High School Resume Examples & Writing Tips

If you’re like most high school students, you’re in the tough situation of writing a resume without any work experience.

We’ll explain exactly how to make a high school student resume for your first job, internship, or college that highlights your strengths even if you have no work experience.

Whether you’re just applying for summer jobs or need a resume for college, here are some additional resources that you can use depending on your situation:

• Resume examples for teens
• How to make a sorority resume
• Internship resume example
• How to write a scholarship resume
• How to write an entry-level cover letter
• The 40 best jobs for teenagers

To start off, check out the following video where our resident career expert Chloe explains how to write a resume with no experience, step-by-step:

1. Use a simple resume format for high school students

If you’re writing a resume for your first job, then you’re probably not sure where to start. So we’ll break it down for you.

Start by using the standard chronological resume format. This format places your most recent experience at the top of the page (just below your resume’s header section and introduction), and older experience underneath it. Note that this experience doesn’t need to be work experience, and can be things like internships, volunteer work, and class projects.

You should then include the following information on your resume:

• Contact information – your name, email address, and phone number.
• Resume objective – a 3-sentence summary about who you are and why people should hire you.
• Education – your high school and graduation date.
• Work or volunteer experience – this can be anything from mowing your neighbor’s lawn to helping out at the local food bank.
• Projects – worked on a cool project for school or just for fun? Mention it on your resume.
• Extracurricular activities – clubs or sports you do outside of class.
• Languages – any languages you speak (if you speak more than one).
• Hobbies – any interests you have outside of school.

2. Write an outstanding high school student resume objective

A resume objective is one type of introduction for a resume you can use to summarize who you are to employers. This intro is great for high school students or anyone with little job experience because it emphasizes your future career goals and passion (rather than your current accomplishments).

Before you write your resume objective, read the job ad to see what qualifications the employer is seeking. Then, write a 2–3 sentence paragraph that highlights your:

• relevant skills
• related career goals
• what you can contribute to the company or organization

Employers appreciate seeing a resume introduction because it lets them know that you’re passionate about getting a job and whether or not you’re qualified.

Here’s an example of a resume objective written by a high school student that emphasizes the applicant’s strengths:

Here’s why this resume objective works: in the first sentence of this example, the student establishes several key skills, and includes their GPA to demonstrate a capacity for high achievement.

The second sentence clearly explains where the student wants to work, and the third sentence tells the hiring manager what skills they have to bring to the position.

3. Highlight your volunteer experience and extracurricular activities

There’s no need to panic if you’re writing a resume with no experience. You can simply replace the work experience section of your resume with a section describing details like your:

• main extracurricular activities
• examples of volunteer work
• contracting and freelance gigs

Here’s an example of how to include volunteer work on your resume:

If you still have gaps in your resume, you can expand on the extracurricular activities you’ve been involved in. Include noteworthy information, like leadership roles you held, or major projects you led and organized, like this:

Heritage High School Student Council
Secretary, 2021 – Present

• Write and distribute detailed notes from 10 student council meetings every semester
• Introduced Trello to streamline management of council projects, saving an average of 3 weeks on each project compared to time frames from previous semesters

You should also include your hobbies and interests on your resume if they showcase some sort of soft skill such as teamwork skills or leadership skills.

Your interests are especially important to mention if they’re related to the position in some way.  For example, reading is a good hobby to put on a library page resume because it shows you enjoy being around books.

4. Include relevant coursework

If you don’t have many volunteer or extracurricular activities to put on your high school resume, that’s okay.

Instead, highlight what you do have by including coursework related to the position you’re applying for in the resume’s education section.

Including your school coursework shows that you have some relevant unpaid experience and that you can handle projects efficiently.

Here’s an example of how to include relevant coursework in your own resume:

How to list relevant coursework on resume

RELEVANT COURSEWORK

Intro to Business

• Completed module on 10 types of business models and strategies
• Gave a 10 minute oral presentation on global business ethics for the class
• Collaborated with 3 other students to write a complete business plan

If you’re unsure what classes relate to different jobs, 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

5. Focus on your transferable skills

While you may not have many examples of hard skills for your resume because they often take years of experience or education to learn, you may still have some and not realize it. For instance, you’ve probably developed skills through your life that are valuable to a variety of different jobs, like typing and other various computer skills.

Plus you’ve likely built a range of soft skills during your time as a high school student (and in life in general), and these skills are highly transferable and valuable for all kinds of work.

Soft skills

Soft skills are the personal qualities that determine how you interact with others, such as basic communication skills or your ability to collaborate. These skills are very useful because they’re hard to teach and help you excel naturally in pretty much any environment.

However, soft skills aren’t the type of skills you can just list in the skills section of your resume. After all, what does it really mean to have strong communication skills?

To convey your top transferable skills to employers, you’ll need to provide real-life examples of how you’ve applied them in your experience section and resume’s introduction.

Notice all of the soft skills (in bold) mentioned in this resume objective example:

Driven and compassionate student with a 3.8/4.0 GPA and excellent organizational and interpersonal skills. Seeking to apply my tutoring and mentorship skills to the Youth Development summer internship at your company. Possess proven communication skills and passion for advocacy that will support your organization’s cause.

Including skills in your introduction like this can help hiring managers see that you’re a good fit for the position and want to work with them specifically. Try to pick out skills relevant to the position you’re applying for, and then include examples of how you demonstrated them in your experience section.

Hard skills

Here are some additional skills to include in your high school student resume that you’ve likely picked up through school or your social life:

High school resume for a college application

Below is an example resume for a college application written by a high school senior:

High school resume for a first job

The following high school resume example was written by a teenager applying for their first job as a busser at a local restaurant:

High school student resume with no work experience

The following resume example was written by a high school student with no work experience. Notice that to make up for their lack of experience, the candidate includes a variety of extracurricular activities and academic awards: