First time building a resume?
You've come to the right place.
I'm Sinéad, and coming up in this video,
I have all the tools you need to build a resume from scratch
so you can get your foot in the door and start working.
And if you don't have any work experience just yet,
deep breath, and stop stressing right now,
because it's totally OK.
You can still prove you'll be a great hire with a few tips
and tricks.
And be sure to stick around until the very end
of the video, because I'll be sharing
how to create an amazing skills section that will definitely
appeal to employers and amp up the overall power
of your resume.
All right, let's do this.
Let's start with the basics.
What is the purpose of a resume, anyway?
Who's reading it, and how much time do employers really
take to review my resume?
A resume is your professional calling card,
and it's your best chance to make a strong first impression
on the recruiter or hiring manager.
But since there are often a lot of candidates and companies
do want to fill positions quickly,
most recruiters won't spend very long reading a resume at all.
In most cases, we're talking, like, 10 seconds.
So your goal is to ensure that your best attributes jump off
the page.
And how do you do that?
Well, that leads us right to step number one,
create a resume outline and define your format.
Getting started is obviously the hardest part,
but an outline will give you something to work with.
Outlines are our friends when it comes to building resumes.
You can either open a blank document
and create an outline from there,
or we have a variety of resume templates
to choose from on indeed.com that will guide you
through building your resume, which is so helpful, especially
if it's your first time.
All right, so let's break down the format of your resume,
starting at the top and working our way towards the bottom.
Your name and contact info go at the top.
Your objective statement goes below that,
followed by your education.
Experience goes below that, and not
necessarily professional experience,
but also activities like volunteer work.
Add your skills underneath your experience,
and include relevant activities if you'd like.
Keep in mind that an ideal resume
is straightforward and easy to read,
so be sure to set equal margins all around.
0.7 inches is good to start, but you can go up to one inch
if needed.
Choose a standard font like Times New Roman or Arial.
Type your name at the top in the biggest size
font, about 16 to 18 point.
Then create your section titles in a slightly smaller size,
about 12 to 14.
You may choose to underline, bold,
or center your section titles.
Whatever you do decide, just stay
consistent with what you do.
Finally, create the actual content
in about 10 to 12 point font.
It should be smaller than your section titles.
Don't include graphics.
No photos, and no colorful fonts.
We're aiming to keep it clean and professional
so that your work speaks for itself.
Again, check out our resume builder tool
that allows you to skip formatting completely.
All you have to do is respond to the prompts,
and then the tool builds your resume for you.
Within a few minutes, you'll have a perfectly formatted
resume that you can either download or use
to apply to any job on Indeed.
Now that we know the best way to outline and format a resume,
let's start filling out those sections
and talk about the best strategy for first-time job-seekers.
But before I get into that, if you've watched this far,
please give us like, hit that subscribe button,
and of course, hit that notification
bell so that you never miss our weekly career advice.
Step two, use the upper third of your resume
to display your highlights.
The top part of your resume gets the most attention.
Let's be honest here.
Employers are really busy, and they may not
spend that much time reviewing our material.
So it is smart to put the most important stuff first.
The top part of your resume should include
your first and last name.
Put your city of residence, and don't include your full street
address for privacy reasons.
Next, contact info, like your phone number
and your email address.
And pro tip.
If you've had the same email since elementary school,
let's make sure your email address is
professional-sounding, so not like ilovepuppies@indeed.com.
Stick to a simple format, like first name
initial dot last name at your email provider dot com.
You could also choose to include links
to other work-related materials, like a portfolio or perhaps
your personal blog.
Underneath your contact info, I recommend
that you create something called an objective statement.
Basically, in one to two sentences,
write a statement that explains your core offering
to an employer.
So to start, ask yourself, if an employer were to only read
this part of my resume, what would I
really want them to know?
If you don't have prior work experience,
mention your background in other areas.
So for example, if you're a high school student seeking a job
as a receptionist, you may say, "detail-oriented and personable
aspiring receptionist on track to graduate with honors from
Hometown High in 2025.
Eager to support office efficiency
through proven organizational skills,
as demonstrated by two years of experience
as Glee Club treasurer."
For more advice and resume summary examples,
feel free to check out this video right here.
Step three, include your education.
You did the schooling, so let's show it off.
List any diplomas, degrees, and/or educational milestones
that you have achieved or are working towards,
starting with your highest achieved first.
For example, if you graduated high school
and now you are currently in college,
this is how you would craft your education section.
Start with the name of the institution,
as well as the city and state, and then
your expected graduation year.
And then put your name of your degree or your achievement
underneath.
So, for example, you have, "State University, Cleveland,
Ohio.
Expected graduation 2024.
Bachelor of Arts, English major.
Hometown High School, Cleveland, Ohio, graduated 2020."
Now, it's important to note that under any educational
institution, you can totally put all your awards
and your honors, such as dean's list
or honor roll, and then extracurricular activities.
You may also choose to add relevant coursework
under each school.
