Recent Graduate resume example

Technical

Programming · Data analysis · Testing

Professional

Team projects · Research · Presentation

No internship experience

Graduating without formal work placements. Coursework, projects, part-time work, and involvement all become legitimate evidence, and the resume's job is to present them as such.

Summary example: Recent business graduate with project experience in market analysis and data reporting, alongside three years of part-time retail work. Reliable, numerate, and comfortable presenting findings to a group.

• Completed a final-year project analyzing customer data for a local business, presenting recommendations the owner adopted.
• Worked 20 hours weekly through three years of full-time study while maintaining strong academic standing.
• Coordinated a student society event for 150 attendees, managing budget and supplier bookings.

With internship experience

One or more placements to draw on. These should be presented as professional experience, not as an extension of education.

Summary example: Recent computer science graduate with two software engineering internships building internal tools. Comfortable contributing to an existing codebase through standard review and release processes.

• Built an internal reporting tool during a twelve-week internship, used by a support team of twelve after release.
• Contributed 30+ merged pull requests to a production codebase, working through standard code review.
• Automated a manual weekly data export, saving several hours of team time each week.

Career changer / postgraduate

Entering a new field after prior work or further study. Prior experience is an asset when translated rather than something to explain away.

Summary example: Data analytics graduate with six years of prior operations experience in logistics. Combines new technical skills in SQL and Python with practical understanding of how operational processes actually work.

• Completed a data analytics program including a capstone project forecasting demand from three years of historical data.
• Applied new SQL skills in a prior operations role to replace a manual weekly report.
• Six years of operations experience including team supervision and process improvement.

What do I put on a resume with no work experience?

You almost certainly have more than you think. Coursework and final-year projects, part-time or seasonal jobs, volunteering, society roles, and self-directed projects are all legitimate. Describe them the way you would describe a job: what the situation was, what you did, and what resulted. Part-time retail or hospitality work alongside full-time study demonstrates reliability and time management, and leaving it off is a common mistake.

Should I include my GPA or degree classification?

Include it when it helps you and when the employer asks. Many graduate schemes have an explicit minimum and will filter on it. If yours is below a stated threshold, omitting it is reasonable, though be prepared for the question. Where your final-year or major-specific results are notably stronger than the overall figure, presenting that specifically is honest and often more favorable.

How long should a graduate resume be?

One page, with rare exceptions. You will not yet have the volume of relevant experience that justifies two, and a padded page is obvious to reviewers who read hundreds of these. The constraint is useful: it forces you to select your strongest evidence rather than listing everything you have ever done.

Should I use an objective statement?

No. Objectives describe what you want, and the reader is deciding whether you offer what they need. Replace it with a short summary of what you bring: your field, your strongest relevant skills, and any experience that supports them. Two or three lines is enough, and it is the section most worth tailoring to each application.

How do I write about academic projects professionally?

Give the problem, your specific role, the tools or methods used, and the outcome. “Analyzed customer data for a local business and presented recommendations the owner adopted” reads as applied work. Where the project was a group effort, state your contribution clearly, since ambiguity there is one of the first things interviewers probe.

Do I need to tailor my resume for every application?

Tailor the summary and the ordering of skills and projects to match each posting's emphasis. That is usually ten to fifteen minutes of work and it noticeably improves outcomes, particularly at this stage where applicants are hard to distinguish. Sending an identical resume to fifty employers is the most common graduate mistake and is generally visible to the people reading it.