What is the best resume format if you dont have work experience?

The best resume format, if you lack experience, is the functional resume format. Functional resumes are excellent for students, recent graduates or candidates changing careers. A functional resume highlights your skills and matches them to the job posting, allowing you to increase the chances of getting an interview, even without experience. For a no-experience resume, instead of starting off with a work experience section, a functional resume format allows you to demonstrate your relevant skills in three distinct sections.

How to Write a Resume With No Experience (Examples & Tips)

Welcome to the job market! It can feel scary to write your first resume, but we have you covered. This guide will show you how to write a resume with no experience by highlighting skills, education, and potential to stand out. Let’s get started!

Want a strong resume fast? Try our Resume Builder. It’s fast and easy to use. Plus, you’ll get ready-made content to add with one click.

Or view our sample resumes made with our beautiful resume templates.

Sample Resumes With No Work Experience

Choosing the Best Resume Format With No Experience

Before we can tackle the subject of writing your first resume, you need to know that not all resumes are created equal. There are three major resume formats that you can use to highlight skills, past experience, or both. Since we’re learning how to write a resume with no experience, you should use a functional resume format.

The functional format focuses on your skills rather than work history, making it perfect for students. The work history only shares job titles and dates of employment. Your skills and potential are listed under detailed skills sections where you can highlight transferable experience. It’s not the best for online applications, so we strongly recommend it for in-person applications.

However, if you have to apply online, you can use one of these formats:

Combination/Hybrid Format (2nd Best):
The hybrid format balances skills and work experience. It’s best if you have over three years of experience, but can still work for beginners.
Chronological Format (Avoid for Beginners):
This reverse-chronological resume highlights steady employment, promotions, and years of experience. As a first-time job seeker, you should never use this format.

Pull Together Your Information

Although you’re writing a resume with no work experience, you have plenty of experience from school and your personal life. Schools prepare you for the workforce by developing time and task management skills by turning in homework, meeting assignment deadlines, participating in team projects and managing your study schedule.

Here’s a list of relevant experience you can add throughout your “no experience resume.”

Relevant coursework like economics, typing, or research.
Awards like honor roll, perfect attendance, and teaching commendations.
Soft skills like communication, teamwork, problem-solving, and time management.
Technical skills like social media management, basic coding, or graphic design if they show up in the job description.
Hobbies like Debate, Future Leaders of America, or Future Farmers of America.
School or personal initiatives that nurture relevant skills like blogging, event planning, or meal prep.
Certifications like First Aid or CPR.

Writing Your Resume Objective With No Experience

If you’re looking for your first job, start your resume with a killer resume objective. A resume objective focuses on which transferable skills and work ethic you can provide an employer, making this a great strategy for teens, students, or job seekers without experience.

Your resume objective will be the first thing recruiters will read about you. Follow these four simple steps to writing an attention-grabbing objective.

Be straightforward. Employers are reading piles of resumes at a time to determine whose qualified. Make your resume objective concise and keep it to only two or three sentences long.
Make the objective statement a perfect match. Use the job post to find the specific skills and requirements they’re looking for in a candidate. Use those keywords in your objective to let the employer know you have what they’re looking for.
Use power words. Peak the interest of recruiters with strong, powerful keywords and actionable descriptions. For example, “Attentive to detail” and “driven,” “Team player” and “reliable” or “Problem-solver” and “leader.”
Describe what you bring to the table. Clearly state how you bring value to the company’s success. Add skills such as work ethics and communication.

Here’s an example of an objective statement for a no experience resume.

Highly motivated law school graduate seeking a full-time position in the Office of Inspector General where I can lend my investigative abilities to help improve profitability.

Adding Your Education Section

If you lack work experience, your academic achievements build a picture of your credentials for the job. The education section helps you outline your academic training as qualifications in place of your zero experience.

In this section, name the college you attended, the degrees you completed and the honors you received. If your highest level of education is a high school diploma, include it in the education information. Otherwise, leave it out and start with your highest degree earned.

