How to present your resume if you have no prior experience?

Are you a graduate who’s looking for a job?

You might be having apprehensions because you lack experience. Well, You don't have to worry about that, because not all companies look for an experienced candidates, sometimes recruiters look for more than just experience. So you do have a chance in the corporate world, you just need to prepare your resume in a way that gets you the attention of the recruiter. Here are some tips and tricks that you can use in your resume, which will help you to get a job without any hindrance. Read them and boost your resume.

SUMMARY – An important part of Resume

Whether you are a professional or fresher with no experience, a summary plays an important role in your resume.

A summary is a statement that comes after your name and specific details in your resume. It exhibits your educational background, abilities, interest, and future goals. The summary should not be more than 3 to 4 lines so keep it short and crisp. A perfect summary tells the recruiter why you are a suitable candidate for the job. Since you have no relevant experience, your summary should include ethics, skills and professional passion, and achievements as well.

EDUCATIONAL QUALIFICATIONS – Necessary to add.

The educational background becomes the highlight of your resume when you have no prior experience. Under educational qualification, you have to mention academic degrees specifying the course or program. You should write these details in reverse chronological order. It shows your specialization in that field you have graduated. Let's take an example that you have graduated in the sales and marketing field, which means you have a profound understanding of it. When a recruiter sees your resume for the profile of Marketing manager, he will get a piece of proper knowledge about your skills and qualification.

On other hand, it also shows your academic performance and through which the recruiter gets to know your caliber and how focused you are in your life.

INTERNSHIPS – Don’t skip

Internships play a vital role in your resume. Internships can be considered as something similar to experience because it gives you the real-life projects and sharpens your skills. If you just graduated and looking for a job then internship experience will help you. Many students in college do at least 1 to 2 internships in their college period. It's not only a small experience, but internships help you make connections and spread your networks. You meet some highly professional people during your internship period which impacts your personality. Paid or unpaid, both internships give you real-life experience and the recruiter will consider a resume with internships as it makes a good first impression. When you are adding internships then don’t forget to add your role, internship period, and the related deliverables and assignments completed during the tenure.

RELEVANT SKILLS – Don’t forget to list

Along with experience, skills are most important from a career's point of view. . Getting your first job depends on skills. Experience is important but skills always matter. List your soft and technical skills in your resume. The Skills section shows your qualities and professionalism. During your internship period, you develop more skills and that helps your resume to be more attractive. Because of your highlighted skills, a recruiter will not have any doubt about you. Many students make mistakes while writing their relevant skills and because of which they lose jobs. Listed skills in resumes tell the recruiter why you are fit for this job. In the skills section, you can also add courses that you have done. Apart from this, the recruiter often seeks candidates who have good communication skills, management skills, decision-making skills, etc. You should develop these skills and boost your resume.

EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES - If relevant, put in a resume

Most people do not put their extracurricular activities in their resume, because they have no idea how helpful it can be in the course of job seeking. Extracurricular activities show different aspects of your personality in front of a recruiter or interviewer. Having an interest in extracurricular activities also shows that you are not only a workaholic but also someone who has an interest in other areas. Everyone knows that involvement in such activities helps in overall personality development, which is always a plus point for a candidate.

Along with extracurricular, you can also add you're relevant interest if it is related to your job or profession.

COLLEGE SOCIETIES – Will help you

When you join college then you also engage in at least 1 or 2 societies in which you have an interest. But do you know that the college society you are associated with actually helps in

getting your first job. While working with societies, you get some positions like the president of the society, marketing head, project head, etc., and even if you don't, you still gain some experience of working. Like you organize an annual fest in your college and manage that. If you put these positions and experience in your resume then the recruiter will know that you have a bit of experience, abilities, leadership qualities, etc. Along with this, you should also list your volunteering work in your resume which you've done in your college.

AWARDS AND ACHIEVEMENTS – Show to the recruiter

In this section, you can put all your accomplishments which you've achieved in your college life. You can list your academic performance and competitions you have won in school as well as in college. If you won a football match or any other sports then you can write about that and if relevant brief them. Don't forget to put the year, award name, date, and place of your achievements.

AVOID THESE MISTAKES

While making your resume, make sure that you aren't doing these mistakes:

  1. Don't make grammatical errors because sometimes due to your silly mistakes, the entire meaning of your content changes. A Resume without any grammatical errors shows that you have given time to it. And also use only a single font.
  2. Another important point is that don't make your resume so vibrant because it will look funky. A resume should not contain more than 2 colors.
  3. Don't write too long paragraphs because interviewers don't have enough time to read the entire thing. Sentences shouldn't be more than 2-3 lines. It should concise and understandable.
  4. Always customize your resume according to your job profile because you can't use the same resume for all job posts. Every job profile is different from the last one. So, you should modify accordingly.

Last but not the least, a resume shouldn’t exceed more than one page.


This blog was first published on the Resumod blog