–you don’t need to do that! The vast majority of recruiters and hiring managers will view your LinkedIn profile to make sure your information is accurate and to get a sense of your online activity (which is why it’s included in the checklist). They can find all of your professional details there if desired.

Follow those tips and you’ll be on the right path in no time. Happy hunting!

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How to Write a College Resume That’ll Get You Hired (Plus an Example!)

When you’re in college, a strong resume is one of the first things that helps you land an internship or part-time job. It represents you to employers when you can’t be in the room (yet!) and is essential to convincing them to call you for an interview based on your previous experiences and current skills. Whether you have a resume you used for college applications or are starting completely from scratch, putting effort into your resume now gives you a higher likelihood of success and sets a solid foundation, making it a breeze to update in the future as you—and it—evolve.

If you feel like you have nothing to put on your resume, don’t worry. After advising hundreds of students on these documents, I know you have more to offer than you think! I frequently meet first-year college students who believe they can’t include many of the things they did before college on a resume. You absolutely can—and you should—until those get outranked by all the other awesome things you’ll accumulate over the course of your college career. Even if you’re a freshly minted high school graduate, you have valuable skills and experiences employers want, and this guide can help you showcase them.

Read on to learn about what goes on your resume, how to format it, and what else you can do to ensure it makes you shine—and to see our college resume example.

What Goes on a College Resume

In setting up your resume, you should use a few core sections to help you easily lay out all the information a recruiter is looking for when they make quick decisions about whether or not to interview you. (And yes, recruiters do skim, reportedly spending an average of 7.4 seconds making their first pass on a resume, so you want to make a good impression fast).

Contact Info

It’s traditional to start with your basic contact information at the top of your document including your name, email, phone, and the city and state where you live. Use your full name (and maybe bump up the font a point or two because you’re a big deal!), and if you have a nickname you prefer, you can include it in parentheses.

Use your college email as it’s typically professional and establishes your educational brand. Now is also a good time to check that your phone’s voicemail greeting is up-to-date. In case a recruiter calls while you’re busy—or you don’t recognize the number and swipe it to voicemail—this greeting could be their first impression of you. Even recording something as simple as, “ Hello, you’ve reached Christine. Please leave a message and I will return your call as soon as possible, ” can help them feel confident they reached the right person and that you’re able to present yourself professionally.

Your physical location can be based either on your school’s address or your permanent home address. If you’re targeting opportunities in one location or the other, include the most local address so they know you’re familiar with the area (and likely won’t have a problem finding housing).

Pro tip: Save space by listing your email, phone, and location all on one line. If you have a LinkedIn profile , you can add that in your contact information section as well. The result might look like this:

Karla Perez Stillwater, MN ∙ (000) 765-4321 ∙ [email protected] ∙ www.linkedin.com/krperez

For college students, education should be right below the contact information on your resume. This immediately orients your reader to the fact that you’re a current student and conveys important information, like what you’re studying. What you include in your education section can also demonstrate that you’re a good match for the opportunity you’re targeting, increasing your chances of a recruiter call.

The basics you should always include are:

• Your school’s name
• Your expected graduation date
• The type of degree you’re pursuing: For example, you might write “Bachelor of Arts” or “Associate’s Degree.”
• Any majors, minors, or concentrations: If you’re applying to opportunities in these areas, this will help an employer see you already have some knowledge and a motivation for working with them.

Depending on your personal strengths and what jobs you’re applying for, you might also want to include:

• Your GPA: But only if it’s strong. (It’s usually good to include 3.5 and above.) If you stumbled through some of the general requirements you had to take but nailed all the courses in your major, consider adding two GPAs—your cumulative GPA and your major GPA—to show you have stronger grades in your chosen discipline.
• Standardized test scores: If you’re applying to opportunities in quantitative fields, like finance or consulting, you might consider listing standardized test scores like the SAT or ACT.
• Relevant coursework: Selecting and highlighting three to five classes that match closely with the specific opportunity you’re applying to is a really fast way to tailor your resume and make you a more attractive match. For example, if you’re targeting an internship in computer science, you can list your “Introduction to Python” and “Introduction to Algorithms” classes.
• Other colleges or universities you’ve attended: If you’re a transfer student or you studied abroad at another university, adding these schools can signal that you have other strengths, such as cultural awareness or language skills, or give you a chance to highlight key classes you took elsewhere.
• Your high school: If you’re shooting for an opportunity local to your high school or went somewhere well-known, then you may want to keep that as your last entry for educational experience. Otherwise, high school is the first entry to cut when you’re short on space. It has gotten you to where you need to be, but the focus should now be on the higher-level degree you’re working on and you should dedicate as much space as you need to boast about all of your amazing college accomplishments!

Here is an example of what a completed “Education” section might look like:

Candidate for Bachelor of Arts degree ,   St. Olaf College , Northfield, MN Double Major: Political Science and Economics ∙ Expected Graduation: May 2023 ∙ GPA: 3.7 Relevant Coursework: Introduction to Political Theory, Politics and Human Rights, Global Interdependence

The experience section is where the real substance of your resume lives. This is the chance to show a snapshot of the jobs and internships you’ve had (if any), the work you did, the skills you used, and your accomplishments. Let’s talk about what experience you can include, how to pull out skills and demonstrate your value, and what it should look like on the page.

Experience can cover a lot of things. It can be full-time jobs, part-time jobs, internships, or research. Unpaid work—like volunteer and community roles—counts too! Don’t discount the value these other kinds of experiences can add to your resume just because you didn’t earn money. You can leverage all of your experiences on a resume by pulling out transferable skills , or broader talents you’ve developed that will be beneficial even if you aren’t applying to the same type of role.

Take a significant class project, for example. That can be built out as experience as long as you’re clear it was for a class. If you worked on a group project, you probably collaborated on a team, organized, worked under deadlines, completed some independent tasks, presented your work to others, and had some kind of outcome. Even if you were doing something that might not seem widely applicable, like designing a rocket, many of those skills can transfer over to another role. Say you had to do cost comparisons for the materials you selected for your rocket, those same analysis skills could be useful to a business role or for a part-time job where you have to order supplies for a restaurant.

You can also create targeted headers for your Experience section(s) if there are themes that correlate with the internship or part-time job you want. Specific headers—such as “Research Experience,” “Marketing Experience,” or “Software Engineering Experience”—can immediately help your reader see that you’re aligned with the needs they have for their open role.

If you don’t have something that specific, it’s OK. You can still shift your experiences into categories like “Relevant Experience” and “Additional Experience.” For example, if you’re applying to research roles, you’d want to put any research related work under “Relevant Experience,” and your cashier job and website building side hustle would go under “Additional Experience.” These two headers are great for allowing you to bump the best of your experiences up toward the top of your resume.

