Resume for Freshers Looking for the First Job

After completing your education when you finally decide upon working and gaining experience, you always strive to formulate a perfect resume for yourself which successfully catches the eyes of the employers and they are instigated to proceed with the hiring experience with you. Do you know that an average recruiter spends not more than 6 to 7 seconds on one resume and interprets the candidate’s personality and ability in that very time frame? If you are looking forward to a successful career but are quite doubtful about how to prepare a resume for freshers, do not worry. In this blog will provide tips and tricks to create a job-winning resume for freshers looking for their first job.

Also Read: How to Answer ‘Why Should You Be Hired for This Internship?’

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What Should Your Resume Include?

Building a resume for freshers looking for their first job can be tricky when you have no experience to highlight your candidature. Given below are the basic components that you can incorporate into your resume:

1. Personal Information

Your personal information includes your name, email address, mobile number and address. This allows your recruiters to contact you if they find your profile suitable for the vacancy you have applied for. You need to ensure that you provide correct information to avoid any mistakes or miscommunication.                                                                   

2. Career Objective

Career objective is a section wherein the candidate can showcase their skills and employment expectations. The career objective for a fresher in a resume is the first segment that catches the eyes of the employer, thus it is important for candidates to carefully formulate this area.

Also Read:

• Career Objective for Resume for Fresher in Computer Science
• Career Objective for Fresh Graduate

3. Educational Qualifications

As a fresher, your education is the only asset that you possess in your kitty. Therefore, remember to highlight your educational qualifications in a way that becomes your unique selling point and the recruiters are forced to ring you for the next round of hiring. Also, if you have been into various co-curricular activities, mention the details in bullet points. 

4. Projects or Internships

If you have participated in any project or have interned in the same professional field, it is very important to state them along with the organization you were associated with and the duration of your work. This will help you stand out amongst the pool of candidates.

5. Career Skills

While building a resume for freshers looking for the first job, the section of career skills is the most vital part of the resume. This is where the employer will get to know about the various career-oriented talents that you have. Cleverly formulate this section and ensure that you do not exaggerate your abilities.

Also Read: The Difference Between CV and Resume

How to Write a Resume for Your First Job?

The process of creating an amazing resume looks something like this:

Select the Appropriate First Job Resume Format and Template

There are three primary resume templates to choose from. Each one emphasises a distinct aspect of your resume.

• Reverse-Chronological Resume – Your professional experiences and education are listed in reverse-chronological order in this format.
• Functional Resume– Instead of employment experience, this approach emphasises your skills and accomplishments.
• Combination (or Hybrid) Resume – This approach emphasises your skills as well as your professional experience.
  
  We advocate using the reverse-chronological approach for 99% of job applicants.

While a functional resume can be useful for job changers or young graduates, it is not as prevalent as a reverse chronological resume.

Furthermore, recruiters all over the world are familiar with the reverse-chronological structure, making it a safer bet.

Once you’ve decided on a format, the following step is to fine-tune your layout, typeface, and so on. Here’s what we recommend in that case:

• Make use of a two-column layout. A two-column resume structure allows you to include a lot more information on your resume.
• Choose a Popular Font. We advise using Ubuntu, Overpass, or Roboto.
• Describe Your Experiences Using Bullets.
• Don’t Exceed One Page. Unless you’re a seasoned professional with a decade of experience, we recommend keeping your resume to one page.

Make a note of your contact information (properly)

It’s critical that the recruiter has at least two ways to contact you.

In other words, your contact information should always be included on your CV. This includes the following:

• Name and surname
• Phone number Email address
• Location

Aside from these necessities, you can additionally provide:

• LinkedIn URL
• Relevant social media
• Website or blog

When it comes to your contact information, the most important thing to remember is to write everything accurately. Check that you’ve spelt your name and email correctly, that the phone number you listed is reachable, and that the accounts you’ve linked to are up to date.

Another thing you should know about location is how much detail you should provide.

Include an Objective on Your Resume

Recruiters spend an average of 7 seconds examining each resume before deciding if it is worth further consideration.

That means you just have around 7 seconds to make a good first impression and persuade the recruiter that you’re the right person for the job.

A strong resume objective will take care of that for you.

A resume objective is a 2-3 sentence summary of your talents, accomplishments, and professional objectives. Its objective is to explain your motivation for entering the sector as well as your interest in this specific employment.

This makes it excellent for a fresh graduate or someone changing careers’ initial work CV. In general, any resume with no work experience.

