High School Student
Resume Example

Applying for a job or internship as a high school student is intimidating.

Even if you have real work experience, it likely isn’t related to the next job you want. Additionally, there’s a good chance many other high students will be applying for the same position.

So how do you make yourself stand out? Keep reading to find out our top three tips for writing a successful high school resume.

1. Write an outstanding resume objective

A resume objective is a type of resume introduction you can list at the top of your resume, and it’s best for job seekers with little experience — making it perfect for most high school students.

A resume objective highlights your skills, career goals, and what you can contribute to a specific company in one short paragraph. A resume objective is a tremendous help to hiring managers, who often lack the time to closely read each resume they receive.

Check out how our candidate uses their resume objective to emphasize their strengths:

Responsible and ambitious student (3.8/4.0 GPA) with excellent time management. Seeking to apply my customer service abilities and project/event planning skills to the Business Development summer internship at your company. Possess proven communication skills and strong work ethic that will aid your company in meeting its milestones.

As well as highlighting your skills, resume objectives can be customized for the specific company you’re applying to. For example, you can refer to the exact job you want, or choose to emphasize skills mentioned in the job ad. This small detail shows employers you’ve done your research, and aren’t just sending them a generic high school student resume.

2. Highlight your volunteer experiences and extracurricular activities

Few high school students have real work experience, but there’s no need to panic if you’re one of them.

The work experience section of a standard resume can be replaced by a section describing your extracurricular activities, volunteer work, or both.

You can also include your hobbies and interests on your resume if they reflect positive qualities about you that transfer to the workplace. For example, reading would be a worthwhile hobby to put on a library page resume because it shows you enjoy and respect literature.

Our candidate focuses on their volunteering experiences by providing detailed bullet points of what they did in each volunteer role. For instance, as a homeless shelter volunteer, they:

• Organized a successful school-wide canned food drive that collected 400+ cans in one month
• Assisted in biweekly lunch preparation and service on Saturdays
• Processed incoming food donations and organized food pantry, developing new system of grouping items by expiration date to reduce monthly food waste by 47%

Similarly, you should expand on the activities you’ve been most involved in, whether at school or outside of it, using detailed bullets. Include noteworthy information, like leadership roles you held, or major projects you led and organized.

3. Include relevant coursework

If you don’t have much volunteer experience or extracurricular activities to put on your high school resume, include coursework related to the position you’re applying for.

Because our applicant is applying for a Business Development summer internship, they’ve included a few related courses they’ve taken — Intro to Business, Entrepreneurship, and Computer Applications — in the education section of their resume.

It’s easier to land a job if you have some experience or familiarity with the type of work you’d be doing, even if that background is just knowledge of the basics because training you is easier than training people with zero background knowledge.

In case you’re having a hard time working out what classes relate to different jobs and fields, here are some ideas:

• Creative Writing, Rhetoric, and Humanities → Journalism jobs
• Government, Civics, Economics, and Public Speaking → Political or legal roles
• Fundamentals of Math, Algebra, and Accounting → Accounting or finance positions
• Foreign languages → Customer-facing roles
• Biology, Calculus, and Computer Science → STEM internships