Once you decide which headers to use, make sure each entry includes basic information—the title of your role, the organization’s name, the location, and the dates you worked there—along with bullet points describing what you accomplished. For example:

Intern , Minnesota State Senate , St. Paul, MN June 2019–August 2019

• Researched prior legislation and current bills, summarized content, and identified alternate actions
• Coordinated the schedule for Senator Harriet Maxwell and kept accurate minutes for all meetings
• Drafted memos for important interoffice updates outside of normal meeting schedule

A skills section is a great way to make your most valuable knowledge and expertise stand out—and be easily spotted by a recruiter. Which skills belong in your own skill section depend on the jobs you’re applying for, so be sure to read the job description carefully to figure out what skills are most relevant for each particular role.

Skills that might appear in this section include (but are definitely not limited to): technical skills; software or other tools you know well; languages you can speak, read, or write; other job-specific skills like using a POS system or cash register; and, for some jobs, even your ability to drive different vehicles.

From this range, you can see why it’s important to change things up based on what job you’re applying to! Some skills—for example, being fluent or conversational in a second language—might be relatively permanent fixtures on a college resume. If you’re looking for a part-time job waiting tables, you might add the fact that you can bartend, whereas you might list your mastery in JavaScript instead when going after that software engineering internship you have your eye on.

Once you’ve decided which skills are most important for this role, you can simply list them on your resume. If you have a few different types of skills, you can separate them into categories. For instance:

Languages: Spanish (Fluent); Russian (Basic) Software: JavaScript, Python, CSS

Note that just listing your skills in a separate section isn’t always enough. You also want to make sure to describe how you’ve used key technical and job skills elsewhere on your resume (usually in the bullet points of your experience section).

Other Optional Sections

There are some other sections you can consider adding depending on your experiences and what your target employer might be looking for. For example, a consumer product firm might be looking for examples of design work. In that case you could add a section called “Design Projects,” which might include significant assignments from some of your academic classes or independent projects that you’ve developed in your spare time. Don’t be afraid to include links to your work if you’re submitting your resume online! (Just avoid hyperlinking out from important words, as this could trip up the online systems that scan most resumes.)

Another popular section is “Leadership Experience” where roles like being the vice president for one of your student organizations or being a co-captain for your athletic team would be a good fit. Employers love to see leadership themes on resumes, as it demonstrates the transferable soft skills they’re looking for like communication, collaboration, and initiative.

An “Activities” section can also demonstrate skills. If you dedicate time to learning more about consulting cases with your consulting club, you likely increased your analytical skills in a team setting, which is valuable for many business roles. If you’re an athlete, you can showcase your ability to manage your time, create or be part of a cohesive team, or organize and motivate teammates during practices. These skills gained as an athlete can be ideal if you’re applying for a heavily collaborative role. Additionally, if the activities that you’re involved in are directly applicable to the job, these are powerful to include as it demonstrates interest and dedication. So if you’re majoring in healthcare administration, adding that you’re a member of the Healthcare Society on your campus can be a major plus for an employer.

Any optional sections like these will usually need to be set up similar to your experience entries. Include the organization (or class), your role, the location, the dates you participated, and your key achievements. Here is an example of an entry you might put under a “Leadership” heading:

Head Delegate , Model United Nations , Northfield, MN September 2019–April 2020

• Researched global topics such as human rights and sustainable energy and developed persuasive positions
• Represented Chile as a delegate in an education simulation at a conference with 2,000+ participants; negotiated with others and collaborated on common goals to deliver resolutions on political issues
• Liaised between the delegation and the Secretariat, serving as a first point of contact and resolving issues

6 Tips for Writing a Successful College Resume

From formatting to crafting strong descriptions, attention to detail can pay off when tackling your resume. Here are six tips to help you develop a great resume:

1. Choose the Right Resume Format for You

Your parents or other family members might share their resume and have you copy it because it has worked for them. But they’re at a different place in their career and their format may not be the best one for you.

There are three main types of resume formats for laying out your experiences, skills, and education—the functional resume , the combination/hybrid resume , and the chronological resume . The chronological format is almost always the best fit for college students.

With a chronological resume, you’ll list your experiences within each category/section in reverse chronological order (most recent to least recent, based on end date). Since this is the most traditional and common resume format, recruiters are familiar with it and can quickly see what you have to offer.

2. Be Clear and Consistent

In terms of resume formatting, there are a lot of small choices to make about things like font, style, and spacing. Whatever you decide, make sure it is easily readable, consistent, and not overly fancy. You could have the greatest content in the world, but if it’s too difficult or annoying to read, a recruiter is going to move on.

In order to make a document easy to scan, use clear headers for your sections. Maybe they’re bold and in all caps, or maybe they’re a couple font sizes larger, but they should be the same throughout your resume. The rest of your content should be consistent as well. For example, all your organization or previous employer names might be in italics, your dates all right aligned, your locations in plain text, and the titles of your roles in bold. Keeping things uniform helps the recruiter easily absorb all the relevant information you want them to have.

3. Make Sure It Can Pass Through an Application Tracking System (ATS)

Formatting is also important because your resume will likely pass through something called an applicant tracking system (ATS), a type of software that helps recruiters organize incoming candidate applications. Recruiters can apply filters or search for keywords, and the ATS will show candidates matching the desired criteria, making it easier to identify good candidates in large applicant pools.

In order for your resume to pass this first round and make it to the human who has the power to get you to an interview, the ATS needs to see you’re a good match. But there are formatting choices that can confuse an ATS—for example, some won’t read the content inside tables, text boxes, or graphics. And if the ATS can’t read your materials, your resume might be filtered out. (Read more about formatting your resume for an ATS here .)

This all means that using one of the fancy resume templates you see online isn’t necessarily the best move . Most basic formatting can be achieved with bolding, italics, and spacing, and you will still end up with a good-looking resume—meaning that starting with a blank document can actually be a better bet. (If you still want to use a template, we’ve curated 41 free ATS-friendly templates here .)

4. Create Impactful Descriptions

Give the descriptions you use for your experiences some TLC, as this is what recruiters will focus on once you’ve caught their attention. I often discover students undersell—or simply forget—all the things they’ve done that might be interesting and of value to an employer (including those transferable skills).

Here’s an exercise that can help. Reflect on an experience (such as an internship you had or volunteer work you completed) and quickly jot down what you did. You don’t need to have much structure for this—try it as a brainstorm. Think about answering some of these questions:

• What was your role?
• What were the goals for that position or experience?
• What tasks did you specifically do?
• What projects did you work on?
• Were there any side projects or tasks you completed?
• Who did you work with?
• What did you contribute?
• What did you accomplish? (Or what did/do you intend to accomplish? This can be a useful way to think about things especially when considering research or longer term projects that are still in progress!)
• Can it be quantified? Numbers can paint a clear and impressive picture of your accomplishments to someone reading your resume. You might write that you fundraised as part of the Student Government Association, and that will generally get your point across, but if you can say you increased SGA fundraising by 30% and were able to create two new social events attended by 100+ students each, that will make more of an impact. Look for ways to quantify your accomplishments wherever possible.

