If you are getting advice from a bunch of different people to help you get your first job in high school, I bet people will tell you that you don’t need a resume yet. Of course, you can go fill out an application and get lots of part-time jobs or summer jobs without a resume. Even as a high school graduate it is possible to get a job without a resume.
But I am here to give you advice on how you can stand out.
How you can get hired more quickly, get a better paying job or get closer to meeting your future career objective.
Or how you can compete with the students whose parents have connections to help them get hired?
So my advice is to take the time, make the effort and create your first resume in high school.
Now, don’t stress out. Think about this first resume as a stepping stone on your career path. As you grow, learn new skills, and change jobs, your resume will change too.
The goal of your first resume is to help you get an interview to get your first job. It may feel weird to talk about your babysitting job or clubs and activities in school, but that’s all you have right now and that’s ok. Your potential employers know that you probably don’t have a work history yet. You can find transferable skills in any of your life experiences. And I will help you.
This first resume will have a short shelf-life. As soon as you get your first job, you will add new experiences and delete some of the older, less relevant experiences.
There is no official format for a high school student resume. Actually there is no single resume format for anyone. There is lots of room for creativity in the layout and formatting. Don’t let that overwhelm you. You can even Google high school resume examples for ideas.
Here is a sample resume you can use as a template. This person is 15-16 years old with babysitting experience, student council and a few accomplishments. Don’t you think this format makes this person look more impressive than the same info on a paper application?
I see a new trendy style of resume that features a small column going down the left-hand side of the page. I find this style to be very cluttered and confusing to read. I also see people making their first name extra large, in a special giant font, in color. Yes, this calls attention to your name, but I it wastes a lot of valuable space on your resume. I would rather see a few lines of your experience, activities, or projects. That's just my opinion! You need to pick the template you like the best.
Ok now, let’s get to the good stuff!
Here are my tips for writing your first resume in high school.
Tip 1: Fill out the resume worksheet.
Before you sit down to write your resume, just make a running list of things you might want to highlight about your life experiences so far. This is where all of your extracurricular activities will pay off. Start a Google doc, Word doc or grab a pen and paper and start writing up a worksheet of ideas.
Download this sample resume writing worksheet to get you started!
Spend some time thinking about each category. Try to picture a hiring manager, or your future boss, and envision what characteristics they may want in an employee. Chances are your high school experiences can position you as a dependable team member or an assertive leader; or someone with a strong work ethic, who contributes creativity, or provides an excellent customer experience. These are attributes any employer would value.
Your resume worksheet might include any of these items:
Education Section. Name and city of your school, expected graduation date, GPA, class rank. List out your elective classes, relevant coursework, and academic achievements. They may be worth highlighting on your resume.
Jobs. These might include positions with local businesses (restaurant, car wash, retail store, etc.) or cash-based positions like babysitting or grass cutting. Were you a counselor at a summer camp? That still counts as a job even if it was only for a few weeks or days. You can also list your role in your household, for example, if you care for your younger siblings while your parent works an overnight shift. “In-home childcare” or “Residential house cleaner” are two ideas on how you can position your work with your family.
Clubs and Activities. List each group along with your role. Specify it was an elected position or volunteer. Think about the projects and experiences and write a few details about why you did what you did. What were the results? Are there any metrics you can share?
Athletics. Include each sport, years played, time dedicated to training and practice, accomplishments, and awards. Your experience on athletic teams will tell your future employer that you are committed and a hard worker
School Projects. Think back to both individual and group projects and your specific role. Think about the process you followed to complete the project. This may bring up some resume-worthy traits like project management, leadership skills, attention to detail, and the ability to meet deadlines.
Awards and Honors. List all of these. Include those where you had to achieve a specific metric, for example, a GPA, 100% attendance, fund-raising, test score, etc. Include those where students or teachers nominated you.
Interests and Hobbies. This section may help to set you apart from other candidates, especially if your interests and hobbies are directly related to the job you are applying for. For example, if you love camping, hiking, and fishing, you will want to spotlight this if you are talking to REI or looking to be a camp counselor.
Charity and Volunteer Experience. Did you help out at your school’s car wash, fish fry, or book sale? Have you raised money for an organization hosting a 5k or fun run? Have you volunteered at a water station during a race? Employers will value your work in the community.
