What to put on a resume with no work experience: contact information, education, skills the posting actually names, and at least one proof section — projects, volunteering, campus roles, or informal work formatted like a job. One page. No fake employers.
This URL is a section inventory — include, maybe, never — not a full “how to write” tutorial. For teen letters, see what to put in a high-school letter . For turning duties into proof, see how to name responsibilities you excel at .
Below: the table, how proof blocks should look, how Workday and Greenhouse read a first file, and what to cut when the page is already full.
Key Takeaways
- Education sits high while you are still in school
- Projects and volunteering are Experience if you write bullets
- Include / maybe / never beats copying a senior template
- One page for first US resumes
- UNC and UC Davis treat classwork and campus roles as usable experience
- This will not work if you leave the page empty except an objective
What to put on a resume with no work experience: include, maybe, never
Start with the posting, then with what you actually have. The table is a call sheet, not a template to copy line for line. If a row does not map to a requirement or to something you can discuss, it is optional decoration.
UNC Career Center’s student resume guide tells students to keep a first resume to one page, drop headshots, and rename headings to match what they actually did — campus involvement, service, research and projects — instead of leaving a blank Experience block. UC Davis Career Center wants one page for recent graduates, standard headings, and 2–5 accomplishment bullets per role or project.
| Section | Call | Rule of thumb |
|---|---|---|
| Name, phone, email, city + state | Include | Skip full street address on a public PDF |
| Education + expected date | Include | Top of page while you are a student |
| Skills (tools, languages, methods) | Include | Mirror posting spelling; only list what you can discuss |
| Projects / volunteer / campus roles | Include | Format like jobs: title, org, dates, bullets |
| Summary (2–3 lines) | Maybe | Useful if it names the target role; skip if it is fluff |
| GPA | Maybe | If the field expects it or it is a strength |
| Relevant coursework | Maybe | 3–6 courses that match the posting, not the whole transcript |
| Objective | Never, usually | Unless the internship ad asks for one |
| Headshot / skill bars / icons | Never | Parsers and US screeners do not need them |
| References available upon request | Never | Wastes a line; they will ask if they want names |
Walk the posting first, then your list: school, clubs, volunteer shifts, family shop, class projects. Assign each item Include, Maybe, or Never for this file. A different posting can flip a Maybe to Include.
Failure mode: a senior template with an empty Experience heading, an objective about “seeking to grow,” and a skills cloud of personality words. Screeners still need a timeline. Rename the heading to Projects, Volunteer Experience, or Campus Involvement and put dated blocks under it. Stuffing every Maybe — GPA, twelve courses, LinkedIn, GitHub, hobbies — crowds out the one proof block that matches the ad.
Practitioner example — first retail apply: Include contact, school plus expected date, POS or cash-handling if you used it, and one volunteer or informal-work block. Maybe GPA if it is a strength. Never a headshot, a references line, or an objective that only restates the job title. First internship: same Include rows, plus skills that match the posting’s software names and a class project you can discuss. Never a two-column Canva file with icons in the rail.
Inside the Include rows, keep the facts short. Contact is name, phone, email, city and state — not street address, age, or availability hours. Education is school, credential, expected date — not the full transcript. Skills are tools you can discuss, spelled the way the posting spells them. Soft-skill words belong in a proof bullet or nowhere.
Key Takeaway: if a section does not prove a posting requirement, it is optional decoration — cut it.
How should proof sections look?
UC Davis wants position title, organization, dates, and 2–5 accomplishment statements. That is the shape of the section — not a prompt to invent a company. The examples below are illustrative.
A proof section is a job block without a W-2: same heading style, honest labels. If you cannot name dates and a duty, it is not ready for this page. Informal work (babysitting, lawns, family shop) belongs here if you can name those. Do not upgrade it to a fake company title.
Before / after 1 — volunteer:
- Before: Volunteer at food bank. Helped people. Team player.
- After: Shift volunteer, Riverside Food Pantry, Sep 2025–May 2026. Checked in about 40 households per Saturday using the pantry spreadsheet; trained 3 new volunteers on the intake sheet.
Before / after 2 — class project:
- Before: Class project on marketing.
- After: Campaign project, Intro to Marketing, Spring 2026. Built a 6-slide plan and a simple budget in Sheets for a fictional campus cafe; presented to the class.
