Your life has begun! It’s exciting, but employers don’t care about your schooling. Show them you’re more than just another sheepskin with this recent college graduate resume example.
Career Expert
Congratulations. You earned your diploma. But that's just the start of your journey. To get a job, you need experience. But you can’t get experience without a job, so you’re stuck in a vicious circle.
Or… are you? Even if you haven’t worked while at college, you’ve still got tons of experience and skills that you can put on your new grad resume. You just need to know to structure your college graduate resume the right way.
In this guide:
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Our review of more than 500,000 resumes built with our tool revealed that*:
- Fresh graduates, on average, report having 2 previous jobs.
- 29.73% of our users include certifications on their resumes.
- Median resume creation time for graduates is 12.2 minutes.
* The data comes from the last 12 months (August 2023-August 2024).
A college graduate resume is a document that presents your education, extracurricular activities, and skills. The college graduate resume should be short, to the point, and tailored to the job. Make sure to highlight any relevant work experience or internship as doing so will make you stand out from the crowd.
Sherry Dantas
Personal Info
Summary
Prolific programmer skilled in Python and Java. Seeking to exceed coding KPIs at Procore. Created data analytics app that tracks 10,000 sensors. Developed scalable business management app with MySQL database. 2nd place contestant, TopCoder contest intermediate division.
Education
BS Computer Science, Augsburg University
Data Science and Analytics
Game Development & Design
Projects
Portfolio Website
Award
2018—2nd Place, TopCoder Intermediate Division
Additional Activities
Publications
Hard Skills: Java, Python, C, PHP, app design, testing, debugging
Soft Skills: Teamwork, critical thinking, communication, problem solving
This resume is so impressive that we bet you didn’t notice that Sherry doesn’t have any in-house work experience! That’s right, she’s never been employed as a programmer.
Here’s how to make your new grad resume just as awesome.
If you don’t look the part, they won’t hire you. That’s why resume formatting makes a difference.
Your safest bet is to go with a slightly tweaked version of the reverse-chronological resume format. A typical reverse-chronological resume starts with a candidate’s work experience, followed by their education and then their skills, certifications, and so on. In your case, start with the education section and put your experience after it.
Then build it out like this:
Expert Hint: More than 35% of recent college graduates work in low-paid jobs that don’t need degrees. To avoid that group, start a robust networking effort now.
You’re not a clone. But you’d never know it once you’re buried in a stack of college graduate resumes. Worse, you’re up against people with years of experience. You’ve got to show your value fast.
Do it with a solid resume objective (avoid writing a resume summary unless you already have some work experience under your belt).
That’s a brief paragraph with a couple greatest hits.
Use:
Skip the resume objective for now and complete the other sections of your resume first. You’ll thank us later. Take a look at these college graduate resume examples and see what resume objectives look like in action:
Nail it all with a splash of color, choose a clean font, and highlight your skills in just a few clicks. You're the perfect candidate, and we'll prove it. Use our resume builder now.
What skills go in a recent college graduate resume? Here’s a list of the ones employers like:
The skills on this list are called soft skills or transferable skills. You can put these skills on your college graduate resume when applying for almost any job.
But most jobs need other skills, too—for example, no one’s going to hire a programmer who doesn’t list programming skills on their resume! So… which technical skills should you put on your resume?
That depends on the job ad. Read it, find the skills they want, and show how you’ve moved mountains with them. That’s called targeting your resume.
But, don’t put too many skills for a resume for college graduates. That looks suspiciously like lying. Look at these recent college graduate resume samples:
Say the job wants these skills: C , MySQ L , Android Studio , collaboration , Java , sales , and problem solving .
To prove these skills, you can create resume sections named Projects and Experience and show how you’ve used your skills in practice.
Want to try a different look? There's 21 more. A single click will give your document a total makeover. Pick a cover letter template here.
How to write a recent graduate resume:
Got questions on how to write a great college graduate resume? Having trouble getting a response to your recent graduate resume? Leave a comment. We’ll be happy to reply!
At ResumeLab, quality is at the crux of our values, supporting our commitment to delivering top-notch career resources. The editorial team of career experts carefully reviews every article in accordance with editorial guidelines, ensuring the high quality and reliability of our content. We actively conduct original research, shedding light on the job market's intricacies and earning recognition from numerous influential news outlets. Our dedication to delivering expert career advice attracts millions of readers to our blog each year.
Written by Tom GerencerHaving published over 200 career-advice articles, Tom Gerencer is a career expert who covers the whole array of job-seeking topics for people at all career stages, from interns to C-suite members. His insights, commentary, and articles reach over a million readers every month. With inside knowledge of key industry players and in-depth research, Tom helps job seekers with advice across all professions and career stages.
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