Church or Place of Worship. Many teens are active with their church or place of worship. Have you participated in youth group activities? This may show that you have leadership skills. Have you learned public speaking skills by being a reader during service?
Languages. Are you fluent in any languages other than English? If you are a first generation immigrant, this can be a real advantage you won’t want to leave out! Use terms like beginner, intermediate, proficient, fluent, or native.
Skills. Have you started to teach yourself HTML or PHP? Or have you worked in your family’s restaurant and you already know the POS system?
In this first step, the goal is to capture all of the relevant information you might want to include on your resume. Don’t get caught up on the actual words or grammar yet. Just write a stream of consciousness about all of these categories. You can fine tune the exact language later.
Hopefully, this exercise has you more excited about what you have to offer!
Tip 2: Choose your layout.
My advice here is to keep it simple. You can search for resume templates in Microsoft Word, Google docs, and online. In my “Elder Gen X” opinion, I find many of these over-designed, distracting, and they waste a lot of space with pretty lines, borders, boxes, and images. So, beware!
Again, my advice is to keep it simple. Find a layout you like, but I would recreate it in Word or Google Docs. Just type. Some of these templates will have coding that gets messed up when you hit delete or a hard return and you spend precious time trying to undo and reformat.
Leave out the resume objective or career objective. This is no longer needed and is now a bit old-fashioned. Including an objective statement at the top of your resume takes up valuable space you can use to explain more about your relevant experience that makes you the perfect candidate.
Tip 3: Pay attention to the formatting.
By formatting I mean the font, bold, italics, underline, all caps, bullets, line spacing and margins.
The reality is that hiring managers scan your resume first. So, make it easy for them to quickly read your highlights. There may be 100-200 applicants for a job. Don’t make the hiring manager work too hard to read your resume.
Choose your font. Go with an easy-to-read font like Arial, Calibri, Helvetica, Tahoma, Times New Roman, Verdana.
Choose your font size. Depending on how much copy you want to try to fit on a single page, font sizes 10-12 should work. If you have a teacher or family member who needs reading glasses, have them take a look and see if they can easily read it.
Set your margins. You may have been taught to keep a one-inch margin all around. There is flexibility with resume margins. If you need the space to try to keep it to one page, then push the margins out to ¾ or ½ an inch. The margins on my resume are ½ inch.
Be consistent. Pay attention to the formatting of each section header, each job or category, bullets, etc. Be careful if you copy and paste from another document. This may change fonts and font size by accident.
Tip 4: Format your contact information.
Your contact details will appear at the very top of your resume. If you are using a preferred or chosen name that is different from your legal name, be prepared to clarify this if the company runs a credit check or background check. You don’t want to be accused of lying.
Many companies are making new policies to be more inclusive in their hiring procedures. But some paperwork may require your legal name. I have seen job candidates use chosen names during the interview process and use their legal names on official paperwork.
Modern resumes no longer require you to include your street address. Definitely include your phone number and email. Take a minute right now and update your voicemail greeting to something simple and appropriate for when your future boss calls you for that first interview.
Tip 5: Create a professional email.
If your current email address is something like GlitterGirl07 or PokemonRules15, you need to create a new, professional email address to use for your job search. Use a variation of your first and last name. Keep it simple.
Creating a new email address for your job search will also ensure you don’t miss out on any important job application responses or requests for interviews. Try not to use this email for any online shopping that might generate daily emails that clutter your inbox.
I would also make sure you can access this new email account from your phone. When people start responding and asking you for interviews, you want to be able to respond in a timely manner.
Tip 6: Write your resume.
Go back to the worksheet you completed from Tip #1 and start writing your resume. Start with your work experience section.
List your jobs (if you have any) in reverse-chronological order.
List the company name and the dates you were employed.
Write out the bullet points explaining your tasks, projects and responsibilities.
Include any hard skills you have learned like Microsoft Word or any software programs, social media tools, or graphic design.
Include any soft skills you have gained like time management, organizational skills, teamwork, and problem-solving.
Follow this same process with the additional sections for your activities, volunteer work, awards, etc. As you write out all of the details about your life experiences, I believe you will begin to see an amazing resume coming together.
