Guides · Entry level
New grad resume with little experience: what to put on it
A new graduate is not expected to have years of experience. You are expected to show what you have actually done: projects, coursework, part-time work, internships, volunteering. The work is in describing those things specifically, without dressing them up as something else.
General advice, updated 2026-10-31. Examples are fictional. Nobody can promise you an interview or an offer, and we do not.
What counts as experience
- Internships and co-ops, with their real titles and dates.
- Part-time and summer jobs, even outside your field. They show reliability, customer contact, shifts, cash handling or teamwork.
- Course projects and a final-year project or thesis, labelled as academic work.
- Personal projects you can show or explain: a small app, a data analysis, a portfolio piece.
- Clubs, societies and volunteering where you had a real responsibility.
Describe projects as projects
Put academic and personal work under a heading like Projects, with the course or context and the date. Say what you built or analysed, with what tools, and what the result was if you know it. Do not present a class project as a job or a client engagement.
Fictional example: Priya, data analyst applicant
Before: Data Analyst, University of Westbrook, 2025. Delivered data-driven insights to stakeholders.
After: Course project, Applied Statistics (2025): cleaned a public city transit dataset in Python (pandas) and presented a ridership trend analysis to the class in a team of three.
Priya is fictional. The before version implies a job she did not have. The after version is smaller but every word can be checked, and it still names the tools the posting asks for.
Order the page for an entry-level reader
- Contact details and a two-line summary naming your degree and the kind of role you want.
- Education near the top, with your degree, institution and graduation date.
- Projects or Experience next, whichever matches the posting better.
- A short skills list containing only tools you have used, ideally ones mentioned in your projects.
- Keep it to one page unless you have a genuine reason not to.
Applying to roles that ask for experience
Some “entry-level” postings list a year or two of experience. Read which items are required and which are preferred. If your internships and projects cover the required work, applying is reasonable. Do not change dates or titles to reach a number of years; describe what you did and let the reader decide.
Check your resume against a real posting.
Paste a job description and your resume. For each requirement you get the sentence that backs it, or an honest gap. Free, no account needed.
Start the free checkQuestions
Should a new grad include a GPA?
That depends on the field and the employer. If a posting asks for it, include it accurately. If not, it is your choice. Never round it up.
Can I list a part-time retail or restaurant job?
Yes. Describe what you actually did there: customers served, shifts, training others, handling stock or cash. Those are real responsibilities.
How do I know which of my projects match a posting?
Paste the posting and your resume into the free ApplyHonest check. It lines up each requirement with a sentence that backs it, or shows an honest gap, so you can see which projects to move up.
Role guides: Data analyst, Software engineer, Graphic designer