Once you have a good brainstorm, take the information you gathered and try crafting several statements using this formula:

Action Verb + Subject + Outcome/Purpose/Result (i.e. Accomplishment)

So you might say:

Organized a fundraiser event for 70 participants resulting in $1,000 in donations to a local hospital

Your descriptions are most valuable when leading with an action verb that reflects specific skills. For example, swap “Worked on” for “Collaborated on” and “Responsible for” with “Oversaw.” Other verbs I often recommend students use include:

• Communicated
• Facilitated

5. Tailor Your Resume for Each Opportunity

Always tailor your resume to each specific job you apply to. Making it easy for the recruiter to connect your skills to what they are looking for can increase your chances of success. The job description is your blueprint and key to doing this. A couple of these exercises could help you identify what you’ll want to highlight.

• Activity 1: Take the job description and go through and underline everything you’ve had some experience in. This might be specific tasks, software/programs/tools, or qualities. Write a quick note in the margin to highlight when you’ve done that. Underline things where you have transferable skills too. For example, if you’ve used a software that is similar to a software they’re looking for, underline it. A recruiter should be able to see on your resume that you used similar skills and would be a quick study.
• Activity 2: If you aren’t sure which skills to emphasize, take the entire job description and pop it into a simple online word cloud generator, like TagCrowd . It automatically shows you the words most used in the description, which are likely of highest importance to the company or role. If you have those skills, make sure you mention them in your descriptions and mirror the language as exactly as possible (our friend the ATS will be looking for precise keywords!).

These activities can help you identify the right action verbs, keywords, and tools—like software—to weave into your descriptions. They can also help you decide what past experiences to include or which of your college courses are relevant to this role and which direct and transferable skills to highlight to make your resume a stronger fit for your target job.

6. Keep a Few Other Tried-and-True Tips in Mind

Here are a few other parting tips to keep in mind as you build your document:

• Avoid writing in first person (“I,” “we,” “our,” and “my” statements).
• Bullet points will make your document more readable—usually two to three per entry works well. But it doesn’t have to be even: Give more description space to the most relevant entries.
• Attention to detail matters. Proofread—not just for typos, but to make sure formatting is consistent (like date dashes). Employers will use your resume to make assumptions about how detail-oriented you are.
• Review any headers you put in all caps. Some spell checkers are programmed to assume that they’re acronyms and skip them.
• Ditch jargon and acronyms wherever possible. Don’t assume the reader always knows what you’re talking about. Sometimes the first person reading your document is a general recruiter and not familiar with the technical side of a role.
• Be aware of tenses. If you’ve completed an experience, those descriptions will be in past tense, and current roles can be described in present tense. (If you’re still actively involved in a role you can list the role through “Present,” and if more than one entry has the same end date, make a strategic decision to put the most relevant experience first.)
• Acceptable margins are usually between one and 0.7 inches.
• Pick a readable font, like Arial, Calibri, or Times New Roman, and try not to go below font size 11.
• As a college student, stick to a one-page resume. However, you should consider keeping a longer version (called a master resume) for your own personal use. That’s where you keep a full record of your experiences to make it easier to pull out the relevant ones each time you tailor your resume for a specific job.

What Does a College Resume Look Like?

A college resume should showcase your education, experiences, and skills (direct and transferable!) in a clear way, while keeping in mind what is most relevant to your target employer. The resume below shows a student highlighting their relevant education and experiences specifically for internship opportunities in government and politics.

Download sample college resume

There are many ways to write and format a resume. Ultimately, you want one that best represents you and your accomplishments to recruiters for the job at hand. Try out some of these tips, and I hope they help you succeed in catching that recruiter’s eye!

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After a few years of professional experience, should I leave college jobs on my resume?

I've been out of college and employed as a software engineer for about three years now, and in addition I've been doing a decent amount of freelance work at the same time. Now that I've started looking around at other positions, I'm wondering if I should reduce or entirely remove some of the internships and part-time jobs that I had in college in order to not distract from my more recent and relevant professional experience.

In my specific case, I have a few assistantships and internships that while I think they provide more depth and show the breadth of my experience, are just going to be far less important to potential employers.

So, what's the general rule on listing college work experience on a resume after 3-5 years of professional experience?

• work-experience

• In my experience you should only go into detail about positions you held in the last 5-10 years depending how long you had each position. Your college works, college jobs unless they were the company your applying to, offer very little insight to you as an employee. The space on the resume is better left to your contract work. –  Donald Commented Jul 31, 2012 at 13:05

5 Answers 5

Obviously internships and part time jobs wont count as much as full time positions and your CV should reflect that. If you have space by all means include them, a few will be good. However make sure the space that you devote is proportional to how significant they are. The last thing you want is for your ASDA summer job to take space away from your full time job at NASA :).

• I agree here. I have accomplishments I have done in sports as a small section on mine that have had a huge positive in my first job as well as moving up and landing my second job. They like to see initiative, drive, and determination. If they show it, then add them. Proportionally of course. –  Adam Commented Jul 24, 2012 at 22:15
• +1 great answer. I just have the title of the job. However, if the work that you did in those summer jobs or internships is significant to you or to your job application, give it more emphasis and more detail description. –  tehnyit Commented Jul 25, 2012 at 7:54
• Thanks for the answer. I've decided to just cut those college jobs down to just a short two line description. Leaves plenty of space for more relevant stuff. –  Chaser324 Commented Jul 28, 2012 at 0:32

The "general rule on listing college work experience on a resume after 3-5 years of professional experience" is "it depends" .

The overall rule is that your resume includes everything that showcases your skills and experience but that also remains within the generally accepted and desired 1-2 page range .

As a hiring manager, if you held only that one position for those 3 to 5 years after college, I would still prefer to see those part-time jobs from college, because you're early enough in your career that I'm still using your resume to get a full picture of who you are and how you've grown as an employee, and if that starts early, I'm interested. However, if you've been there 5 to 7 years, I care considerably less about that, because who you are as an employee is clear: someone who stays in one place for some time.

If you held multiple jobs over those 3 to 5 years, then I want to see all of those listed as well -- same reasoning (I want to see how you've grown as an employee) but with more attention paid to the types of jobs you've hopped around to, to try to figure out why (bored, bad fit, moved to a new area, etc).

Now, in either of those situations, if the work you did in college was dramatically different (e.g. pizza delivery versus computer programming), then I would clearly classify those as "Miscellaneous" or something like that, and list them just for completeness (and in truth, many companies will ask you to complete a job application listing all your jobs for the last 10+ years, so you might very well have to do it anyway).

For example, you might have:

Some Job Title, Some Company, Some Location, 2009-2012 Description and list of skills used. Past Positions Held Pizza Delivery (part-time), Some Company College Town, 2009 Video Store Clerk (part-time), Some Company College Town, 2008

But, if the part-time stuff was relevant, I would be totally happy to see this no matter the space it takes:

Some Important Job Title, Some Company, Some Location, 2009-2012 Description and list of skills used. Some Job Title (part-time), Some Company, Some Location, 2009 Description and list of skills used. Some Job Title (part-time), Some Company, Some Location, 2008 Description and list of skills used.

