How to Write a Resume With No Experience: Template and Tips

To write a resume with no experience, lead with education, then turn class projects, part-time jobs, clubs, volunteering and anything you built into an "Experience" or "Projects" section, each with an action verb, a concrete detail and a result. Keep it to one page, add a skills line and a link to your work, and tailor the top third to each posting.

Definition: A resume with no experience (often called a first-job or entry-level resume) is a one-page summary written before you have held a paid role in your target field. It argues from evidence you created elsewhere: coursework, projects, campus work, service and part-time jobs.

Almost nobody has zero experience. Most people have experience they haven't learned to describe yet.

That gap matters more than it used to. The New York Fed's data for the second quarter of 2026 puts unemployment for recent college graduates at about 5.6 percent and underemployment at 42 percent. Ashby, an applicant tracking company, reported in May 2026 that roles on its platform now draw 300+ applications per hire on average, roughly triple the 2021 level. A thin first resume has a lot of company.

The good news is that most students have more raw material than they think. Per the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 44.6 percent of full-time college students aged 16 to 24 were in the labor force in October 2024, and 81.6 percent of part-time students were. That's a lot of shifts, customers and responsibilities that rarely make it onto the page.

What counts as experience on a resume with no experience

Employers screening students aren't hunting for job titles. They're hunting for evidence of a few traits. In NACE's Job Outlook 2025 survey (237 employer respondents, collected in August and September 2024), nearly 90 percent of employers said they look for problem-solving ability on a college student's resume, almost 80 percent look for teamwork, and at least 70 percent look for written communication, initiative, work ethic and technical skills.

Read that list again as a checklist. None of those traits requires an employer to have paid you.

Here's a working map of what can go on the page and which trait it shows:

MIT's career office makes a similar point plainly: experience comes in many forms, and beyond jobs and internships it suggests class projects, competitions and personal projects. We'd add one filter. Include it if you can name what you produced. Leave it off if all you can say is that you attended. For aspiring engineers, Gergely Orosz of The Pragmatic Engineer suggests a targeted version: if a startup you're applying to has a public API, build a small project with it and add that to your resume.

The evidence also suggests these lines aren't filler. In a field experiment published in 2018, Stijn Baert and Suncica Vujic sent fictitious applications to real openings in Belgium and found that listing volunteer work raised the chance of a positive employer response by 7.3 percentage points. Different country, different market, so treat it as a direction rather than a promise. If you want ideas for creating more of this evidence quickly, our guide on how to get experience when every job requires it lists ten routes.

Resume sections for a first job, in order

For most students and first-job applicants, this order works:

1. Header. Name, city and state, phone, a professional email, LinkedIn, and one link to work (a portfolio, a GitHub, a writing sample, a shared doc).
2. Education. School, degree or program, expected graduation month and year, GPA if it helps you, and two or three relevant courses.
3. Experience. Paid jobs, internships, research and substantial volunteer roles, newest first.
4. Projects. Two or three things you made, each with what it does and one result.
5. Leadership and activities. Club roles, teams, campus jobs, competitions. Combine with Experience if it's thin.
6. Skills. One or two lines: tools, languages, certifications. Only what you could use in an interview tomorrow.

If your projects are stronger than your jobs, put Projects above Experience. Once you have a relevant internship or a year of full-time work, Education usually drops to the bottom.

What to leave off. A generic objective statement, "References available upon request", a photo, your full street address, and personal details; MIT's guidance advises leaving out age, religion or health status. High school activities can stay through roughly your first year of college, then they usually give way to college work, unless one is genuinely remarkable.

How to turn ordinary work into resume bullets

Most first resumes fail in the bullets, not the format. They describe duties ("Responsible for helping customers") when the reader wants to know what you did and what changed.

A simple formula: verb + what you did + how much or how many + result. You won't always have a result. A scale or a number is the next best thing.

Illustrative before and after, from the kinds of jobs students actually hold:

Before: Cashier at a grocery store.\ After: Handled checkout for 150+ customers per shift; trained 3 new hires on the register and returns process.

Before: Member of the marketing club.\ After: Ran the club's Instagram for one semester; grew followers from 340 to 610 and filled a 60-seat speaker event.

Before: Group project for statistics class.\ After: Analyzed 4 years of campus dining data in Python with two classmates; our menu recommendation was adopted for one dining hall.

