Starting your Career Late and Have No Experience? Here's Some Tips to Create an Impactful Resume

Have you ever found yourself in a paradoxical situation – I need a job to get experience but I need experience to get a job! Well, we’ve all gone through this at some point in our lives. Whether it’s your first job or you’re starting out late, you need a resume. In fact, I am saying this out of personal experience. A potential employer wanted to hire me but blatantly put down my application saying I have no experience. Well, at that point I didn’t have any experience but how would I even when it was my first job. You can pen down an impactful resume even if you don’t have prior  work exposure. You’ve got life experience, and I guess that’s above all.

So, the next time you find yourself in a quandary, don’t worry. All you need to know is how to write a resume with no work experience and present your skills in a proper and systematic way.

Creating an Impactful Resume if you Never had a Job

1. Decide on a Resume Format

You know you want the job but how do you prove it to the hiring manager? Well, even before you get down to listing your qualifications, you need to decide on an appropriate resume format. The most popular is reverse chronological. It’s a time-tested resume format. It’s an attractive option for job seekers who have very little experience. Since you don’t have much experience, make sure the length of the resume is just one page.

2. Include a Summary Statement/ Objective

In today’s fast-paced world, hiring managers don’t have the time to sift through all the resumes they receive. Sometimes, they even run it through BOTS. Therefore, at the beginning of your resume you need to have an impactful summary statement which includes relevant keywords related to the position you’re applying for. Remember, you’ve got very little time to make a first impression. Since you don’t have any work experience, it may be tough to write a career objective. Thus, a professional summary makes more sense. It’s best to start with one or two adjectives that describe your work ethic, followed by your level of education, skills and interests. It should be tailored to the specific job you’re applying for.

3. Focus on your Academic Background

When you’re pitching to get your first job, your academic qualifications are everything. It’s a great way to showcase your education and background. Mention the institutions where you studied. List the degrees you’ve obtained or the ones you’re pursuing currently. Besides this, make sure you highlight relevant coursework. This is very important to showcase your technical skills. Before sending out the resume, make sure you read the job descriptions thoroughly to see what kind of skills the hiring manager is looking for. If you’ve done any projects that are relevant to the job you’re applying for, you can briefly describe them too. A potential employer will also be happy to read about any other professional credentials.

4. Include “Life” Experience

Work experience isn’t everything to get a job. The best way to add life to a no experience resume is to showcase what you’ve done in life. A lot of candidates think that without work experience an employer won’t hire you. However, that’s not the case. There may be several things you may have done when you were in university. Do you have any volunteering experience? If yes, list it. It demonstrates your community involvement and your willingness to work with others. During your volunteering phase, if you got any hands-on experience related to a certain field, make sure you include that as well.

When you’re applying for your first-full time job, don’t shy away from listing any part-time jobs or internships you did, no matter how small it may have been. Whether it was paid or unpaid, you did do some work and thus, it should go on your CV. All that an employer wants to see is that you did gain some “real-world experience”. Listing any internship you completed is key when you’re applying for a job without experience. For any reason you haven’t done any, it’s always better to do an internship before applying for an entry-level job.

5. List your Hard Skills

You may be dedicated, hardworking, determined, and so on, but your hiring manager definitely doesn’t want to read that. This is something you will have to prove once you bag the job. What they really want to know is the skills you possess. For example, if you’re applying for the role of a graphic designer, you can mention that you’re proficient in Photoshop, Illustrator or any other software that is prerequisite for the job. This is really what they want to see. Besides this, the other hard skills you can mention are SEO, cloud computing, MS Office, ERP Systems, customer service, etc. Only put it on your CV if you have prior experience of using them. A lot of candidates mention it only to make their CV look fancy. You don’t want to land yourself in trouble, right?

6. Pay attention to Technical Details

Writing a resume for the first time might seem a bit overwhelming. Thus, it’s natural to make grammatical errors, and punctuation and spelling mistakes. All these errors can make your resume look unprofessional. Once you finish doing all of the above, proofread your resume. You can even run it through a friend or family member. As a candidate with no prior work experience, you can’t afford a missing word or typo. It should be clean and consistent. Even if it involves editing your draft multiple times, do it. Some resume writing tips we swear by are:

• Use only one font type – Times New Roman or Arial
• As you need content to fill up an entire page, choose the right font size – 12pt for headers and 11 for the body of your text.
• You don’t have much work experience, therefore, resist the temptation to highlight and use multiple colours. Black text on a white page is a safe choice.
• Lastly, make sure the resume is consistent. Use bold/italics wherever needed.

Launching your career can be daunting yet exciting. We hope with our tips you can successfully create a no experience resume that is impactful.