...until I see this :

Some Really Important Job Title, Some Company, Some Location, 2016-2020 Description and list of skills used. Some Moderately More Important Job Title, Some Company, Some Location, 2012-2016 Description and list of skills used. Some Important Job Title, Some Company, Some Location, 2009-2012 Description and list of skills used.

Probably somewhere in 2013 or 2014 the imaginary person in this example could knock the college off the list, and certainly by the completion of that second position listed.

Again, the goal is to give the best (and most accurate) picture of you that you can give, in the space you have to give it. That may include 9 entries for 9 years (5 years plus college), 2 entries for nine years, or anywhere in between.

Leave them as is , if you find that assistantships and internships to be very challenging project that you have accomplished. This is your accomplishments !

Another option would be writing these experience in detail as an independent project(s) that you have completed !

One solution I've used in the past was to summarize all part-time jobs as a single entry at the bottom of the list. This de-emphasizes them, but you can still refer to them if the hiring manager is interested. E.g.

• Skills needed, responsibilities held, etc
• Company C, "jobtitle", three word summary
• Company D, internship, three word summary
• Company E, "jobtitle", three word summary

I'd keep all the relevant jobs. If you worked as a pizza delivery, a tech support and a webmaster during college, mention about pizza delivery, describe the tech support in a one or two lines and write more about webmaster stuff.

I had the same problem with my education. I finished two universities. I was studying computer science in one and management in the other. When I applied for an IT job I focused on the computer science studies and only mentioned the other faculty.

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College Resume - Examples & Writing Guides for 2024

You’ve just sat down to write a college student resume.

An A+ resume that converts.

Whether you need a part-time job to cover your bills or a college internship for more experience, we are here to help.

This guide will take you through a simple step-by-step process of creating a college student resume. 

• An example of a finished college resume that works
• How to write a college resume that’ll fill up your interview diary
• How to make your college resume stand out [with top tips & tricks]

For some added inspiration, here’s a college student resume example, created with our very own resume builder :

The above example gets serious results, and yours will too. Simply follow the steps below.

Check out some of these related resume examples that you might be interested in:

• No Experience Resume
• Internship Resume
• Research Assistant Resume
• Students and Graduates Resume
• High School Resume
• Teacher Resume

How to Format a College Student Resume

The first step when creating any resume is to pick the best resume format.

Formatting has a number of benefits, but mostly it allows the hiring manager to read your resume with ease.

The most common resume format for a college student is “functional” or “skill-based”, which allows the hiring manager to immediately see the benefits in hiring you. We recommend college students starting with this format.

Students will usually have stronger skills than their work history, which makes the functional resume a good choice. It’s also ideal for those who have gaps in their employment history.

Now that you have the best format, you need to organize your resume layout .

Use a College Student Resume Template

Before you go ahead with crafting your college student resume, you may want to use a college student resume template.

A resume that is neat and orderly will be a breeze for recruiters to read.

Oh, and it’s the best way to prevent formatting issues.

What to Include in a College Student Resume

The main sections in a college student resume are:

• Contact Information
• Volunteer Experience
• Extracurricular Activities

Want to go a step further? You can also add these optional sections:

• Awards & Certification
• Personal Projects

Interests & Hobbies

But what should you write for each of these sections? Read on to find out.

Want to know more about resume sections? View our guide on What to Put on a Resume .

How to Correctly Display your Contact Information

Now, this section doesn’t require flair, but it must be factually correct. Messing up the contact section can mean the recruiter can’t contact you – oops! 

The contact information section must include:

• Title - In this case, “College Student” or “High-school Graduate”
• Phone Number – Proofread this multiple times
• Email Address – Use a professional email address ([email protected]), not one from your childhood ([email protected]).
• (Optional) Location - Applying for a job abroad? Mention your location.
• Abigail Pearce - College Student. 101-358-6095. [email protected]
• Abigail Pearce - Student. 101-358-6095. [email protected]

How to Write a College Student Resume Summary or Objective

So, this is a job you really want.

This may even be a job you NEED.

However, your competition is fierce. 

And with so much competition, you need to convince the hiring manager within the first few sentences.

To do this, use a resume summary or objective .

These are short paragraphs that go on top of your resume, just under your contact information. They give an overview of your entire resume.

But what is the difference between the two sections?

A resume summary is a 2-4 sentence summary of your professional experiences and achievements.

Dependable marketing sophomore with 1 year part-time experience in a marketing internship to oversee marketing campaigns that maximise profit. Experience includes PPC campaigns, SMM, web design, brand development, and more.

A resume objective is a 2-4 sentence snapshot of what you want to achieve professionally.

Current undergraduate sophomore in marketing with hundreds of classroom hours in marketing and sales related courses. Passionate about maximizing revenue with effective marketing campaigns. Experience includes creating campaigns for my own personal projects in my first term at College X. Skilled in WordPress, Facebook Ads Manager, Photoshop, ClickFunnels, and more.

So, which one is best, summary or objective?

Those with some work experience should go with a resume summary. On the other hand, those who seriously lack work experience should go with a resume objective.

How to Make Your College Student Work Experience Stand Out

Recruiters like to feel confident that you can do the job. There is no easier way to do this than to list your work experience .

Here’s the best way to structure your work experience section:

• Position name
• Company Name
• Responsibilities & Achievements

The Pizza Cabin

03/2019 - 01/2020

• Served food to 40+ people a night and multiple tables at a time.
• Educated customers on menu items and daily specials.
• Received 98% positive customer feedback.
• Engaged customers in a personal, yet professional manner, which helped me to win “Employee of the Month” 4 times.

To separate your resume from the competition, you should focus on your achievements instead of daily tasks. This will allow the recruiter to see the obvious benefits in hiring you.

Instead of saying:

“Served customers”

“Served food to 80+ people a night and multiple tables at a time”

Simply, the first statement is way too vague. There zero chance the recruiter will be impressed by this.

The second statement shows that you were able to serve 80+ people and multiple tables at a time. This tells the recruiter that you are able to work under pressured conditions and to time constraints – impressive!

What if You Don’t Have Work Experience?

Now, not every applicant will have worked in a similar job before.

If this is you, there is a simple way to get around this.

Simply call-upon crossover skills from any previous jobs.

For example, if you held a customer service role at a local pizza restaurant, you can talk about any crossover skills and experiences. Just like a sales associate, you would be able to show you used strong communication and sales skills.

As a student, make sure to check out our student resume guide!

How to Correctly List your Education

Next, it’s time to talk about your education.

Whether it’s a college junior resume or college sophomore resume, your education section is crucial.

There’s nothing too complicated with this section, just simply enter the information for your in-progress degree in the following format:

• Degree Type & Major
• University Name
• Expected Graduation
• GPA, Honours, Courses, and anything else you might want to add

Majoring in Marketing

University of Chicago

2019 - Present

• Relevant Courses: Principles of Marketing, Managerial Communications, Quantitative Methods, and Macroeconomics.

