A fresh graduate resume puts your education first, then your internships and part-time or volunteer work, your skills, and your extracurricular activities. Keep it to one page with plenty of white space, and check it for mistakes before you send it.
Sending dozens of resumes at once is common for fresh graduates, and it is the easy part. The real challenge is writing the resume. What should you put in it when you have next to no work experience?
What a fresh graduate resume needs
1. Education
As a fresh graduate, put your education right at the top of your resume. Write the name of the university or college you attended, your degree, and your grade point average (GPA) or final grade. Add any academic honors you have.
2. Internships
An internship is a big plus on a graduate's resume. You might not have done much there, but that does not make the experience insignificant. If you have had part-time jobs or done volunteer work, add them too.
In this section, list each company, your responsibilities, and how long you held the position. Do not exaggerate when you describe what you did: hiring managers notice it quickly. Start each point with a strong verb; this resume cheat sheet has more than 150 of them.
3. Skills and knowledge
What skills and knowledge did you gain in college? If you are applying for a junior developer position, for example, list the programming languages and frameworks you have learned. Don't be afraid to list those you know only at a basic level, as long as you say so honestly: once you have the basics, you can learn the rest on the job.
4. Extracurricular activities
Employers like graduates who were active in extracurricular activities during their studies, because those activities show interpersonal skills such as teamwork. They also tell the hiring manager about your interests and your character. After all, there is much more to a person than grades.
Presentation matters too
Now that you know what to put in your resume, here are a few more tips to make it appealing to a potential employer.
5. Keep it short
Your resume should be one page long at most. Hiring managers do not have time to read a long resume. They also know that you have just graduated, so stretching your resume with unnecessary details will put them off.
6. Use plenty of white space
Hiring managers go through many resumes whenever a position is open, and they don't want to skim a wall of text. Use white space between the sections to make your resume look clean and easy to read.
7. Check your spelling and grammar
You can't expect people to take your application seriously if your resume is full of spelling and grammar mistakes. Your credibility is at stake, so always check your writing before you send it. The Spell Checker can spot mistakes that tired eyes miss.
For the general structure of a resume, read how to write a resume in 4 steps.