If you’re a student sitting down to write your high school resume, you might be feeling a little lost. Where do you start? What should you write? Creating a resume isn’t easy for anyone, but it can be especially tricky when you’re a high school student without much work experience.
Maybe you need a high school resume to submit for a job or internship application. Or perhaps the college or scholarship you’re applying to requires a resume. Whatever your situation, you want to put your best foot forward on your high school resume.
A strong high school resume gives potential employers and colleges a quick but detailed and accurate snapshot of who you are and why they should be interested in getting to know you better. On the other hand, a weak or sloppy high school resume will end up in the waste basket in ten seconds flat. You’re hoping for the first option, of course.
If you’re asking yourself, “What skills can a high school student put on a resume?” or “How do you write a high school resume with no experience?” we’re here to answer those questions and more. Continue reading to find a step-by-step guide on how to create a stand-out high school resume, as well as a personalized high school resume template to give you a jumpstart on your resume writing process.
Let’s start with the basics—formatting your high school resume. The good news is, you don’t have to start from scratch. We’ve created a modern high school resume template for you that’s perfectly suited to showcase your skills and experiences at any level. And if you’re a creative type looking to add extra personality to your resume, you might consider exploring the high school resume template options on sites like Canva.
What makes a good high school resume template, anyway? Here are a few of the most important formatting rules your resume should follow:
Once you’re set with a great high school resume template following these guidelines, your first step is to add your contact information. Here are a few tips on what to include:
Once you’ve expertly added and arranged your contact info, you’re ready to move on to the next part of the high school resume—your objective statement.
The objective statement on your high school resume is quite literally answering the question, “What is the purpose or objective of this resume?” While on the surface it may seem obvious—you want to get hired for a specific job or accepted to a specific college—you’ll need to dig deeper in order to write an impressive objective statement.
Your objective statement should provide three important pieces of information:
Oh, and you only have one or two sentences to share this important information. Piece of cake, right? Don’t worry, it’s easier than you think if you use a specific formula for writing your objective statement:
[Insert characteristic] student seeking to [insert specific goal] with [insert skills] gained from [insert experience or achievement].
You’ll understand this formula best if we use an example. Let’s say you’re applying to a graphic design internship at your local newspaper. You have a keen eye for detail, your goal is to tell impactful digital stories, you’re already skilled at using Adobe to create page layouts, and you have design experience from working on your school yearbook. Here’s an example objective statement for your high school resume:
Detail-oriented student seeking to amplify The Daily City Newspaper’s influence through digital storytelling. Gained expertise using Adobe Creative Suite while designing 25 page layouts and 12 advertisements for the Daily High School Yearbook.
Stating your goals, qualifications, and experiences in your objective statement lets the potential employer or college rep reading it know that your resume deserves their attention. And after piquing their interest, you can continue to impress them with your remaining high school resume sections.
Since you haven’t graduated high school yet, you might be feeling a little lackluster about writing the education section of your high school resume. But rest assured, there are plenty of enticing details you can include in this section to help you impress employers and colleges. Here’s a list of information you might add to your education section:
We hope you’re pleasantly surprised that you can write more than, “high school diploma in progress” on your high school resume. Just by digging a little deeper, you’ll find plenty of information to include in your education section to help you stand out as the ideal job, internship, or college applicant.
As we arrive at the biggest, most stressful section of a high school resume, we have to address a question we commonly get from students:
“How do you write a resume with no experience?”
Many students think because they haven’t worked an official job, they lack experience. But it isn’t true. Unless you’ve been sitting in a box for your entire life, you’ve earned experience worth putting on a high school resume—we just need to dig a little deeper to find it.
So what types of experiences can you include on your high school resume? Of course, if you have work experience—even if it’s for your family business and you weren’t an “official” employee—you should showcase it. But if not, don’t worry. Instead, you can share information about your high school internships, volunteer work, community service, club involvement, participation in sports, leadership positions, and even the challenging academic summer programs you’ve attended.