Now, you may have some questions on this section. If so, here are the answers to some of the most frequent questions that we get:

• What if I haven’t completed education yet?

As we mention above, you should still mention your current place of education, despite not finishing yet

• Should I include my high school education?

If you have not yet finished your college degree, you should also include your high school education

• What do I put first, my education or experience?

Experiences are the priority, so those go first

Want more information? Check out our guide on how to list education on a resume .

Top 10 Skills for a College Student Resume

You’ve got all the skills.

But here’s the thing –

Your competition is well-skilled too!

Show the hiring manager that you’re the top candidate by listing your best skills.

But what are the best skills for a college resume?

Create a list of hard skills and soft skills that you have developed so far in life, such as the following:

Hard Skills for a College Resume:

• Microsoft Office
• Typing Speed
• Copywriting

Soft Skills:

• Creative Thinking
• Communication
• Time-Management
• Team Player
• Decision-Making

Tailor your skills to the job description. You can have the best skills in the world, but the recruiter won’t appreciate them if they’re not relevant to the job.

Here’s a more comprehensive list of 100+ must-have skills this year.

What Else Can You Include?

We’ve now covered every essential resume section .

But the school bell hasn’t rung just yet.

You need your resume to stand out!

Acing the above sections should be enough to get you shortlisted, but adding the following sections could give you a further advantage over the other applicants.  

Awards & Certifications

Have you ever won an award?

Have you completed any third-party courses?

Do you hold any specialized certifications?

Regardless of what it is, if there is anything that you’re proud of, be sure to include it here.

Here’s an example:

Awards & Certificates

• Food Handlers Card & Food Safety Manager Certification 
• “Critical Thinking Masterclass” – Coursera Course

Need to speak multiple languages at your new job?

Yes or no, being able to speak a second language is impressive.

And with so much competition, this could be the difference.

Add a language section if you have space. 

Rank the languages by proficiency:

• Intermediate

Now, you may be wondering, “why would a recruiter want to know that I’m a part of the football team?”

Well, it allows the recruiter to get to know who you are on a personal level.

But it doesn’t stop there…

Certain hobbies demonstrate that you have soft skills, like teamwork and communication. 

Here’s which hobbies & interests you may want to mention.

Include a Cover Letter with Your Resume

Your resume should now be ready to send.

No application is complete without a convincing cover letter.

In opposition to a generic resume, a personalized cover letter shows that you care about working for this specific company .

Here’s how to structure a winning cover letter:

You should complete the following sections:

Personal Contact Information

Your full name, profession, email, phone number, and location

Hiring Manager’s Contact Information

Full name, position, location, email

Opening Paragraph

It’s no secret that recruiters skim through their pile of resumes. As such, use concise language to mention:

• The position you’re applying for
• Your experience summary and best achievement to date

With the recruiter intrigued, you can get deeper into the following specifics:

• Why you chose this specific company
• What you know about the company
• How are your top skills relevant for the job
• Which similar industries or positions have you worked in before

Closing Paragraph

Don’t just end the conversation abruptly, you should:

• Conclude the points made in the body paragraph
• Thank the recruiter for the opportunity
• Finish with a call to action. This is a good way to keep the conversation going. A simple “At your earliest opportunity, I’d love to discuss more about how I can help you achieve X” will work

Formal Salutations

End the letter in a professional manner. Something like, “Kind regards” or “Sincerely.”

For more inspiration, read our step-by-step guide on how to write a cover letter .

Key Takeaways

Building a college resume doesn't have to be hard.

Follow the tips in this guide for a college resume that is head & shoulders above the competition. 

Here are our best tips on how to create a college resume:

• Make your resume easy to read by formatting it correctly. Prioritize the reverse-chronological format, and then follow the best practices on content layout
• Use a resume summary or objective to hook the recruiter
• In your work experience section, highlight your most notable achievements to date
• Include a convincing cover letter to separate you from the competition

Suggested Reading:

• How to Make a Resume with No-Experience [21+ Examples]
• 21+ Essential LinkedIn Profile Tips For Job-Seekers
• Use Resume Keywords to Land the Job [880+ Keywords]

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College Student Resume Examples and Templates for 2024

• Resume Examples

How To Write a College Student Resume

• Resume Text Examples

When applying to colleges, you may find some schools require a resume . You can write a great resume for your college applications by showing your relevant high school and other experiences and emphasizing how you’ve explored topics and pursued your interests. Incorporating this theme into each section of your resume can increase your chances of being accepted into your preferred college or university. The advice and examples provided below can guide you in achieving this goal.

• Computer Science

1. Summarize your college student qualifications in a dynamic profile

Your resume profile should catch admissions officers’ interest by giving the top reasons they can expect you to engage actively in their campus community. Can you share some instances from your life where you have exhibited curiosity and dedication toward excellence? Your answer to this question can lead to your best profile points. For example, maybe you’ve earned an “A” average in the school subject likely to become your college major. Or perhaps you’ve done freelance work that’s helped you develop a hobby into a possible career track. With details like these at the top of your college resume, you can show your potential to thrive in a college setting.

Profile Example

Motivated student with strong academic performance in high school, including an “A” average for mathematics. Demonstrated success in a leadership role through multiple school athletics and work activities. Naturally curious and eager to explore and understand new topics.

2. Add a compelling section featuring your college student experience

Use your resume’s experience section(s) to give examples of exploring and pursuing topics that interest you. Colleges and universities generally want students who are engaged, diligent, and curious about the world. So view your experience from this perspective and write down anything that reflects your gaining or showing these qualities.

You aren’t limited to details about work experience, especially if the jobs you’ve held so far don’t speak to your career interests. On a resume for college applications, the strongest experience section will often come from a different area. For example, maybe you’re most proud of having been on the debate team or teaching yourself HTML outside school. Below is a list of possible experience sections you might develop on your resume:

• Community service
• High school athletics
• Internship experience
• Personal accomplishments
• School clubs and societies
• Study abroad experience
• Summer coursework

Experience Example

High school athletics.

Spring Track Team

Co-Captain (Senior year)

• Voted into team leadership role; coordinated with the head coach to help organize meets and answer various questions from team members
• Served as a valued mentor and resource to underclassmen

Member (all four years)

• Gained and demonstrated a strong sense of dedication and teamwork
• Contributed to team’s placing in the top four out of 18 high schools in the region for three consecutive years

3. Include education and certifications relevant to college students

View your resume’s education section as another chance to show active engagement in learning. Give basic details about your high school. But also feel free to name study areas or materials that have sparked your interest and may become a focus for you at the college level. For example, if your English classes have let you choose from a reading list for each unit, you could name some of the books or texts you decided to read and why. Also note any AP classes you’ve completed, school awards you’ve won, or other distinctions you’ve earned, like a high GPA or class rank. These can all help admissions officers see your potential.