Tip 7: Proofread and proofread.
Read the copy forwards to see if it makes sense and for context.
Read the copy backwards too.
Your brain will correct typos when you read normally. Reading backwards forces your brain to read each word individually. The word “manger” won’t come up in Spell Check but I am guessing on a resume it should read “manager."
Tip 8: Explain the “why.”
I’ve reviewed many professional resumes where the candidate simply lists a bunch of tasks they did with no benefit statement. They leave out the “why” or the “what’s in it for me, the hiring manager.” These resumes read like a to do list. If you had your own store or restaurant, and you were hiring high school students to work in it, what traits would you look for?
Here is one example: Counted nightly cash drawer.
Ok, so you can count. Not really a differentiator from the other people applying for this same job.
Now, how does this sound? Provided support to store managers when counting the cash drawer to verify accurate nightly deposit amounts.
This statement implies that you want to help the store manager and you value the accuracy of the money coming into the store. Which person would you want to interview?
As you write out the bullet points about each job, activity, club, etc. you want to include what you did and the “why” or benefit. If you need inspiration, you can Google the job description or resume sample for ideas…sample babysitter resume, student athlete resume, etc.
Tip 9: Don’t lie.
Please be truthful on your resume. You don’t need to make up experiences. It’s ok if your resume is lean. You’re in high school! Any employer knows they will need to train you for the position.
That’s why I gave you the list in Tip #1. Out of all those things, you can hopefully find enough bullet points for your resume without lying or exaggerating.
Tip 10: Use action words.
Leading with an action word positions you in your future employers mind as someone who gets things done, who takes action. You can always use Google as a resource. Search for “best action words for a resume” or you can use a site like WordHippo.com to find synonyms.
This includes action verbs like:
Coordinated
Led
Maintained
Served
Trained
Wrote
I have written several blogs especially for high school students creating their first resume with babysitting, retail, or restaurant experience. Normally, I would never recommend you plagiarize copy. In this case, I give you my full permission to copy any of the bullet points from these three articles. It should make writing your resume even easier!
Tip 11: Keep it to one page.
Since you are in high school, this shouldn’t be difficult. Employers only expect a single-page resume when you are early in your career.
Now, If you find that you have lots of experience and activities, go ahead and build a bigger resume. If you really think about Tip #1 and write out all of your job experience, clubs, volunteer work, etc. it may take you to a second page. Save this document as your fully-loaded resume.
This is a more advanced resume strategy that lots of adults ignore. If you start now, this will set up for much success in the future. I will explain how to use the fully-loaded resume in the next tip!
Tip 12: Customize for each job.
Think about this. Each job out there is looking for a different person. So, why would the same resume work for all the different jobs? If you create the fully-loaded resume (mentioned in tip #7 above) early on, you can use this to create a separate resume for each job.
It might be as simple as trading out one bullet for another. For example, if you are going for two different retail jobs. One at REI and one at Home Depot.
The REI resume would include your activities like hiking, fishing, and camping. Your Home Depot resume would include your stage crew experience for the school musical. Everything else might be the same.
If you go the extra mile and customize your resume for each job, make sure you stay organized and save each resume with a different file name. Eg. “LastName_REI_resume.” Even if you only have one version of your resume, always include your last name in the file name.
If you are emailing your resume or applying online, many people name their resume file “resume” and it can easily be lost.
More about that fully-loaded resume.
Pro tip! If you really want to go the extra mile, take the time to write up the detail for all of the experience and activities in your worksheet from Tip #1. Just write and write. Don’t worry about how long the resume gets.
This is another step that will set you up for future job searches. Make this a habit to do for every job, club, award, etc. Eventually this document will be your life story!
It will make it much easier in the future to customize your resume for each different job you go for. Think about the bullet points as LEGO blocks you add or delete for each resume for each job you go for.
Do you really need a resume in high school?
There are lots of jobs you can get in high school that don’t require a resume. If you take my advice and create this first resume while in high school, you will be way ahead of the game! Having one will help you stand out and get hired more quickly. It will also set you up for future success when you go for the bigger paying jobs or go to fill out a college application. Good luck!
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