How to Write a Resume With No Experience

Writing your first resume feels harder than it should, mostly because of one wrong assumption: that you need a work history to have anything worth putting on the page. You don't — you need evidence of a few key things employers look for in any candidate, and that evidence can come from school, sport, volunteering, or everyday responsibilities just as well as from a paid job.

What Employers Are Actually Looking For

For entry-level and first-job roles, employers are mostly screening for reliability, communication, teamwork, and willingness to learn — not years of relevant experience, which they don't expect from a first-time applicant. Once you understand this, it becomes much easier to see what's actually worth including.

Where to Find Content for a First Resume

School and study. Group projects, presentations, leadership positions (class representative, prefect, club leader), and subjects relevant to the job all count as real experience.

Sport and extracurricular activities. Being part of a team, especially in a captain, coaching, or organising role, demonstrates teamwork and responsibility clearly.

Volunteering. Even occasional or informal volunteering — helping at a community event, a school fundraiser, or a local charity — is genuine, relevant experience for most entry-level roles.

Informal or casual work. Babysitting, lawn mowing, tutoring younger students, or helping in a family business are all legitimate experience, especially if you can describe specific responsibilities (handling money, managing a schedule, working unsupervised).

Family responsibilities. Caring for siblings, managing a household task, or coordinating family logistics can demonstrate real responsibility if framed clearly.

Structuring a First Resume

1. Contact details — name, phone, email, suburb.
2. A short summary — two to three sentences about what you're looking for and what you bring, focused on reliability and enthusiasm rather than experience you don't have yet.
3. Skills — a focused list of relevant transferable skills (see below).
4. Education — your current or most recent school/institution, expected completion date, and any relevant subjects or achievements.
5. Experience — include anything relevant from the categories above, described specifically.
6. Availability — for casual and part-time roles, your availability is often as important as your skills, so state it clearly.

Turning Everyday Experience Into Resume Content

The skill is in the specificity. Compare these two ways of describing the same experience:

Weak: "Helped out at school events."

Strong: "Coordinated setup and volunteer scheduling for the school's annual fundraising fair, managing a team of six student volunteers across a full-day event."

The second version names a specific role, a number, and an outcome — exactly the kind of detail that makes any experience, formal or informal, read as credible.

Key Skills to Highlight

For most entry-level and first-job applications, these transferable skills are worth including if you can genuinely back them up:

• Reliability and punctuality
• Teamwork
• Communication
• Customer service basics
• Time management
• Problem-solving
• Willingness to learn new tasks quickly
• Basic cash handling (if relevant)

Getting Started

A first resume doesn't need to be long — one page, tightly written, beats two pages padded with vague statements. See our first-job resume example for a fully worked template, or use our AI resume builder to put one together, prompting you for the kind of school, volunteer, and casual experience that turns into strong resume content.