How long should a first résumé be

One page. A second page at this stage is almost always padding, and padding is the thing a reader notices first.

Contact line, two lines of orientation, then education. Once you have a year or two of work, education moves below experience.

What if I have had part-time jobs unrelated to the field

Include them, briefly. They show reliability, hours held alongside study, and dealing with people. One or two lines each is enough.

Do I need a photograph

It depends entirely on the country you are applying in, and the convention differs sharply. Where you are unsure, leave it off.

Which design should I choose

One of the ATS-safe single-column designs. One of the 37 in the gallery is built for a first application, with education and projects first.

Guide · Résumé

A résumé for your first job

A first résumé has one page, education near the top, and project work written the way employment is written. Here is the whole shape.

ConxfolioPublished 2026-09-12

— one page, properly filled.

A first résumé is a short document with a specific job: to show that you have done real work of some kind, that you can describe it, and that you can be trusted with a task. It is one page, and every line on it should be evidence.

The order

Contact details. Two lines of orientation. Education, with the qualification, institution, years and grade where it is strong. Projects. Any work, paid or not. Skills. That order puts your best evidence in the first third of the page, which is as far as a quick reader gets.

The two lines at the top

Name what you have studied and one thing you have actually done with it. "Economics graduate with a statistics minor and two research placements. Comfortable with survey data, cleaning it and explaining what it does and does not support." Specific beginner work reads better than any statement of ambition. The summary guide has more worked examples.

Projects are the experience section

Write each one as a role: a name, a date, and lines underneath that start with a verb and end with a result. A dissertation, a capstone, a thing you built at home, a competition entry. The no-experience guide lists what else counts, including volunteering and society work, which are roles with deadlines and other people in them.

Part-time work belongs on the page

Bar work, retail, tutoring, a warehouse shift. One or two lines each. It shows hours held alongside study, dealing with people at their least reasonable, and turning up. Do not apologise for it and do not inflate it.

Choosing a design

There are 37 complete designs in the gallery and 21 are marked ATS-safe. One of them is built for a first application, putting education and projects ahead of employment, and it is among the ATS-safe ones. Starting there saves you from reordering a design that assumed ten years of history.

Fill one page properly

An interests line listing reading, music and travelling describes most of the population. One line about something you organised, built or competed in is evidence. Where a section exists to fill space, remove it: the length guide covers what comes off first, and a shorter page with nothing weak on it is the stronger document.

Check it before you send it

Run the file through the ATS résumé checker. It will tell you what it could read, and for a first résumé the useful rows are the content ones: whether your project lines start with a recognised verb, whether any of them carry a figure, and whether there are enough of them. Those are the lines a human reader weighs too, which is why they are worth the half hour.

Then export to PDF, or DOCX where the posting asks for it. Both are free, there is no watermark, and there is no account to create before you can download your own document.

Three mistakes that are easy to avoid

Writing about what you hope to learn. An employer is reading for what you can already do. Ambition belongs in the letter.
Listing every tool touched in a lecture. Three you could be tested on are worth more than twelve you have seen, and the skills guide covers how the list is read.
Copying a graduate template and filling the boxes. Templates built around ten years of employment leave a first applicant with empty sections, which is the one thing a first page cannot afford.

What a first employer is actually looking for

Evidence that you finish things, that you can describe your own work, and that somebody has seen you do it. Every part of the page should serve one of those three. A finished project with a result serves all three at once, which is why the projects section is the centre of a first résumé and why it is worth an evening of proper writing rather than a list of titles.

Applying to several places at once

Keep one master page and change the opening two lines and the order of the projects for each family of roles. That is twenty minutes per application rather than an evening, and it keeps every version consistent, which matters more than it sounds when you are sending twelve of them in a fortnight.

Fold the first one

Start from a blank page, fill the sections in order, and pick a design built to put education and projects first.

Open the résumé builder Browse the 37 designs

Questions

How long should a first résumé be: One page. A second page at this stage is almost always padding, and padding is the thing a reader notices first.
What goes at the top: Contact line, two lines of orientation, then education. Once you have a year or two of work, education moves below experience.
What if I have had part-time jobs unrelated to the field: Include them, briefly. They show reliability, hours held alongside study, and dealing with people. One or two lines each is enough.
Do I need a photograph: It depends entirely on the country you are applying in, and the convention differs sharply. Where you are unsure, leave it off.
Which design should I choose: One of the ATS-safe single-column designs. One of the 37 in the gallery is built for a first application, with education and projects first.

Conxfolio is a free set of four career tools: a résumé builder with 37 rendered layouts, an ATS résumé checker that prints its own arithmetic, a cover letter builder that traces every proof paragraph back to the line it came from, and a portfolio builder with 20 authored designs. There is no account to create, nothing is held back for a paid plan, and no language model is used anywhere in the product, so the readers, the score and the letter are deterministic code you can check.