Before: Tutored students.\ After: Tutored 6 high school students weekly in algebra over two semesters; 5 of 6 raised their final grade by at least one letter.

Every number above is made up for illustration. Yours have to be true, and a reader may ask you to walk through any of them in an interview. If you can't remember the exact figure, a range or an honest estimate ("about 40") is fine.

Notice what the rewrites do: each one maps old work onto a trait employers say they screen for.

How to build your resume in college, year by year

If you're still in school, the resume is less a document you write once than a page you fill on purpose. One way to think about the years:

• First year. Get one campus or part-time job and join a group where you can own a small task. Note numbers as they happen (attendance, money raised, users); reconstructing them later is hard.
• Second year. Build one project with a visible output, and look for a role with responsibility in a club. Start applying for summer roles, including small companies and campus research.
• Third year. This is when an internship matters most for many paths. At many larger employers, summer internship recruiting can open the fall before, so it helps to have the page ready early.
• Final year. Cut to one tight page, lead with the strongest two items, and tailor the top third for each application.

Internships carry real weight. A resume audit study by John Nunley and co-authors, published in Labour Economics in 2016, found that internship experience increased the interview rate by 14 percent for the fictitious new graduates it tested. And in NACE's Job Outlook 2026 survey, employers named an internship with their organization and an internship in their industry as the two attributes with the most influence when choosing between otherwise equal candidates.

A copyable resume template with no experience

Here is an illustrative one-page template. Replace the brackets, delete any section you can't fill honestly, and keep the formatting plain so it reads well in an applicant tracking system (the software many companies use to collect applications).

[FULL NAME]\ [City, State] | [phone] | [email] | [LinkedIn URL] | [portfolio or GitHub link]

EDUCATION\ [University], [City, State]\ [Degree, major], expected [Month Year] | GPA: [x.xx, if it helps you or if asked]\ Relevant coursework: [Course], [Course], [Course]

EXPERIENCE\ [Role], [Organization], [City, State] | [Month Year] to [Month Year] - [Verb] [what you did] for [how many people or how much]; [result] - [Verb] [a task you owned]; [what changed because of it]

[Role], [Organization] | [Month Year] to [Month Year] - [Verb] [what you did]; [number]

PROJECTS\ [Project name] | [one-line description] | [link] - [Built, analyzed, wrote] [what] using [tools]; [result, users or output]

LEADERSHIP AND ACTIVITIES\ [Role], [Club or team] | [Month Year] to present - [Verb] [task]; [number or outcome]

SKILLS\ Tools: [x, y, z] | Languages: [x] | Certifications: [x]

A few format choices that tend to help: one page; a plain font at 10 to 12 points; dates right-aligned or after a pipe; no tables, text boxes or columns that software can scramble; and a PDF unless the posting asks for something else. MIT suggests a font no smaller than 10 point and at least half-inch margins.

A worked example: one student's first resume

Here's an illustrative case. Priya is a second-year economics student applying for a summer analyst internship at a startup. Her first draft had an objective statement, a high school honor roll line, and one bullet for her campus job: "Worked at the library front desk."

After a rewrite, her page reads, in order:

• Education, with a 3.5 GPA and two relevant courses (econometrics, intro to Python).
• Projects: "Built a Google Sheets model of my club's budget; flagged a $1,200 shortfall two months early, which the board fixed by moving one event." Plus a link to a short write-up of a class data project.
• Experience: "Staffed the library desk 12 hours a week during the school year; answered about 40 patron questions per shift and trained 2 new student workers."
• Leadership: treasurer of the economics club, with the budget result above.
• Skills: Excel, Google Sheets, Python (basic), SQL (coursework).

Same person, same history. The second version gives an interviewer three things to ask about.

To put it to work, we'd suggest she filter the 1752vc careers board by Internship level and the past week, pick five roles, and tailor the Projects line to each.

"Just use a resume template and fill in the blanks"

There's a fair case for this. Templates handle formatting, where many beginners lose time, and busy readers like a familiar layout.

The problem is that a template fixes the container, not the content. A pretty layout with "Responsible for" bullets still says nothing. Heavily designed templates also cause a quieter problem: columns, icons and graphics can be misread by the software that parses resumes, so the plain version often does better.

Our view: use the plain template above or one like it, and spend your effort on six good bullets.

