This article contains 14 tips to strengthen a resume, particularly if you have little or no work experience:
- Create an “Achievements” Section in Your Resume
- Emphasise Transferable Skills
- Use Action Verbs
- Focus on Impact
- Demonstrate Your Initiative
- Volunteer Work Experience
- Highlight Relevant Soft Skills
- Highlight Technical Skills and Share Portfolio
- Create a Project Section in Your Resume
- Tailor Your Resume
- Include Relevant Courses in Your Resume
- Use a Skills-Based Resume Format
- Seek Internships or Entry-Level Positions
- Strategically Leverage Your Strengths in Your Resume
As a first-time job seeker, you may not have job-related experience that you can speak of. Do not despair. You can still put together a solid resume by effectively highlighting your other achievements and volunteer work to showcase skills and qualities that are relevant to the workplace and to a specific job vacancy. This article offers a number of tips on how to do that.
Tips to Strengthen Your Resume
Follow these steps to highlight your other achievements and capabilities and strengthen your resume if you lack extensive work experience. .
1. Create an “Achievements” Section in Your Resume
In addition to the basic sections that are included in a typical resume, people without previous job experience can create an Achievements section in their resume. Devote this achievements section to list various academic accomplishments, personal projects and other notable successes you have had.
You can quantify your achievements where possible for better impact. For example, you can mention improvements in grades, challenges you have overcome, projects that you completed, and awards you have received both in your academic life and outside.
2. Emphasise Transferable Skills
Identify skills you have gained from volunteer work, internships, coursework, or various extracurricular activities. All of these have given you many skills that are transferable to the job you are applying for. You need to clearly articulate how these various skills can be applied in a professional setting.
Check out our article on Top Transferable Skills First-Time Job Seekers Can Use on Their Resume. It is useful for all resume writers who want to find ways to strengthen their resume.
3. Use Action Verbs
Action verbs are a great way to include job vacancy keywords as well as your individual skills into your resume. Consider beginning your bullet points with strong action verbs that describe your accomplishments. Action verbs can portray a sense of proactivity and accomplishment.
Example: Instead of saying you were “Responsible for event planning,” consider saying that you “Successfully coordinated and executed five fundraising events”.
4. Focus on Impact
To do so, highlight the impact of your contributions. Whether it’s through volunteer work or academic projects, you need to find a way to emphasise how your efforts made a positive contribution. Most employers are interested in candidates that can contribute positively to a team or organisation, beyond their normal job-role. .
5. Demonstrate Your Initiative
Initiative is a much valued commodity in the workplace because it demonstrates leadership potential. In your resume, highlight instances in which you took initiative and made a positive difference such as when you started a project, a club, or volunteer effort.
6. Include Volunteer Work Experience
Experience as a volunteer is as valuable as work experience although many job seekers forget to mention such experiences in their resume. Those who are seeking ways to boost up their experience can include details about roles, responsibilities, and any accomplishments in volunteering. You can include activities such as organising events, managing teams, or achieving specific goals within a volunteer organisation in your resume. .
7. Highlight Relevant Soft Skills
Soft skills like communication, teamwork, leadership, and problem-solving, are often gained through various experiences, including extracurricular activities, and volunteer work with religious and social service or community organisations. Give examples of situations where you demonstrated these skills effectively. List any leadership roles you held in social clubs and other organisations while at school and college.
8. Highlight Technical Skills and Share Portfolio
People can develop technical and job specific skills even as students, during school or university days, and sometimes just for fun.
For example, if you studied coding and software and want to be a game creator, share your MIT Scratch and App Inventor public portfolios that contain your creations as proof of technical skills and expertise. In the same way artists, designers, inventors and any number of creatives and crafts people can share online portfolios of their own creations. Writers can highlight their blogs and other publications.
If you have worked as a gig worker on a global or recognised platform—such as Upwork, Fiverr, Toptal, Gigster, 99Designs, Writer Access, Freelancer, Guru and the like—you can share your online profiles that carry client feedback, work samples and other details when seeking a freelance gig or a for a full time position.
9. Create a Project Section in Your Resume
If you’ve worked on academic, personal or passion projects, create a section highlighting these. Describe the projects, your role, and the outcomes achieved. This can demonstrate your ability to apply theoretical knowledge to practical situations.
10. Tailor Your Resume for Each Application
Be sure to customise your resume for each job application. This enables you to highlight achievements and transferable skills that align directly with the job requirements. Don’t forget to use keywords from the job description or vacancy to demonstrate how your skill sets match the needs of the employer.
11. Include Relevant Courses in Your Resume
– If you lack job-related experience, consider including a section that lists relevant coursework. This can help showcase your academic background and skills.
12. Use a Skills-Based Resume Format
If you lack work experience, you may want to consider using a skills-based or functional resume format. Instead of highlighting your lack of work experience, these resume formats will allow you to emphasise your skills and achievements.
13. Seek Internships or Entry-Level Positions
One way to get over the challenge of a “thin” resume is to seek internships or entry-level positions that align with your career goals. Paid or unpaid internships and entry level positions typically do not ask for previous work experience. Such opportunities can provide you with valuable work experience that you can use later on your resume.
14. Strategically Leverage Your Strengths in Your Resume
By strategically presenting your achievements, accomplishments, volunteer work and transferable skills, you too can create a compelling resume that demonstrates your capabilities and potential. Once you follow these tips to write your resume, your lack of job-related work experience may not matter as much as you fear it would.
Share Your Comments and Concerns
Are you finding it challenging to create a resume because you lack extensive work experience? Share your concerns with us.
In the meanwhile, we wish you all the best in your job search!
The RevampCV Team
Read These Articles Before Sending Your Resume
14 Things You Must Consider When Writing Your Resume
How to Write a Winning Resume in 2024 – Resume Basics
How to Use Powerful Job-Related Words to Strengthen Your Resume
Top Transferable Skills First-Time Job Seekers Can Use on Their Resume
Photo by Liza Summer
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