How to perfect your student resume for your first real job?

New graduates and students often feel that they are not ready for a real job. Primarily because they are intimidated to submit a resume that has no significant professional experience.

One thing that you should keep in mind is that, in terms of professional experience, all the freshers are in the same boat. 

Focusing majorly on your expertise and existing experience, here’s how you can go about making a stellar student resume

Resume Header

A resume header is one of the most important parts of your resume. Here’s what your header should consist of and how you can optimize it: 

 

• Contact information: Include an email address, mobile number, present location, etc. Only a professional-looking email address should be displayed on your resume. 

• LinkedIn Profile: Include a link to your LinkedIn profile. Further, the recruiter is most likely to google your name. So, optimize your social media presence as well. 

• Profile Title: Most candidates make the mistake of naming the profile title in a resume as “CV” or “Resume”, considering that they do not have a proper job title. You need not add a proper job title to your resume. You can include your major or a recent certification that is relevant to your targeted profile. For example, Computer Science Graduate, Certified Data Scientist, etc. 

 

Work Experience 

You need not have a proper job to write this section in your student resume. As long as it showcases your ability to work in the real world, any work experience will do.  Let’s say you worked as a teacher’s assistant, or resident advisor during your college years, it should reflect in your resume. 

Further, incorporate the following tips to write your experience section: 

 

• Reverse chronology: Use a reverse chronological order to write your profiles. Write the most recent profile first then go back to the oldest one. 

• ATS: ATS is software that screen resumes based on keywords. Hence, you need to include keywords that are highly relevant to your targeted profile in your resume. 

• Power verbs: Begin each point in the experience section with a power/action verb. Further, remove full-stops as these points aren’t complete sentences. 

 

Objective 

An objective serves as a statement of purpose for candidates who have little or no professional experience. Written in a paragraph format, an objective statement should reflect on how you can be beneficial to the company. 

A few tips to craft a stellar objective statement: 

• Avoid using first and second-person pronouns. For example, if you were involved in delivering lectures. You should not write it as “I delivered lectures…”. Instead, you should write it as “Adept at delivering lectures…” 
• Include educational qualifications in the objective. For example, “Enterprising Computer Science Graduate demonstrated the ability to…” 
• Include pointers along the lines of your passion and relevant experience. 

Education 

As a student, you need to emphasize more on the education section and certifications in a resume. Further, focus equally on academic achievements. Here’s how you can leverage the education section in your resume: 

• Include the coursework/modules that are relevant to your targeted profile. 
• Do not use abbreviations to write the name of your school/college. 
• Always include the date of enrolment and graduation. 
• Include your GPA if it will add value to your profile and add Dean’s merit list inclusion. 

Example: 

Bachelors in Liberal Arts | Berkeley University | Pasadena, California | Mar ‘15 – Apr ‘19

Extracurricular/Volunteering Experience 

Testing your leadership qualities, extracurricular activities give an idea to the recruiter of your abilities to handle tasks independently. Keeping in mind that as a student you have little or no experience, this section showcases your potential skills and abilities. 

Some extracurricular activities may include a sports club, volunteer work, community service, etc. Here’s how you should include these activities in a resume: 

“Awarded with the silver medal for leading the debate team to the finals in a contest organized by Berkeley university “ 

Key Takeaways

Coming to the end, here are a few takeaways: 

• The resume header shouldn’t have any personal information such as marital status, date of birth, etc. 
• Do not write your internships in the work experience section, and avoid listing your certifications in the education section. 
• As you are an entry-level professional, do not exceed more than 1 page for your resume.