Before / after 3 — campus or tutoring block:
- Before: Tutor. Helped students with math. Good communicator.
- After: Peer tutor, campus learning center, Jan 2026–May 2026. Ran 90-minute drop-in sessions twice a week for College Algebra; logged attendance on the center sheet; walked 4 regulars through the same problem set until they could finish it without the answer key.
Keep those three shapes. Weak lines name a category. Stronger lines name a title, place, dates, a tool, and a countable duty. You do not need a revenue number. You do need something a screener can ask about.
- Family shop (illustrative): Counter help, Patel Grocery (family), Jun 2025–Aug 2025. Ran the register on Saturday mornings; restocked 3 aisles using the store clipboard; did not list yourself as “Operations Manager.”
- Athletics (illustrative): Team manager, JV soccer, Fall 2025. Kept the attendance sheet for 18 players; set up cones 30 minutes before practice twice a week. Put this under Activities unless the posting is sports-related.
Failure mode: “Founder, Smith Consulting” for mowing lawns, or “Director of Operations” for a sibling’s lemonade stand. Screeners in retail and internships have seen that move. Use the real label. If the work was unpaid, say volunteer or family business in the organization line.
Heading names that work: Experience, Projects, Volunteer Experience, Campus Involvement, Research. Heading names that hide the inventory: My Journey, About Me, Soft Skills, Other. Workday and Greenhouse map standard headings; a creative label often dumps the block into leftover text.
Key Takeaway: a proof section is a job block without a W-2 — same shape, honest labels.
What order should the sections follow?
Order is part of the inventory. A first resume that buries education under hobbies, or puts contact only in a styled header, looks empty in the portal even when the PDF looks fine on your laptop.
- Contact line in the body, not only in a header.
- Optional 2-line summary aimed at one target title.
- Education (while you are a student).
- Skills that match the posting.
- The strongest proof block (projects or volunteer or campus) next.
- Additional activities only if they still earn a bullet.
Single column. Standard headings. If a portal mangles the file, paste into Notepad and check order before you submit. Do not put Skills in a sidebar column; many importers read left to right and will skip the rail. If you need a second proof block, stack it under the first — do not add a third column of icons.
Workday often maps Education and Experience from those exact heading words. A first resume that uses “Schooling” or “Stuff I’ve Done” can leave the Education field blank in the recruiter view. Greenhouse usually shows a parsed preview after upload. Open it. If phone or email is missing, the contact was in a header or text box, not in the body.
Contact in the body means the first lines of the document, selectable as plain text: name, city and state, phone, email. Skip the full street address on a public PDF. Skip a headshot. A two-column Canva template is a common first-resume choice from class; Workday and Greenhouse both tend to read the main column and treat the left rail as noise, so skills vanish. Build one column instead. For layout detail, see Workday resume format in 2026 .
Mid-check the file before you apply. Run a free ATS check so tables, text boxes, and two-column Canva layouts do not look fine on screen while Greenhouse stores an empty phone field.
Edge case: some school templates put the name in a colored banner. That banner is still a header to many parsers. Recreate the name as the first body line, then keep the rest of the inventory in the same column.
Key Takeaway: put education high and proof immediately under skills so the page is not a blank Experience heading.
LinkedIn, GitHub, and leftover high school
UNC’s guide says include high school only if you are a first- or second-year student, or the experience is still the strongest proof you have. After that, college and recent projects replace it. A 2022 homecoming committee line on a 2026 graduate resume is nostalgia, not a section.
LinkedIn URL: maybe. Include it if the profile matches the PDF (same dates, same titles). Skip it if the profile is empty or still lists a joke headline. GitHub or portfolio: include when the posting is technical or creative and the link shows work you can discuss. A blank repo is worse than no link.
Certifications: include if they are finished and named the way the issuer names them (Google IT Support, ServSafe, CPR). “In progress” belongs only if the posting asked for the credential and you have an exam date. Languages: include if you can work in that language on the job; “conversational Spanish” is honest, “fluent” is a test they can give you on day one.
Unpaid internships still go in Experience — same title, org, dates, bullets as a paid job. Do not hide them in Activities. A summer internship with two bullets beats a volunteer heading that only says “helped out.” If the internship was one week of shadowing with no owned task, put it in Activities or cut it; shadowing is not a role you excelled at.