These types of activities are impressive to potential employers and colleges, so don’t be nervous if you’re writing a high school resume with no work experience. Be proud of the unique experiences you’ve had. You can even change the title of the section from “Work Experience” to “Relevant Activities” or “Major Achievements.”
How to write descriptions for your experiences on a high school resume
Once you’ve identified two to four experiences or activities to showcase on your high school resume, you face the challenging task of describing your involvement and duties. This is one of the most difficult and crucial parts of writing your resume—how you represent your experience can be the difference between securing a position or continuing your job search.
You want to use between three and five bullet points to describe each experience. Remember, your high school resume is limited to one page, so be strategic with every word. Illustrate your most recent or most relevant experiences in greater detail than your older or less-applicable experiences. For example, if you’re applying for a business internship, you should emphasize your experience as treasurer or marketing manager of a school club.
And what should each bullet point description contain? Here are a few guidelines to ensure your experience descriptions have the greatest impact:
If you follow these guidelines, your high school resume will stand out from the crowd and dazzle every manager and admissions rep who reads it.
An example experience entry for a high school resume:
Retail Associate — Old Navy, Inc.
November 2018 - January 2020
If you search for general resume examples online, you might feel overwhelmed and perhaps a bit discouraged when you look at sample “Relevant Skills” resume sections. But what you’re probably looking at are sample resumes for mid-career professionals. When you’re still in high school, you’re not expected to have the same advanced career skills as someone in their thirties does. This leaves you with the question, “What skills can a high school student put on a resume?”
The answer is: more than you think! When evaluating what skills you might be able to add to your high school resume, it’s helpful to understand the difference between hard skills and soft skills.
Hard skills refer to a person’s abilities gained through technical knowledge or training. These can range from technology or software skills to interpersonal skills such as public speaking or customer service. As a high school student, your hard skills may be limited, if you haven’t gained much work experience or training, but you’ve probably still acquired a few through school and extracurriculars.
Here are examples of hard skills you might be able to add to a high school resume. You should choose which skills to include based on the type of job, scholarship, or college you’re applying to.
Soft skills, on the other hand, are personality traits that empower a person to be an exceptional employee or student. These types of skills can be gained in any setting, meaning you don’t need work experience to possess them. And while hard skills can be taught on the job, it’s much harder to teach a person to have good character, so you shouldn’t underestimate the importance of having soft skills.
Here are a few examples of soft skills that could be included on a high school resume.
To strike an impressive balance on your high school resume, aim to include three or four hard skills and four or five soft skills—all relevant to the position or school to which you’re applying.
After you’ve completed the above sections, you might find you still have some space on your high school resume—and that’s good! It gives you an opportunity to further impress potential employers and colleges. Let’s explore the different types of sections you can add to round out your resume.
Honors and Awards. Many students will include this section in their high school resume because it’s the perfect way to showcase their academic, sport, and extracurricular achievements. You might include being on the Honor Roll, having perfect attendance, winning a sports championship, placing first in a robotics competition, or receiving a scholarship, to name a few examples.
Relevant certifications. If you’ve had the opportunity to complete training and earn certifications relating to the position you’re applying to—for instance, a CPR certification for a lifeguard or preschool assistant job—you might want to devote an additional section to those.
Portfolio or published works. If you’re an artist, writer, or other type of creative, you can add a section to your high school resume that specifically highlights your best creative achievements. For example, you can share the artwork you’ve publicly displayed, the poems you’ve had published, or the musical pieces you’ve performed.
Hobbies and interests. When submitting your high school resume with your college or scholarship applications, you might choose to add a section about your interests to come across more holistically or help the committee know you better. You can even present your hobbies in a fun and interesting way. For example, you might share your love of ice cream with a statement like, “Visited 40+ family-owned ice cream shops in my surrounding area.”
Remember, your high school resume is all about you. So tailor the focus of your additional sections to showcase your uniqueness and bring you closer to the job, internship, scholarship, or college you’re pursuing.