Here’s a quick checklist of what to include in your education section:

Your degree or education in progress
The name of your school
The school’s location
Dates attended and graduation date or expected graduation date
Your field of study and degree major
Your GPA — only if it’s above 3.5
Any academic honors and relevant courses
Relevant extracurricular activities or programs

For example:

Example for high school student:

High School Diploma, Fiorello H Laguardia High School,
Expected graduation in 06/2025
3.92 GPA
Academic High Honor Roll 2021 – 2022
Presidential Award for Academic Excellence 2022

Example for college graduate:

BA in Linguistics
Boston University, MA
2022
3.9 GPA

Example for vocational students:

Cosmetology Vocational School, Monticello, NY
Diploma expected in 12/2025

Example for current college student:

Bachelor of Liberal Arts
University of New York, NY
Expected in 06/2025
3.9 GPA
Member of the National Communication Association

Focus on Relevant Experience (Volunteer, Internships and more)

Impress recruiters even without paid experience. Not sure what experiences you can list that would benefit your application? Here are the top ten experiences you may consider for your first resume:

Jobs like babysitting or mowing lawns.
Extracurricular activities, such as clubs and sports.
Internships or apprenticeships.
Translating or interpreting projects.
Volunteer work.
Tutoring.
Service-learning experiences.
Military experience.
Student organizations.
Leadership experiences.

Once you’ve narrowed down your most relevant experiences, use bullets to list the skills you’ve developed in each role and the tasks you performed. Not sure how to start? Use the job description as your guide to match your skills, activities and abilities with the keywords mentioned in the post. Once you have identified these, list your qualifications using bullet points with action verbs.

For instance, if you were applying for a teaching assistant role, you might compose your experience like this:

Online Tutoring Services
2022–Present

Design lesson plans for the students.
Assess a student’s level of progress.
Create a schedule for further education and development in subject areas.
Assess student’s knowledge of a subject and identify areas for improvement.

Summer Camp Counselor
June 2022–July 2022

Opened and prepared the club for daily activities.
Ensured the safety and security of 20+ kids a day.
Planned games and outdoor activities

However, if you don’t have relevant experience and will be writing a functional resume, select your top skill categories and list how you’ve used each skill set. In other words, when listing your duties, instead of listing tasks you’ve completed by job, list the activities you’ve done by skill category or by theme. And, remember to include the results you delivered by applying your skills by adding concrete numbers wherever possible.

For example, a Professional Skills section for someone interested in a social media specialist role in the academic field would look like this:

Social Media Skills

Achieved over 1,000+ followers in the first 30 days of launching the profile with successful conversion rates.
Wrote copy for social posts and ran advertising campaigns to drive engagement with original content.
Applied attention to detail to monitor the brand on all social media platforms, quickly replying to any mentions.

Digital Marketing Skills

Top influencer impacting 100+ followers daily with valuable academic advice.
Avid planner for marketing campaigns to create brand awareness and market the company’s services.
Analytical and mathematical skills to identify trends.

Tutoring

Prepared lessons for 20 students a day about upcoming assignments specific to math and science.
Maintained communication with parents regarding student’s progress.
Researched learning materials and resources to use during lessons.

What about if you have internship experience? The following entry-level job and internship resumes can help you see how other job seekers write a resume with little to no experience. Check out these internship resume examples to inspire you:

Add your internships to your experience section as you complete them.

Listing Your Skills for the First Job

For candidates new to the workforce, spotlighting various critical skills can ultimately impact a hiring decision. Recruiters use two main types of skills to determine whether you are fit for the job: hard and soft skills.

Hard skills are technical abilities that require specific knowledge to accomplish your job assignments, such as accounting or graphic design.

Interpersonal skills, on the other hand, are not tangible. They define your traits, such as friendliness and a strong work ethic.

Employers look for candidates with a mix of soft and hard skills that relate directly to the job. These skills become part of the keywords used in the job description and by recruiting software like the applicant tracking system (ATS).

Let’s break down the most in-demand soft and hard skills to optimize your resume:

Soft skills

Self-starter
Time management
Organizational skills
Problem-solving
Active listening
Leadership
Communication skills
Logic-based reasoning
Trustworthiness
Reliability
Flexibility
Decision-making

Hard skills

Bilingual
Customer service
Computer proficiency
MS Office
Writing
Design skills
Book keeping
Graphic design

Make Sure Your Resume Is Easy to Read

Even if you’re qualified for the job, having a resume that is hard to read will immediately get you overlooked! In fact, Harvard shares eye-tracking research that shows recruiters spend about six seconds on their initial decision to determine whether a candidate is qualified. If your resume is cluttered and unorganized, you will most likely get passed over.

