Jadee Shea

Apr. 21, 2023

Applying for your first job can be challenging and stressful when you don’t have any prior employment experience on your resume, but there are workarounds to help you.

For instance you can add certain things to it that employers like to see.

When listing past experiences, if you don’t have a past job you can add things like being in a group, or participating in certain activities, and you should definitely add any volunteer work you’ve done.

An example would be if you’ve been on a sports team, you have experience in good team work, and if you’ve helped out with decorating or planning a school activity you are proving your experience in being helpful and in a way having a good work ethic. 

When listing skills, you don’t want to lie about them because if you get the job, your gonna have to follow through with what you wrote and portray them in your workplace.

Some good skills to name off are having a good work ethic like mentioned earlier, punctual, flexible, responsible, patient, etc. 

When adding your references, which are the adults in your life that can vouch for your skillset, you don’t want to put any family members because employers typically know they are bias to you and would lie to get you the job.

Most people put their previous bosses but when your getting a first job you can put a family friend or a teacher that knows your strong suits.

I personally put a teacher that has had me for a long time and knows my good work ethic, along with a family friend who has known me for a very long time and knows my personality. Also make sure to contact anyone you plan on putting on your resume before you submit it for privacy reasons.

Mr Roth, Tahoma High School teacher of Career exploration says in an interview, “The biggest things employers look for on resumes is work experience and education, but if you don’t have any the next biggest thing they look at is the skills listed.”

Mr Roth also informs that when your making your resume you want to ensure there are no grammatical errors at all, he says that most of the time when an employer reads over a resume if they see even one grammar error they will just throw it away without reading the rest. That being said you should check over it multiple times and make sure everything is capitalized and spelled correctly.

When teaching lessons about making your resume Mr Roth also includes that when your adding things to your resume you should write with mostly bullet points and small statements instead of large paragraphs. 

In conclusion, there are a lot of things you can do to improve your resume when applying for a job, specifically when you don’t have enough or any past work experience, that are more likely to get you the job.