How to write a resume with no work experience

Start from evidence, not from job titles

An employer hiring for an entry-level role is not looking for experience they know you do not have. They are looking for proof that you will turn up, learn quickly, and not need supervising for every task. Everything on a first resume should serve one of those three claims.

Write down everything from the last three years that involved responsibility or produced something: a final-year project, a part-time shift job, a society you ran, a family business you helped with, a course you finished, a freelance gig, a volunteering weekend. That list is your raw material, and it is almost always longer than people expect.

The order that works when experience is thin

Put education near the top, because it is your strongest credential, and give it more than one line: degree, institution, dates, and two or three bullets about relevant modules, your final project and any distinction.

Then projects, then any experience, then skills. Recruiters read top to bottom and stop when they lose interest, so the section holding your best evidence goes first. Our Graduate template is built in exactly this order.

• Contact details and a one-line headline, such as Computer Science graduate - Python and SQL.
• A short summary naming the role you want and two things you can already do.
• Education, with a project or two described properly.
• Projects or coursework, each with what you built and what came of it.
• Experience of any kind, including part-time and unpaid work.
• Skills, split into tools and languages rather than one vague blob.

Describe a project like a job

A project bullet fails when it only says what the project was. It works when it says what you did and what resulted. Compare: Built a website for a charity, against, Built and launched a booking site for a local charity in Next.js, cutting the time volunteers spent on phone bookings from around six hours a week to under one.

That is the same project. The second version is stronger because it names the technology, the scale and the outcome, which is what a hiring manager needs in order to decide whether to interview you.

Part-time and unrelated work is worth more than you think

Retail, hospitality, tutoring, delivery and call-centre work all demonstrate things employers struggle to teach: turning up on time, handling an angry customer without escalating, counting money accurately under pressure, working a rota around study.

Write those roles as jobs, with real bullets. Served forty to sixty customers an hour through peak periods while keeping the till accurate is an achievement. Worked at a cafe is not.

What to leave off

School-level results can go once you have a degree, unless the employer asks for them. Hobbies earn a line only when they are specific and relevant - a GitHub profile with real commits, a photography portfolio for a design role - never as a generic list of reading and travelling.

Leave off objectives that talk only about what you want. A summary reading Seeking a challenging role to develop my skills tells an employer nothing. Say what you can do, and what you are aiming at.

Fill one page properly, then stop

One full page is the target. Padding to two with wider spacing and filler bullets is obvious to anyone who reads resumes for a living, and it dilutes the parts that matter.

If you are short of material, add depth rather than items. One more result on your best project is worth more than three more lines about a module you sat through.