How to Write Your First Resume: A Step-by-Step Guide

Step 1: Understand the Purpose of Your Resume

Think of it as your personal pitch—one that you (ideally) tailor to each position you apply for. A resume is your personal marketing tool: it highlights the skills you consider most relevant, your experience and qualifications with the goal of getting potential employers to see that you're a good candidate for the job.

• Research the position: Look at the job description and note the primary skills and qualifications.
• Gather necessary information: Include your education, volunteer experiences, extracurricular activities, and certifications.
• Keep it concise: Resumes are typically one page for entry-level candidates. You can expand to two pages if you have enough relevant experience, but especially for a first resume, keep it focused and succinct.

Step 2: Choose the Right Resume Format

There are three common formats that are normally used by candidates. Using one of these accepted formats means whoever is reading through your resume know what, and where, to look for in a resume, and makes it easier for them to extract the relevant information.

The three formats, are described as follows:

• Chronological: Lists work experience from most recent to oldest.
• Functional: Focuses on skills rather than work history.
• Combination: Blends skills and work history equally.

For first-time job seekers or students, the work experience will be a weak point of the resume, so a functional or combination resume is often the best choice.

Step 3: Adjust Your Resume If You Don't Have Much Work Experience

Nobody starts out with work experience. Some companies demand experience even for entry-level positions, so how does that make sense?

Well, it doesn't, really. There's no point in sulking over it though, there are ways of gathering experience even outside of work.

• Leverage Volunteer Work: Highlight responsibilities and transferable skills.
• Showcase School Projects & Personal Projects: Projects are a good way to demonstrate starting level hard skills. If possible, do one or more projects related to the field you're looking to work in.
• Include Relevant Coursework & Certifications: Mention specialized classes or online courses(like a programming class, a graphic design or accounting course specific to the industry).
• Highlight Soft Skills: Show adaptability, problem-solving, and communication skills through examples. Teamwork is a great one to highlight as well.

Step 4: Craft Compelling Resume Sections

• Contact Information: Include name, phone, email, LinkedIn, or a personal website.
• Summary Statement: Briefly explain your career goals or value to the role.
• Education: List your highest level of education and relevant honors or awards.
• Skills: Include hard skills (e.g., technical abilities) and soft skills.
• Experience: List jobs or internships with bullet points describing responsibilities and achievements.
• Additional Sections: Volunteer experience, certifications, or personal projects.

Step 5: Make your resume easy to "scan" through

Hiring managers often need to look through a large amount of resumes for the same job. They may spend as little as 30 seconds scanning or skimming through a resume. Your goal is to make a resume where the important details stand out even when recruiters try to read between the lines.

This idea is sometimes called "The 30 second rule".

• Make key details easy to spot: Use bold or italic text for headings.
• Relevant details first: Highlight your most relevant achievements near the top.
• Remove irrelevant information: Avoid cluttering your resume with unnecessary details.

Step 6: What Makes a Resume Stand Out?

This subject has been touched in more detail in the How to Write a Good Resume article.

Some key points discussed, are as follows:

• Proofread thoroughly: We can't stress this enough. Take some time to eliminate grammatical or spelling errors.
• Tailor it to the job: Use keywords from the job posting.
• Use action verbs: Words like "coordinated," "led," and "achieved" show initiative.
• Quantify wherever possible: Numbers make achievements more credible.
• Keep it clean and readable: Use a simple, professional font.

Step 7: What Is a Good Resume for a Student?

You might feel like you don't have much content for your resume as a student, and that's alright.

It is important to recognize the fact that your main "competition"(other candidates for the same position) are also most likely going to be students, so you're all in the same boat. The same boat most of us have been in at some point.

The playing field is even. Do your best to highlight the most relevant bits, or your proudest achievements so far, such as:

• Academic Achievements: Highlight GPA, honors, or awards.
• Leadership Roles: Mention roles like team captain or club president.
• Relevant Coursework: List courses that align with the job.
• Internships & Part-Time Jobs: Focus on transferable skills.

Step 8: Final Checks Before Sending

This was previously mentioned but it is important enough to warrant its own step.

What kind of impression would it make over an employer, if their first interaction with you, is reading a resume full of mistakes?

Having such mistakes might convey a lack of either motivation or attention to detail, which is not something you want to convey. That might not even be the case for you, but whoever is reading your resume won't have a way of knowing that from just reading a piece of paper or a PDF. So make a good impression.

• Run spell check and grammar check.
• Ensure consistency in font size, bullet style, and spacing.
• Save as a PDF to preserve formatting. Word documents have proved finicky so they may not be ideal
• Double-check your contact info for accuracy.