Writing a résumé with no work experience

No paid job yet does not mean no evidence. Here is what counts, how to write it up, and the section order that puts it where a reader looks first.

ConxfolioPublished 2026-09-12

— you have more evidence than you think.

Almost nobody applying for their first role has nothing. What they have is work that no employer paid for, which is a different thing, and the page has to be built so a reader finds it quickly.

What counts

• Course and personal projects. A dissertation, a capstone, a thing you built at home because you wanted it to exist.
• Volunteering. Shifts covered, people helped, money raised, a rota you organised.
• Societies and teams. A committee position is a role with a budget, a deadline and other people in it.
• Family business and informal work. Real work with real constraints. Name it plainly and describe what you did.
• Placements, competitions and contributions. Anything with a result attached, including the ones that did not go well and taught you the method.

Write it the way work is written

Each item gets a name, a date and lines underneath in the same shape as an employment role: a verb, the work, the outcome. "Analysed forty-eight thousand transaction records and presented three growth opportunities to the module panel" is an achievement line by any standard. The experience guide applies without modification here.

The order for this page

Contact line, a short opening paragraph, education, then projects, then any work of any kind, then skills. In the résumé builder the Page and sections panel in the design tab moves whole sections up and down, so putting education above experience takes one step and does not disturb the design.

Of the 37 designs in the gallery, one is built for exactly this shape, with education and projects first. It is marked ATS-safe, which means a single column whose text still extracts cleanly from the exported PDF.

What the check will say, and why

The ATS résumé checker applies evidence ceilings to thin documents. With no readable experience section and content below thirty, the score is held at fifty-five. With no experience and no education, forty. With none of experience, education or skills, twenty-five. Those ceilings exist so an empty page cannot present itself as a strong one.

The way past them is not a trick. It is to write your project and volunteer work under a heading the rules recognise, with dates and achievement lines, so there is evidence to read. A well-written first-job résumé scores well, and the report names each rule it applied.

The opening paragraph

Two lines. What you have studied or trained in, and the one thing you have actually done with it. Avoid stating what you are looking for in general terms; the objective guide covers the narrow cases where a statement of direction still earns its space.

Length and honesty

One page. Pad nothing. An interests line that says "reading, music, travelling" is three words that describe most of the population, whereas one line about a thing you have built or organised is evidence. If a section is there to fill space, take it out and let the page be shorter and better.

Part-time and holiday work counts

Shop work, bar work, warehouse shifts, tutoring, care work. It shows hours held alongside study, dealing with people at their least reasonable, and turning up when it would have been easier not to. One or two lines each, written the way any role is written, with the scale where you know it: covers a night, tables served, the size of the team.

Employers reading a first application know what it means to have held a job while studying. Leaving it off to keep the page looking focused removes one of the few pieces of evidence you have about how you work.

The interview you are writing towards

Everything on this page is a prompt for a conversation. Choose the projects you would enjoy being asked about, and write the lines so the obvious question is one you can answer well. A project with a result and a decision behind it gives an interviewer an opening; a list of technologies gives them nothing to ask, which is how a promising application produces a flat first ten minutes. The experience guide covers the shape of the line that invites the right question.

The reference nobody thinks of

A tutor, a supervisor from a placement, or the person who ran the society you worked in can all speak to how you work. They are used to being asked and they answer specifically. Ask before you name anybody, and the references guide covers what to send them.