Below are templates and examples to help you format your high school education, along with any certifications you’d like to add to your resume. Note that optional template areas appear in [brackets].

• Candidate: Diploma, High School Name, City, ST | expected graduation date
• [Select study areas or materials of interest]

Certification

Certification Name or Title , [Awarding Organization] | [Year]

Service Excellence Certificate, VCU Advanced Solutions | 2023

4. List college student-related skills and proficiencies

Add a key skills section to show how you excel in a learning environment. For instance, maybe you like to research a topic independently, or you prefer the stimulation of working in a group. On the other hand, perhaps you’re open to learning by various methods. Whatever your learning style, you can highlight it in your key skills section so admissions officers see how you’d apply yourself at their school. Below are some common keywords for college student resumes:

5. Consider adding personal hobbies or interests

You may have heard that hobbies and interests should be left off a resume. While this is often true for regular job seekers, it doesn’t apply to aspiring college students. Hobbies and interests can be a strong feature of your college application resume because they help show your all-around sense of curiosity. Feel free to highlight them in a separate section, typically toward or at the bottom of your resume.

Hobbies and Interests

Avid reader (six or more books per month) | Painting | Running

How To Pick the Best College Student Resume Template

For college applicants, a clear and straightforward resume template is usually best. Opt for a visual design that lets the admissions officer quickly review your most relevant information. Select a traditional resume font , and avoid any template with a colorful or elaborate design.

College Student Text-Only Resume Templates and Examples

• Math College Student Resume Example
• Computer Science Student Resume Example
• Marketing Student Resume Example

Joseph Corbin (123) 456-7890 | [email protected] | Philadelphia, PA 12345 | www.linkedin.com/example

Motivated student with strong academic performance in high school, including an “A” average for Mathematics. Demonstrated success in a leadership role through multiple school athletics and work activities. Naturally curious and eager to explore and understand new topics.

Key Skills 

• Complex problem-solving
• Data analysis
• Group leadership
• Mathematics
• Microsoft Excel
• Team collaboration

Graduate, Benjamin Franklin High School, Philadelphia, PA | August 2018 to June 2022

• “A” average in all Mathematics classes, including AP Calculus

Spring Track Team 

Work Experience

Host / Server / Team Lead, Domino’s Pizza, Philadelphia, PA | Summer 2018 and 2019

• Greeted visitors and took and served food orders in a fast-paced environment
• Proposed several changes to the order entry process for servers and delivery drivers, improving efficiency and collaboration among the two groups
• Helped restaurant place No. 3 in the region for customer satisfaction in July and August 2019

Hobbies & Interests

Advanced proficiency in Spanish (A- average for classes taken in all four years of high school)

Rob Smith  (123) 456-7890 | [email protected] | Columbus, OH 12345 | www.linkedin.com/example

Efficient and hardworking student with a strong interest in computer science. Draw on technical knowledge base covering UX design, JAVA, MySQL, and HTML. Demonstrated success objectively measuring software performance while participating in a rapid development cycle.

• Efficiency improvement
• Group collaboration
• Independent research
• Technical troubleshooting
• User experience (UX)

Graduate, AAE High School, Columbus, OH | August 2018 to June 2022 3.7 GPA | Top 10% of graduating class

Tech Support, XYZ Company, Columbus, OH | June 2020 to present

• Quickly and professionally respond to various tech support tickets
• Install hardware and software as needed to maintain systems
• Work with managers to develop rapid response systems to major tech threats
• Co-design and deliver educational materials to staff on proper tech use

Retail Sales Associate, Smith Clothing Company, Columbus, OH | August 2019 to May 2020

• Gained strong foundation in positive customer relations
• Operated cash register and balanced the till at end of day (EOD)

Certifications

• Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) A+
• Nielsen Norman Group UX and UX Master

John Miller (123) 456-7890 | [email protected] | Columbus, OH 12345 | LinkedIn | Portfolio

High school student with a strong interest in marketing and advertising. Freelance graphic design professional with a growing portfolio and client relationships with major local nonprofits. Enjoy collaborating on a team to explore topics and solve complex challenges.

• Data visualization
• Graphic design
• Marketing strategy
• Task prioritization
• Writing and editing

Candidate: Diploma, Douglass High School, Columbus, OH | expected June 2023 3.8 GPA | SAT scores: 760 math, 680 verbal (1440 combined)

High School Athletics and Activities

Member, Debate Team | August 2020 to present

• Collaborate closely on a 10-person team to research debate topics and form and organize compelling arguments

Member, Cross-Country Running Team | Fall 2021 and 2022

Freelance Graphic Designer, XYZ Company, Columbus, OH | April 2018 to present

• Conceptualize and create diverse marketing materials to spec
• Engage and partner with marketing teams to design campaigns and track return on investment
• Design logos and event graphics for client nonprofits
• Make infographics using data provided by sales teams
• Developed an award-winning print ad for a local coffee shop

Library Materials Associate, Community Library, Columbus, OH | June 2014 to April 2016

• Greeted students and verified account status for check-out
• Helped students find and incorporate various research sources
• Set up display technology for individual and group use
• Managed schedules for meeting and study rooms
• Reshelved materials at EOD

Technical Skills

Adobe InDesign, Photoshop | Microsoft Office Suite (Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint)

Frequently Asked Questions: College Student Resume Examples and Advice

What are common action verbs for college student resumes -.

For aspiring college students, good resume verbs will relate to the process of learning and discovery – think “explored,” “researched,” or “uncovered.” But there are various others you might use to describe your school, work, and other life experiences so far. The following list can help you find a good mix of action verbs for your college application resume:

How do you align your resume with each college application? -

The National Center for Education Statistics forecasts that total undergraduate enrollment will increase by about 9% (to nearly 17 million students) between 2021 and 2031. 

To optimize your resume for each college application:

1. Take cues from what you know about the school. 2. Refer to their website, brochures, notes from the campus tour, or any other information you’ve gathered on what the school is known for and what you’re most drawn to about it. 3. As you look over these materials, highlight words or phrases that are repeated or emphasized.

These terms can tell you what details you may want to feature in your resume profile or key skills sections (as long as they’re accurate to your experience).

For example, say you’re drawn to the college’s study-abroad program. Consider using your profile to showcase any travel or exchange programs you’ve done, along with your foreign language skills. With adjustments like these, you can make your resume more relevant to each college opportunity.

What is the best college student resume format? -

In nearly all cases, use a Combination (or Hybrid) resume because it’s easiest for admissions officers to learn about your pertinent skills and background. It’s also easiest for you to align with your goals.

With the Combination format, you focus on your most relevant skills and experience in your experience section(s) and an intro section. (This combination of experience and intro content is where the format gets its name.) Your resume intro should usually include a profile summary and key skills section, but you may also add a highlights or awards section. By carefully choosing the details for these intro sections, you can (a) position yourself for your desired school program and (b) give admissions officers a clear, quick view of what you offer.