Now, if you have a lot of classes to list, first of all,
go you.
But you also may want to make relevant coursework
its own section on your resume.
Either way, it's best to only list
the classes that support your candidacy for the position you
are currently applying for.
So let's say you are a college student applying
for a job as a psychology professor's research assistant.
Your relevant coursework may look something like,
"Relevant Coursework--
Statistics, Psychology 101, Intro to Research,
Ethics in Psychology."
Yes, you might have taken yoga in college,
but we probably don't need to know that for this position.
Step four, think beyond professional experience.
It's a common misconception that you can only
show paid work on your resume, but this could not
be further from the truth, especially if you
are new to the working world or if you have little experience.
It is perfectly fine to showcase part-time, freelance,
volunteer, and even non-career related info on your resume.
Even experience like babysitting for friends and family
can be relevant work experience, depending
on the job that you're applying for.
If you do have some work experience,
this is how you would list it.
Start with the title and affiliation.
Add dates to the side.
So you have your job title, an employer,
starting month to ending month.
For example, "Spanish Tutor, Self-employed, June 2021
to Present."
Then underneath, you should add three
to five bullet points that describe
your key accomplishments.
Choose a different strong action verb for each bullet point,
and try to use numbers and explain your impact
when possible.
Continuing with our Spanish tutoring example,
you may have bullet points that say,
"Assessed client educational gaps,
identified preferred learning styles,
and developed personalized improvement
plans for four students learning Spanish,
resulting in an average GPA increase of 0.75
within a month."
However, as I mentioned, as a first-time job-seeker,
you should feel free to pull from a range of experiences
in this section, including academic or personal projects,
extracurricular involvement, club activities, and volunteer
work.
For example, let's say you held a car wash
for your favorite charity.
So you could list the following.
"Cash Wash for School Supplies Project, January 2020.
Marketed fundraising event through a synchronized social
media strategy across multiple platforms,
driving 30 attendees.
Coordinated logistics including traffic pathways, team shifts,
and necessary supplies, producing a seamless customer
experience and six word-of-mouth referrals.
Managed four volunteers and customer payment collection,
resulting in over $300 of donations,
or one year's worth of school supplies,
for classrooms in three hours."
A good deed like a car wash can go a long way on a resume.
Step five, include both hard skills and soft skills.
Many first-time job-seekers may feel
like they don't have any professional skills,
but not so fast.
It is so easy for us to take our assets for granted,
so take some time to consider any skills you have that
took any time at all, or training, to acquire.
These are your hard skills and, yeah, they're very valuable,
because if an employer needs someone with a hard skill,
they either need to train an existing employee
or find someone who already knows how to do it.
So if you've got it, show it.
Hard skills include words typed per minute, Microsoft Office,
Google's suite of products like Sheets
and Docs, foreign language fluency, coding ability,
software familiarity, and even social media knowledge,
because oh, yeah, that is a skill that not everyone has.
Soft skills like customer service or coaching
can also be relevant to include, depending on the role.
Even if you only have common knowledge and experience
in these things, it's often worth mentioning.
However, this leads me to my final bonus step,
which is step six, find and use language from job descriptions
to tailor your resume.
As much as we'd all like it to be,
a resume is not a one-size-fits-all document when
it comes to applying for jobs.
So be sure to take the time to tailor
your resume for every job you apply for, because ultimately,
this is what is going to help you appeal to recruiters.
It's also going to help assist online application
softwares that scan your resume to determine
whether you are a match.
So how do you tailor your resume?
The skills section, first of all, is a great place to start.
Check out the preferred and required qualifications
on the job posting.
Take note of any desired skills.
If you meet those requirements, put them
on your resume using that exact same language
so that the applicant tracking system or the recruiter
can easily identify that you have those desired
characteristics.
For example, if they say advanced Spanish proficiency
and you wrote Spanish fluency, change it
to match their exact wording.
This shows that you've done your homework, which
can impress employers and have them saying, well, wow,
this is exactly what we were looking for.
The skills section is one of the most obvious places where
you can tailor your resume, but it's also
smart to adapt the way that you describe your work and impact
in your objective statement and your experience sections,
as well.
It really does make all the difference.
All right, that's a lot of information,
so let's quickly review the six steps for writing
a resume with no experience.
Step one, create an outline and define your format.
Step two, use the upper third of your resume
to display your highlights.
Step three, include your education.
Step four, think beyond professional experience.
Step five, include both your hard skills and soft skills.
And bonus, our step six, find and use
language from job descriptions to tailor your resume.
We really hope you found this video helpful.
If you did, be sure to give us a big thumbs up,
subscribe to our channel, and of course,
hit that notification bell so that you never
miss our weekly career advice.
For even more on creating resumes,
I recommend checking out this playlist right over here,
or for all of the things we should
avoid when writing a resume, click this video right here.
Thank you guys so much for tuning in.
I'm Sinéad de Vries, and I'll see you guys next time.