Resume with no experience: what to include

Writing your first resume can feel like having nothing to say. That is not true: school, courses, volunteering, school projects and even odd jobs show what you can do. The trick is to organize them the way recruiters look for them.

The order changes when you have no experience

Without formal experience, put your strongest points first:

1. Contact details.
2. Objective or summary: two or three lines on the kind of job you want and what you offer.
3. Education: school, current year or graduation year, technical courses.
4. Courses and certificates.
5. Activities and experience: volunteering, school projects, helping in a family business, odd jobs.
6. Skills and languages.

Write an objective that says something

Keep it short and specific. Name the field and what you bring:

Looking for my first role as an office assistant. High school diploma, a basic computer skills course and an easy way with people.

Courses and certificates matter

When you are starting out, every course shows interest and a concrete skill. Include the course name, the institution, the number of hours and the year. Free and online courses count, especially those related to the job: computer skills, customer service, sales, logistics, languages.

Turn activities into experience

A lot of what you have already done shows responsibility and skill, even without a formal contract:

• Volunteering: "Organized the school food drive with 12 classmates."
• Family business: "Served customers and ran the till at the family café on weekends."
• School projects: "Presented a science fair project to 200 people."
• Odd jobs: "Made bike deliveries for six months, keeping to route schedules."

Be honest about what you did and for how long: you will tell these stories in the interview.

Skills recruiters look for

List skills you can demonstrate: typing, Word and Excel, customer service, organization, teamwork, a second language. Favor the ones the job asks for. Skills to put on your resume helps you choose.

See a finished example

The Maria da Silva, João de Souza and Ana Oliveira examples are fictional people with a high school diploma. They show how a short profile and a courses section replace long experience. Use any of them as a starting point and replace the text with yours.