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Jacob Meade

Certified Professional Resume Writer (CPRW, ACRW)

Jacob Meade is a resume writer and editor with nearly a decade of experience. His writing method centers on understanding and then expressing each person’s unique work history and strengths toward their career goal. Jacob has enjoyed working with jobseekers of all ages and career levels, finding that a clear and focused resume can help people from any walk of life. He is an Academy Certified Resume Writer (ACRW) with the Resume Writing Academy, and a Certified Professional Resume Writer (CPRW) with the Professional Association of Resume Writers & Career Coaches.

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How To Write A College Student Resume (With Examples)

• General Resume Examples
• Resume With No Experience
• Student Resume
• College Resume
• Entry Level Resume
• Military Resume
• Internship Resume
• First Resume
• College Application Resume
• 2 Page Resume
• Blank Resume Template
• College Freshman Resume
• Work History
• Resume Templates

As a college student, a resume may seem daunting because you may not have much experience, but there are a lot of other opportunities to make your resume stand out to employers. The opportunities that you can showcase include any volunteering you did, studying abroad, any specialized classes, or internships you’ve done.

To help you write your college student resume, we’ll go over how to write a college student resume, provide a resume example, and go over some tips to keep in mind.

Key Takeaways:

Emphasize your education and honors/awards received in college.

Take advantage of the many opportunities college gives to you and use those to spice up your resume.

Make your resume job/ internship application-specific.

Include extracurriculars, volunteer experiences, certifications, publications, interesting projects, or impressive leadership experiences if you have any.

What is a college student resume?

How to write a college student resume, current college student resume example, college student resume template, tips for writing a college student resume, college student resume faq, final thoughts.

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A college student’s resume is a document that summarizes your academic qualifications and your time spent in college. You probably had to write a brief resume for your college applications. Writing a resume as a college student is similar to that, except with a more professional edge.

Since you don’t have years of professional experience, hiring managers will understand when you don’t have that, which is why they will be looking at your academic history. They will be wondering how you have applied yourself in college both inside and outside of the classroom.

As mentioned above, college is full of opportunities to have enriching experiences. Take advantage of them — they will greatly help you not only by filling out those blank spots on your resume but also by giving you something to stand out from the rest of the competition .

Hiring managers and recruiters will be looking for signs of maturity, self-motivation, and work ethic . Keep these elements in mind as you decide how best to sell yourself based on your college experiences.

To write a college student’s resume, you should start with a resume header that includes your contact information and then go into your resume objective statement. Your top claim to fame is your educational experience and the extracurricular activities you were involved with.

Here’s a more detailed list of what each section of your resume should include:

Resume header . Your resume header should include your contact information. Open with your first and last name, which should be a slightly larger size or otherwise emphasized above all else. Include your location ([City, State] is fine), phone number, and professional email address. If you have a LinkedIn or an online portfolio , feel free to include a link to those here as well.

Important tip: Never put your contact information into an actual header on your word processing software. Some applicant tracking systems (robots that parse resumes to weed out unqualified candidates) can’t read the information in a header.

If the ATS can’t find your contact information, your resume will be thrown out before it even reaches a human reader .

Resume objective statement . We normally steer job-seekers away from resume objectives toward resume summary statements .

However, it’s perfectly appropriate for a college student to use a resume objective instead. Be sure to keep it short (1-3 sentences), include keywords from the job description, and state your relevant skills and career goals.

That being said, if you have substantial or impressive work/internship experience under your belt that truly makes you perfect for the position, opt for a resume summary statement that emphasizes your qualifications and expresses your value to the employer.

Education . Depending on how valuable you find your education section as compared to your experience section, you can swap the order around. We put education third based on the assumption that it’s your most valuable asset at the moment.

Your education section should always include the following information:

Name/Location of the school you attended

Dates attended, date graduated, or anticipated date of graduation

Name of your major/degree

The rest of the information is optional, but more is usually better (especially if the rest of your resume is light):

GPA (if it’s over 3.5)

Minor (if relevant)

Academic honors (Latin titles, Dean’s List , Honors Programs, etc.)

Merit scholarships

Publications and/or research

If you really want to beef up your education section, you can also include more details about relevant coursework . This can be a great way to incorporate keywords from the job description and showcase that you have solid foundational knowledge.

Experience . Once you’ve progressed in your career, this will be a history dedicated to your work history, but for now, keep the heading more open-ended by calling it something like “Relevant Experience.” The reason why this heading works is because it allows you to put down a whole host of experiences in just one section. Items you can put here include:

Work experience (summer jobs, part-time work, etc.)

Internships

Volunteer work

Freelancing experience

Relevant coursework (if you didn’t include it in your education section already)

Study abroad

Club membership/leadership positions

In general, you should keep things in reverse chronological order (the most recent stuff first). Always be sure to quantify your accomplishments whenever possible. Make it easy for a reader to see what value you added to each experience you were a part of.

Extracurriculars. If you’re a part of one or many extracurricular activities, it might be worth including a separate section detailing your involvement with each. Be sure to highlight the key skills you picked up from each experience to show how it relates to the job you’re applying for.

Skills . You’ve certainly acquired some skills during your time in college. Try to give a healthy mix of hard skills and soft skills . Hard skills are those you must be taught, and be tested or measured in some way. Soft skills refer to the intangible, interpersonal qualities that make you great to work with.

Where you can, add a bit of detail to flesh out each skill more fully. For example, if you put down “HTML” as a skill, give a brief description like “wrote webpages during a 3-month internship with XYZ Inc.”

Also, try to make sure that each soft skill you list comes with a correlating piece of data in your experience section. For instance, if you write that you have excellent communication skills , there better be some proof of those skills in action elsewhere on your resume.

Hobbies and interests . If you’re still not at a full page , you can consider adding relevant hobbies and interests. Even something seemingly irrelevant, like a love of working on miniature models, can paint a picture of a candidate who regularly hones her attention to detail in her free time.

Remember, every resume should be job-specific . You should b e tailoring it to each job you apply to. This will help you get noticed by hiring managers.

With that in mind, check out this current college student resume example:

Prateek Student

102 University Blvd. | University, CA 33409 | (555) 555- 5555 | [email protected] CAREER OBJECTIVE Dedicated outdoor education student with extensive teaching experience seeking hands-on internship opportunities.

PRE-PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE The Pool Pros, University, California Lifeguard Senior Manager and Educator (June 2015-May 2018

• Managed over 100 lifeguards at three public pool locations.
• Completed 20 training classes for lifeguard certification and recertification each season.
• Organized and implemented water conservation and education classes for 50 students per season.

Outdoor Leadership Liaison and Leader, (August 2017- May 2018)

• Organized outdoor excursions for 200+ university students.
• Led training workshops for outdoor skills monthly to 20 students per workshop.
• Kept communications between outdoor nonprofit leaders and university officials to ensure the safety of university students while on excursions.

National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS), Lander, Wyoming Wilderness Medicine and Rescue Semester Team Leader, (August 2018- May 2019)

• Led 15 students on two semester-long wilderness immersion school expeditions.
• Trained students in wilderness safety, leave no trace principles and each student completed Wilderness EMT certifications.