Military family moves and caregiver years are not a section heading; if a gap exists, a single line in the summary is enough on a first resume. Do not write a medical story. Do not add a “Reasons for leaving” block. The inventory still wants dates on school and on whatever proof you kept.
Hobbies are almost never their own section. A dated duty (scored games, church-sale register, competition robot) belongs in proof, not under Interests. Dual enrollment, AP, or IB sit inside education — not a second school block — once you have a college line. Still in high school: one school line plus expected graduation; add coursework only when the posting names the subject.
Key Takeaway: extra links and old high-school lines are maybe items — keep them only when they prove this posting.
USAJOBS and the same inventory
USAJOBS still wants a resume with relevant experience, education, and contact information, two pages or less. First jobs rarely need two pages. If you apply federally, copy hours per week and month/year dates into every entry — the announcement will say so. Do not use this page as a federal KSA guide.
Pathways and student intern announcements still want those hours fields even when the “job” was a campus project; leave the hours blank only if the announcement says unpaid academic work does not count. The section list does not change: contact, education, skills, proof. The extra fields are dates and hours, not a new heading called “Federal Experience.”
Edge case: a volunteer shift with irregular hours. Estimate a weekly average you can defend, and keep the same organization name you would use on a private-sector file. Do not invent a GS title. If the announcement requires a transcript, that is a separate upload — it is not a reason to paste the whole course list onto the resume.
Key Takeaway: the section list stays the same; federal ads add date and hours fields you must not skip.
Limits of this inventory
This will not work if you already have two paid jobs — then you need a chronological experience section, not a first-resume layout. It also fails if you hide dates in a “functional” skills cloud; screeners still look for a timeline. If you have one paid job and a stack of projects, keep the job first and treat this inventory as the rest of the page — do not delete the job to look like a student template.
It fails when the only “proof” is an objective and a list of personality words. Empty Experience is a heading problem, not a “I have nothing” problem — rename the section and add bullets. It also fails when you copy a two-column Canva file that Workday cannot parse; the inventory is useless if the portal never stores the sections.
Book a school career-center review when you are applying to internships in a regulated field (health, finance, government) and you cannot tell which projects are confidential. For a first retail or campus job, the checklist above is enough.
Next steps: walk the include / maybe / never table against one posting. Shape one proof block like a job. Put contact in the body. Export one page. Then build the page in a simple builder rather than a two-column Canva file, or check the resume on HireFlow before you upload to Workday or Greenhouse.
Key Takeaway: empty Experience is a heading problem, not a “I have nothing” problem — rename the section and add bullets.
Frequently asked questions
Skip it unless an internship posting asks for one. A two- or three-line summary that names the target role and one proof point is more useful. Objectives describe what you want; summaries describe what you already did in school, projects, or volunteering.
One page for students and first-time US job seekers. UC Davis Career Center tells recent graduates to stay on one page and use two pages only with extensive work history. Fill the page with education, skills, and proof — not giant margins.
Yes. Format it like employment: organization, role title, dates, city, and two to four bullets. UNC’s student resume guide treats volunteering, class projects, and campus roles as experience you can show. Career-related volunteer work can sit under Experience; one-off events usually belong lower.
Hard skills the posting names (software, languages, methods) plus tools you actually used. Soft skills only if a bullet proves them. “Communication” alone is a skip. “Trained 6 new volunteers on the check-in sheet” is a skill with evidence.
Often yes for retail, hospitality, and office-helper roles that ask for a file. Keep it one page: school, expected graduation, activities, informal work. The matching letter is a different document — availability lives there more than on the resume.
Near the top while you are a student or recent graduate. List school, degree or diploma, expected date. GPA only if the field expects it or it is strong. Do not list every course — pick ones that match the posting.
Headshot, full street address, Social Security number, age, or a skills bar chart. Also skip a functional resume that hides dates if you have any dated activities — screeners still want a timeline. One column, standard headings, selectable text.
They read left to right in the document body. Contact sitting only in a header, skills in a Canva sidebar, or a two-column layout often lands empty in the parsed fields. Put name, phone, email, and city plus state in the body. Use one column and standard headings, then open the portal preview before you submit.
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