A must-read for rising stars: how college students can write a resume that wows HR!

When writing a resume, college students (especially freshmen and sophomores) often lack internship experience and don't know what else they can put on it. This article uses seven concepts to show how to present your skills and experience when you don't have a lot of experience, so your resume wows HR!

I'll go through how to write each section one by one, and I hope this gives you an in-depth understanding of the whole resume.

Research the position

The first step before writing a resume is to research the position you're applying for. It may be old advice, but do you really understand the steps and purpose of “research”? Here are the steps:

• Research the skills and experience the position needs: use the job description, online information and even current employees to understand the role's “hard skills” and “soft skills”

• Make sure the skills, experience and strengths on your resume match that research: pull keywords out of the job posting to find your direction, and go for “quality over quantity” by putting only relevant experience on your resume

• Tailor your resume: from experiences that seem unrelated, pick out the matching abilities and write them up, putting the emphasis there, so HR is convinced of your abilities and sees that you have the abilities and experience the job requires

  Transferable skills

Education & student clubs

“Class experience” is something people often overlook, yet it carries real weight and everyone has it. If you don't have many internships, you can emphasize your on-campus experience, including coursework, research, projects, and individual or group final reports. These can go in the Project Experience or Education Experience section. If you've taken part in relevant club activities or volunteer work, you can mention them on your resume too, using on-campus experience to make up for the lack of work experience.

The relevance principle & how to write

Following the “relevance principle” mentioned earlier, match the job requirements and find the experiences of yours that fit: distill the role's implicit requirements, then dig into your own stories and match them one by one. Have you done something similar in class, used relevant tools, or learned relevant knowledge? When you write, don't just state what you did and achieved; also try to spell out what you contributed or what skills you learned along the way (in the team, class or project)! Let HR picture, from what you wrote, what kind of positive impact you could make after joining the company.

What to watch out for when describing experience

It's not only hard skills and quantified results you can write about (use numbers to show results, and a narrative structure to show your logic: why it happened - Why, how you did it - How, what the result was - What). You can also show your soft skills and qualitative impact through specific examples, and all of it can go on your resume.

When you use other experiences (classes, clubs) to highlight relevant skills and strengths, try to give each Bullet Point a clear point you want to make, and consider whether it closely matches the role, whether it shows your level of involvement, and whether it reflects your value and contribution. See the examples below.

Bullet Point examples

1. Final group report: Led a 5-person team to carry out the XXX project and research XXX, and presented insights on the macroeconomy to a class of 100+ using quantitative data and charts.→ Group assignments show teamwork and the role you're good at playing on a team; academic experience can also show the knowledge you learned or how you applied it

2. Independent final assignment: Used XXX to collect data and analyze XXX, combined with XXX to complete an academic paper, which was recognized by the professor and named an outstanding project (top 10%).→ This type of experience can show your academic foundation and your ability to learn quickly, write reports, organize data, make charts and so on

3. Club activities: Served as XXX at XXX, coordinated and completed the XXX project, and used XXX skills or strengths to play a XXX role.→ Don't underestimate the personal value that extracurricular activities show, including strong communication, time management skills, problem-solving⋯ When all candidates have similar hard qualifications, soft skills will make you stand out!

Similar extracurricular activities or projects

Besides class projects, you can also share extracurricular projects you've done, side projects and so on, big or small! A project can be a side hustle, a personal portfolio, industry research, building a website, developing an app and so on. When describing a project, every part should be clear and backed by data. Don't assume the person reading your resume knows everything; give them more of the necessary background (Context). You can use the first Bullet Point to spell out your project's achievements, information and actions, and show how you took it from 0 to 1.

Take me as an example: I ran a side business bringing foreign content creators into the Greater China market, and I put this background in the first Bullet Point so anyone reading my resume could understand the experience at a glance:

Devised a strategic plan to attract 50+ foreign influencers to the Chinese market by identifying content creators with the least barrier to entry, covering the A, B, and C industries. Negotiated agreement terms, including contract length and profit-sharing, and provided monthly video data and revenue reports. Through strategic marketing initiatives, including collaborating with local content creators, exceeded the agreed-upon profit-sharing by X%

Volunteering & community contributions

Order of importance of resume sections: “Full-time/internships > projects/classes > volunteering/community service”

If you don't have internships, emphasizing volunteer experience matters too. It can indirectly show leadership, communication skills and problem-solving. Beyond volunteering/community service in the narrow sense, teaching-related experience like Mentorship is also a big plus!

Awards & achievements

If you've won awards or achieved something in extracurricular activities, be sure to highlight it. Achievements can make you stand out objectively and in measurable terms. That said, don't list every award; your awards should also fit the abilities the role needs, to strengthen the match and keep HR's attention. Also remember to add a percentage after each award to show how selective it was. For example: Academic Excellence Award (5%), Outstanding Graduation Project (1%)

Strong verbs

Whatever experience you're describing, use more active verbs to bring it to life!

For example:

• Words like “assisted” and “responsible for” can mostly be left out

• “Assisted” can be replaced with a more active verb

• “Responsible for (In charge of)” should be swapped for a more precise verb (every Bullet Point is already something you handled, so there's no need to write “responsible for” again). You can replace it with: Lead, Coordinate, Manage⋯.

Highlight similar experience & transferable skills

For example, say you have HR experience and plan to apply for a “data analysis” position. Even though the responsibilities differ, look for what they have in common! If you want to brainstorm similarities between the two jobs, you can ask ChatGPT! Similarities might include:

• Data management: HR work involves handling large amounts of data, including employee information, compensation data, performance and training. So HR needs data management and analysis skills, which are also skills that data analysis roles require.

• Statistical analysis and reporting insights: HR needs statistical analysis skills to carry out compensation surveys, performance reviews, workforce planning and similar work. Likewise, data analysts need statistical analysis skills to interpret and analyze large amounts of data.

• Business insight: HR usually needs to be familiar with the company's business and strategy to understand how employees contribute to the business. Likewise, data analysts need to understand the business to draw insights from data and propose solutions.

• Communication: HR needs to communicate with employees, management and other stakeholders. Likewise, data analysts need to communicate with different stakeholders to make sure they bring everyone's ideas together and get their own insights across.

Conclusion

Playing to your strengths while downplaying weaknesses, and framing your experience well, are essential resume skills. Dig deep into what you did rather than just describing it, use the sentence patterns above, and write with the CAR (Context-Action-Result or Challenge-Action-Result) or STAR (Situation-Task-Action-Result) method (you can find more in-depth resume writing methods in my 👉🏻 Complete Resume Guide!).

A resume is an important way to show your skills, knowledge and experience. If you don't have internship experience, you can make yourself stand out by highlighting your academic achievements, volunteer work and extracurricular activities.