Common mistakes on a first resume

• Hiding the one strong item. If your best evidence is a project, it belongs near the top, not under "Interests".
• Listing duties instead of results. "Helped with events" tells a reader less than "Booked 4 speakers for a 60-person series".
• Leaving out paid work outside the field. Retail, restaurant and caregiving jobs show reliability, which matters to employers hiring beginners.
• One version for every job. The top third (education line, first project, skills) is worth adjusting for each posting, even if the rest stays the same.
• No link to anything. One link to real work can do more than a paragraph of description.

Where we land

A first resume isn't a record of what you've been paid to do. It's an argument that you can do the next thing, built from whatever evidence you have. Some hiring managers are openly skeptical of credentials anyway: Marco Rogers, an engineering leader at Lever, Yammer and Clover Health, told First Round Review in 2018 that performance often doesn't match pedigree. That cuts in your favor when the work on the page is real.

Lead with your strongest item. Number what you can. Cut what proves nothing. Then use the page: when you're ready to send it, the careers board's entry-level and internship listings are one place to start, and our guides on building a high-signal resume and writing a startup cover letter cover the next layer. Applying to venture firms specifically? The venture capital resume guide handles that case.

The bottom line

Nobody expects a 20-year-old to have a long work history. They expect a page that shows how you think and what you finish.

Experience is what you've done.

A resume is how you explain it.

Key takeaways

• A resume with no experience can draw on class projects, part-time jobs, clubs, volunteering, research and things you built, as long as each line names what you produced.
• NACE's Job Outlook 2025 survey found employers look first for problem-solving, teamwork, communication, initiative and work ethic on student resumes, so it helps to map each bullet to one of those.
• A practical order for most students is header, education, experience, projects, activities and skills, with projects moved up when they are your strongest evidence.
• Bullets tend to work better as verb plus task plus number plus result than as lists of duties.
• Internships carry real weight with employers, per NACE's Job Outlook 2026 and a 2016 resume audit study, so the college years are worth planning around one.

Frequently asked questions

What do you put on a resume if you have never had a job?

Use education, class projects, clubs, volunteering, campus roles and anything you built or sold. Write each as an action verb, what you did, a number and a result. A plain one-page layout with a skills line and one link to your work tends to read better than a long list of personal qualities.

How do you write a college resume with no internships?

Put education first, then a Projects section with two or three pieces of real work, then part-time jobs and club roles written as results. Employers in NACE's surveys rank problem-solving, teamwork and initiative highly, and those can come from coursework or campus life. Applying for small-company or research roles can then add an internship-like line.

Should a first-job resume include high school activities?

Usually only through about your first year of college. After that, college projects, jobs and clubs tend to tell a reader more. A high school item can stay if it is unusually strong or directly relevant, such as a business you ran or a state-level competition result in your target field.

Can class projects count as experience on a resume?

Yes, in most cases. MIT's career office lists class projects, competitions and personal projects as forms of experience. Put substantial ones under a Projects heading with the tools you used and an outcome, such as a recommendation that was adopted or a finished app with users. Group work is fine if you say what your part was.

How long should a resume with no experience be?

One page is the common guidance for students and first-job applicants, and MIT's career office suggests one page unless you have extensive experience or an advanced degree. A short page with six strong bullets usually reads better than a full page padded with coursework lists, adjectives and an objective statement.

Sources

• NACE: What Are Employers Looking for When Reviewing College Students' Resumes? (Job Outlook 2025)
• NACE: Internship Experience Often the Deciding Factor Between Equal Candidates (Job Outlook 2026)
• MIT Career Advising and Professional Development: Resumes
• Labour Economics (Elsevier): College Major, Internship Experience, and Employment Opportunities: Estimates From a Resume Audit
• Journal of Population Economics (Springer): Does It Pay to Care? Volunteering and Employment Opportunities
• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: College Enrollment and Work Activity of Recent High School and College Graduates
• Federal Reserve Bank of New York: The Labor Market for Recent College Graduates
• Ashby via PR Newswire: New Data from Ashby Reveals Surge in Applications, Rising Selectivity, and Shifting Recruiter Workloads
• The Pragmatic Engineer (Gergely Orosz): Advice for Less Experienced Software Engineers in the Current Tech Market
• First Round Review: My Lessons from Interviewing 400+ Engineers Over Three Startups (Marco Rogers)