How To Write a Resume When You Have No Job Experience

It boggles my mind that a college graduate would be allowed to graduate without an internship or some kind of practical experience on his record. I guess from the point of view of an academic institution the degree it awards should be all the new graduate needs to get an entry level job. But from the point of view of an employer who may receive hundreds of entry level resumes in job applications, a new college graduate without an internship or some kind of occupationally relevant experience (I'm not taking about fast food experience here) will not have as much hiring appeal as one who does.

As I write this blog entry, in my life as a job search consultant, I am working with a new graduate in accounting without an internship. He has received no interviews in the six months after graduation. Last year I worked with a chemical engineering graduate who chose to go to China and teach English instead of accepting an internship in chemical processing. While teaching English abroad is a noble thing to do and sounds like a great adventure, it isn't what prospective employers want to see on a resume. When he first contacted me, he said he was not getting any interviews. I asked him how his friends got their first jobs in chemical engineering upon graduation. Without hesitation, he said, "They were hired where they interned."

So, how do new graduates write their resumes if they have no internship or practicum in their field?  I've been asked this question a million times by new graduates. My first answer is: volunteer in an organization that needs your skills. My second answer is: sign up for temp jobs through online work platforms such as oDesk, eLance, or Vworker. These places hire people for very short periods of time and only care about what your skills not your work history. You can build up a work portfolio rather quickly. Then, go and look for a real job.

Writing a resume for someone who does not have any job experience is not as difficult as it sounds. Unfortunately, from what I have seen of resumes written with the guidance of college placement offices, the standard resume format is experienced-weighted. That is, most of the resume is filled up by an employment history. If you don't have a work history, good luck writing a resume with that format!

Let me get back to basics. What kind of raw information is described on a resume? They are:

• Knowledge: credentials and theory such as degrees, certifications, licenses, and areas where you have a lot of knowledge in.
• Skills: these are the job tasks that you can accomplish using the knowledge you have. fix a computer. give a flu shot (nurse), do a brake job, etc.
• Abilities: these are the work contexts that you could easily adapt to. office environment, cross-functional work team, lots of business travel, etc.

The above "raw" information is typically used in a standard resume format to describe your job experience. Call it the building blocks of a job history. But if you don't have a job history, you have to manipulate these building blocks in a different way (to fill up the page). Here is how the chemical engineering graduate used these building blocks to write his "no job experience" resume:

Areas of Chemical Engineering Knowledge

• Heat & Mass Transfer
• Transport Phenomena
• Thermodynamics
• Fluid Mechanics
• Statistical Process Control
• Computer Analysis/Simulation
• Material Science
• Experimental Lab Design

Core Competencies

Knowledge

• Knowledge and applications of aerospace transparencies.
• Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering.
• Basic understanding of chemical process engineering.
• Knowledge of laboratory and chemical safety procedures.

Skills

• Demonstrated leadership skills including accountability, results driven, integrity and trust.
• Excellent team participation skills.
• Microsoft Office, Word, Excel, PowerPoint.
• MATLAB
• SEM
• PRO II

Abilities

• Solving technical problems.
• Collaborate with cross-functional areas.
• Adapt to rapidly changing business priorities and assignments.
• Multi-task efficiently.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills.
• Willingness to travel for domestic and international assignments.

The above two sections take up about two-thirds of his resume. Add in the contact information and the education section and eighty percent of the resume is completed. Now, where did he get the terms in the Areas of Chemical Engineering Knowledge section? From the college course catalog for his major. In the Core Competencies section, he grouped his knowledge, skills and abilities in an expanded summary section. All in all, this type of resume emphasizes the building blocks of a job history, not the job history itself.

In the above example, the new graduate finally got hired. But it wasn't in chemical engineering per se. Rather, it was in an entry level chemistry position that required him to assist in experiments in a lab. This is one of the knowledge areas he listed in his Areas of Chemical Engineering Knowledge section of his resume.  This illustrates that if you have no job experience, your resume must focus on other things you do have: knowledge or skills.