Tips for Writing a Resume if You Don't Have Experience

If you are newly graduated from college, you are likely to have little work experience on your resume. The same may be true if you are returning to the workforce after an extended period away. Fortunately, there are some ways to reconfigure your resume to highlight what you can bring to the workplace with little or even no experience on your resume.

It is easy to feel stuck in an endless loop — you cannot get a job when you have little experience, but no one will give you a job to let you put some experience on your resume. If you find yourself in this spot, focus on your skills and on the experience you have outside of work that make you an interesting and valuable candidate.

Highlight Your Skills

If you made it through college successfully, you learned skills that every employer prizes. Your college experience taught you analytical skills, administration and organization, and the ability to be a team player. Every college student also learns how to manage time on both a short and long basis. Do not undervalue this experience on your resume.

List the relevant classes you have taken when applying for a job. Be specific, pointing out the writing, accounting or computer skills you learned and can use in the service of an employer. Also list the other job-related skills in which you excel. Use your cover letter or email to highlight these skills again.

Focus on Your Non-Work Experiences

The college experience is filled with more than just classes. You may have an array of extracurricular activities, volunteer work, internships and awards that set you apart. Choose judiciously among these to make up for the lack of experience on your resume. Select those activities in which you took leadership positions, such as organizing fundraisers for a nonprofit organization, heading up a campus organization, serving as the captain of a sports team or interning with a luminary in your field.

Be specific about your extracurricular accomplishments and show off the skills you learned by the way you list them on your resume. Quantify your accomplishments whenever possible. Point out how much money you raised for a given cause, how many public speaking engagements you undertook and how many people attended, or how your leadership caused your organization to make a difference. Treat your experiences in extracurricular activities as real experience, and express them in the same language you would use for work experience on your resume, so a prospective employer will recognize and respect what you bring to the workplace.

While a recent college graduate may have little work experience on her resume, she brings an enthusiasm, energy and focus which many more experienced workers sometimes lack. Do not let the lack of experience on your resume hold you back in your job search; instead, highlight what you offer with an awareness that you have qualities that employers value.

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