Must Read: Declaration in Resume for Freshers Examples & Tips 2022

List Your Education (In Extensive Detail)

To begin, you should understand how to properly list your educational information in the following format:

• B.A. in Information Systems, for example.
• Name of the university, for example: the University of Chicago
• Years of attendance, for example, 07/2013 – 05/2017
• GPA (only if really high)
• (If relevant) Honours, For example, Cum Laude

Exchange Programme (if appropriate). For example, an exchange programme in Berlin, Germany.

Your education is the most important selling feature in your first employment CV, aside from your skills. This is not the place to be humble and downplay your accomplishments!

Write down your GPA (if it’s excellent), emphasise your honours, and, most importantly, describe your academic achievements in detail.

Instead of work experience, concentrate on this.

The recruiter understands that you have no work experience as a fresh graduate, and that’s fine. As long as you are looking for a junior or entry-level role, experience is not required.

Instead, the recruiter will be seeking additional experiences that will enhance your profile, such as:

• Projects
• Internships
• Extracurricular Activities

When discussing these events, format them similarly to how you would format your professional experience.

When possible, try to focus on your accomplishments rather than your responsibilities. This will set you apart from the other applicants.

Have you completed any internships? Extracurricular activities should be included.

An applicant with extracurricular activities and an average GPA will usually impress the recruiter considerably more than a 4.0 GPA student with nothing else to show.

Highlight Your Skills

Soft skills and hard skills are the two sorts of skills you can include on your resume.

Soft skills are characteristics that enable you to adapt to new work contexts, work well in groups, and utilise your hard skills. They have to do with your personality, social skills, communication, attitude, and so on.

Technical expertise and specific tools are examples of hard talents. They are abilities that one learns and immediately applies on the job. Hard skills include the following:

• C++
• Financial Accounting
• Adobe Illustrator

Although soft talents are increasingly in demand by companies, we advocate sticking to hard skills for your first job CV.

Sure, qualities like “teamwork” or “critical thinking” are highly valued by almost every workplace.

The problem is that the recruiter can’t determine if you have critical thinking skills or if you just added them to your resume to fill space.

Hard skills, on the other hand, are quite simple to assess.

Include Optional Sections

Do you still have some room on your resume?

That’s a good thing! You can make use of this area by adding some additional relevant sections.

Here are some suggestions:

• Volunteering – If you have any volunteer experience, highlight it in your first employment resume. A section like this demonstrates commitment, effort, and a feeling of purpose, which most recruiters would enjoy.
• Languages – As businesses become increasingly international, extra languages are always appreciated.
• Hobbies – Listing some relevant hobbies/interests might demonstrate your genuine interest in the industry or field.
• Awards and certifications – Whether it’s a college essay competition award or a certificate from an online course, anything that enhances your profile should be included.

Maintain the one-page limit

“How long should a resume be?” appears to be an unending conundrum at this point.

The general answer is: it depends.

Because you’re creating your first job resume, the answer is unquestionably one page.

There’s no reason to exceed that limit unless you have a lengthy career history that can’t fit on one page.

The recruiter is unlikely to be interested in two pages of extracurriculars and hobbies.

Must Read: Difference Between CV and Resume

Samples of Resume for First Job

Here are a couple samples of resume for freshers looking for their first job:

Some Tips and Tricks to Ace the Resume Game

While you are in the resume-building phase, it’s time to impress your employers within seconds with these guidelines on how to create a resume for freshers looking for their first job.

• Your resume should match the interests of the employer and the organization.
• Use bullet points wherever needed as it will help the employer churn out important information about you.
• Use a formal and clean font for the resume with little or no graphics.
• Always state correct information, free from grammatical errors.
• Use crisp language and avoid using wordy sentences.    

Must Read: List of Hobbies and Interests for Resume

Other Resume Options for You

While we are on the quest of building a cool resume for freshers looking for their first job, we need to ensure that freshers choose the layout and content material with respect to their chosen profession. Catering to your interest, we have formulated some professional resumes that you would want to look out for:

• CA Fresher Resume
• Marketing Executive Resume
• Maintenance Engineer Resume
• Medical Representative Resume
• Production Engineer Resume
• Network Engineer Resume 
• Content Writer Resume
• Resume for Electrical Engineer Fresher      

Must Read: Personal Details In Resume: Do’s And Dont’s

FAQs

Hopefully, you will use the above guidelines on how to create a resume for freshers looking for their first job. Building a resume can be a tough feat, but not anymore! We at Leverage Edu, through our experts, are here to create the best resume for first-time job hunters. You don’t need to look anywhere else, quickly book your 30-minute counselling with us now.