EDUCATION CERTIFICATIONS California State University , University, California Bachelor in Outdoor Education and a minor in emergency medical response GPA: 3.90 Graduated May 2018 Received NOLS scholarships for a semester abroad in India. Dean’s List all semesters.

Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) , California Licensure Wilderness EMT certificate expiration date May 2020 EMT certification expiration date May 2020 BLS Healthcare responder expiration date August 2021

Here is a college student resume template to help you get started on yours. Be sure to tailor your resume to fit your needs and the position you are applying for:

Your name [Address, City, State ZIP code]| [Phone Number] | [Email Address] | [LinkedIn Profile (optional)] CAREER OBJECTIVE Dedicated and motivated college student seeking [Internship/Part-time] EDUCATION [Degree Pursuing, e.g., Bachelor of Science in Computer Science] [University Name, City, State] [Expected Graduation Month, Year] [GPA: X.X/4.0] Relevant Courses [Course Name] [Course Name] PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE [Job Title] [Company/Organization Name, City, State] [Dates of Employment] [Brief description of responsibilities and achievements] [Job Title] [Company/Organization Name, City, State] [Dates of Employment] [Brief description of responsibilities and achievements] EXTRACURRICULAR [Club/Organization Name, Position held, Dates] [Brief description of your role and contributions]

When writing a college student resume, you should include action verbs to help show what you did and be sure to keep your resume relevant to the job you are applying to. Here are some more tips to keep in mind when writing yours:

Use action verbs. Action verbs help you show a potential employer what you did. Some example action verbs to use are:

Proofread. One of the biggest mistakes you can make is sending your resume in without proofreading it first. Take an extra couple of minutes and read through your resume for any spelling or grammar mistakes. You can even have a friend or a professor look over it to catch anything you might have missed.

Choose the right format. You want your resume to be easy to read so make sure you choose a format that won’t get tossed aside because it has a million different fonts and colors. The top resume formats to use are chronological, functional, and combination.

Keep it relevant. You only want to add the relevant information. They won’t want to hear about your pottery club if you are applying for a tech company. Rereading the job description is a great way to know what relevant information you should include. This will

Get help. If you are completely stuck, ask for help. They have centers at most colleges that help with this kind of thing. They won’t judge you for having the wrong format or too much information. The entire point of college is to learn and get prepared for the workforce, and getting help is doing that.

Getting help will also give you feedback on how to improve your resume. Career centers are the best places to get help with resumes and cover letters .

Keep it to one page. Since you don’t have much experience, your resume should be one page long. If your resume is too long, potential employers will pass yours over. Keeping your resume to one page will also help you keep it relevant and concise.

Select the right font. The font that you use should be professional and easy to read. The most professional fonts are sans-serif or serif fonts and examples of those include Calibri, Helvetica, and Georgia .

What should be on a college resume?

A college resume should include education history, relevant jobs, extracurricular activities, leadership experience, and any skills relevant to the job.

Since college students may not have much work experience, it’s important to emphasize your education history and any relevant jobs that may have armed you with skills for the job you’re applying for.

You can also demonstrate your abilities by including volunteer work, internships, or extracurricular activities.

How do you write a resume for a college application?

The five things you need to write a resume for a college application are:

Your relevant contact information

Detailed education history and test scores

Experiences

Awards/honors

Any additional skills you’d like to share

These are the different sections required for a resume for a college application. Most sections are self-explanatory, but your experiences section might be a little tricky for some.

In this section, you have the opportunity to differentiate yourself because you’ll want to articulate more than your responsibilities. Focus on your accomplishments and provide numbers for context and scale.

Do you need a resume for college?

No, you don’t need a resume for college, unless a school specifically requests one. The items typically requested on a college resume are typically things that are asked on your college application.

However, resumes can be used to streamline this information and can be advantageous for those with extensive leadership achievements in and outside of the classroom.

A resume can also be used to tell a story, rather than just a list on an application, and can allow applicants to expand on experiences not mentioned in other places.

How can a college student make a resume for a first job?

A college student should include contact information, a resume summary, education, experience, skills, and any additional achievements on their resume for a first job. The candidate should have the relevant experience to draw on for an entry-level job by including all of this information.

Many managers hiring for entry-level jobs understand that college students may not have extensive work experience and will be looking for certain keywords throughout the resume that highlight education, experience, and skills.

Education can include your degree or any special training, experience may include work, volunteer, or internship experience, and skills may include anything that highlights a good fit for the open position.

How long should a college student’s resume be?

A college student’s resume should be one page. Resumes should be this length so that employers and hiring managers can review them quickly. Typically those looking to hire a candidate only have a few minutes to review a resume, so you should make sure it’s relevant and succinct, with all of your impressive information listed early.

Once you gain more experience, your resume may become longer but is typically only recommended for those applicants with over ten years of experience in the workforce.

How do you write a resume for college with no experience?

When writing a resume for college with no experience, be sure to emphasize your education instead. Your education and experiences in school will be key in helping you craft an effective resume for college. Be sure to include relevant internships, any soft or hard skills you possess, and projects you may be proud of.

You may also want to include hobbies, interests, certifications, languages spoken, or any additional achievements you may have received, whether they were in or outside of an academic environment.

What makes a college resume stand out?

Any relevant experience you have will make your college resume stand out. Your relevant experience may include any internships, volunteer positions, or extracurricular activities. To get an idea of what relevant experience you should include, reread the job description. This will include any keywords that you can add to help make your resume stand out more.

Adding any relevant awards or achievements can help your resume stand out. Awards and achievements help show any potential employer that you have the skills and abilities to do the work.

Writing a resume as a current college student is exciting because of the flexibility you have in crafting it. Every college student will have a unique resume and that’s a great thing because it helps you stand out from each other.

When writing a resume as a current college student, keep in mind that the best way to make your resume stand out is by taking advantage of the many opportunities being in college gives you.

Try new things: take on a new project or volunteer opportunity. It not only will help your resume but will also give you great pre-professional experience that will help you decide which career path you should take .

Harvard Extension School – Resume and Cover Letters

University of Pennsylvania – Undergraduate’s student resume samples

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Heidi Cope is a former writer for the Zippia Career Advice blog. Her writing focused primarily on Zippia's suite of rankings and general career advice. After leaving Zippia, Heidi joined The Mighty as a writer and editor, among other positions. She received her BS from UNC Charlotte in German Studies.

Don Pippin is an executive and HR leader for Fortune 50 and 500 companies and startups. In 2008, Don launched area|Talent with a focus on helping clients identify their brand. As a Certified Professional Resume Writer, Certified Digital Career Strategist, and Certified Personal Branding Strategist, Don guides clients through career transitions.

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Software Engineer Second Job Out of College - Need Resume Advice

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Looking for some resume critques/advice for my first resume after my first job. I'm a software engineer if that helps.