As someone who’s making a resume for the first job, you might not have thought that taking the time to format your resume well is a crucial step in getting your resume noticed. Here are expert tips to ensure your resume is easily readable and gets attention.

Division of sections

Differentiate your sections by labeling each in bold or italics such as your Header, Education and Work Experience. By doing so, your resume looks organized and easy to read.

Alignment

Keep the spacing consistent and align your text to the left. Since the eye naturally returns to the left, this is the most natural and readable format. However, align dates and locations to the right, which helps to separate that information and makes it easy to scan.

Fonts

Use clean, minimalistic fonts, such as Calibri, Times New Roman, Georgia, Garamond, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Tahoma, or Cambria. Keep your font size between 10-12 points for the content and 12-14 points for headers.

Bullets

Use bullets to break up long text. Using bullet points also draws attention to your accomplishments, which is the information you want to highlight.

Use white space

Using plenty of white space is much easier on the eyes than large, dense chunks of text. It creates a clean, well-designed look that’s appealing to the reader.

First Job Resume FAQ

Is it hard to get a job without any experience on a resume?

You can impress recruiters even without any experience on your resume. Writing a resume with no formal work experience means showcasing your skills and highlighting your education, extracurriculars and volunteering activities.

When you start putting together a resume, you might feel like you lack relevant experience. However, you can demonstrate community involvement, abilities and willingness to work.

Perhaps you worked part-time in school, tutored or babysat kids — be sure to include these experiences. You can also include extracurricular activities that help polish and develop new skills.

Can you skip the experience section on a resume?

Instead of skipping the experience section, use the opportunity to create a skill-based resume. Also known as a functional resume, this type of format shifts the focus onto your top resume skills and abilities instead of professional experience.

It lets you connect with the employer and show them what you can contribute to the company despite having no formal experience. The biggest flex of a functional resume format is that it focuses on your relevant skills so you can market your best abilities.

How do I pass ATS without any experience on a resume?

Employers use applicant tracking systems (ATS) to track qualified candidates. However, an ATS does more than just track applications — it selects qualified candidates for a hiring manager or recruiter to assess.

Luckily, getting past the ATS is easier than you might think. To get past the ATS, even if you don’t have experience, follow these tips:

Use the job description to identify the keywords that match what the employer is looking for in their next hire.
Place these relevant keywords throughout each section of your resume — as long as you have the skill they listed. By doing so, you are ensuring your resume has what the ATS is scanning for.
Use an ATS-friendly resume template like the ones JobHero offers. Simply customize them with your information.

Should my resume focus on skills if I have no work experience?

Yes. The key to a job-winning resume with no experience is to focus on the professional skills that you have learned at school or in extracurricular activities.

If you have no experience, skills will represent your qualifications to perform a duty or job. For this reason, having the right balance of skills is critical.

There are two main types of skills: hard skills and soft skills.

Hard skills refer to skills that can be developed and improved through experience and certifications, such as learning to code or to create marketing campaigns. Meanwhile, soft skills are personality traits that give you the ability to be a team player or stay organized while multitasking.

Demonstrating that you have a mix of both types of skills will help you in your job search.

Learn About Our Writing Standards

Editorial Standards

JobHero has published in-depth career guides, resume and cover letter articles since 2014. We aim to share job-seeking tools and empower job seekers throughout their careers! Visit our Editorial Process to see how our authors research, write and revise our articles.

Rate This Article

How to Write a Resume With No Experience (First Job)

Average rating

Click to add your rating

Last edited by: Gabriela Barcenas, CPRW, Content Writer II - January 27, 2025

Gabriela Barcenas

CPRW, Content Writer II

Gabriela is a Certified Professional Resume Writer (CPRW) and career adviser. With 10 years of digital media experience and five years of resume writing expertise, her publication history includes fashion, education, travel, social justice, equitable design, and career advice.

^*The names and logos of the companies referred to above are all trademarks of their respective holders. Unless specifically stated otherwise, such references are not intended to imply any affiliation or association with JobHero.