For students · No experience
Spoiler: you have more than you think. Class projects count. Hackathons count. The campus job counts. The trick is framing — recruiters reject resumes for being vague, not for thin background.
Most students copy a senior’s resume template, wrong audience. Reorder.
Always first, while you're a student.
School, degree, expected graduation, major(s) and minor(s). GPA only if 3.5+ (or your dept-relative percentile is great). Drop coursework once you have 2+ internships.
Goes second when experience is thin, your real proof.
Class, hackathon, personal, all count. Pick 3–5 strongest. Each gets a one-line description + 2–3 bullets. Always include the tech stack. Link the GitHub or live demo if it exists.
Internships, research, TA work, retail, all valid.
Yes, the Starbucks job counts if you can frame it (managed cash flow, trained 3 new hires, served 200 customers/shift). Recruiters care about ownership, not prestige. Use the same bullet rules as projects.
Last. Keep it scannable.
Languages, frameworks, tools, comma-separated. Then awards, leadership, publications, certifications. No fluff ("team player", "Microsoft Office"). Recruiters skim this in 2 seconds.
Real anonymized rewrites. Notice the pattern: verb · specifics · outcome.
CS junior, applying to SWE internships
Worked on a group project for software engineering class. Built a study app.
Shipped a study-group matching web app for 4-person CS team using Next.js + Supabase; reached 200+ student users in the first week of beta.
Why it works: Verb (Shipped). Stack named. Number (200+). Team size shown. Concrete artifact (web app, not 'app').
Bootcamp grad, applying to junior frontend
Used React to build an e-commerce website with shopping cart functionality.
Built a 12-page e-commerce SPA in React + TypeScript with persistent cart, Stripe checkout, and 95% Lighthouse performance score, deployed on Vercel.
Why it works: Specifics (12 pages, 95% Lighthouse, Stripe). Stack with versions/integrations. Outcome shown.
Mech-E senior pivoting to data
Did a research project on machine learning for predicting student grades.
Trained a gradient-boosted classifier on 4,000 student records to predict at-risk learners 3 weeks early; precision/recall 0.81 / 0.74, presented at undergrad research symposium.
Why it works: Method named (gradient-boosted). Dataset size. Lead time (3 weeks). Hard metrics. Presentation = artifact.
BBA junior, applying to PM internships
Worked on a marketing campaign for student club. Increased social media followers.
Led a 5-person marketing team for the entrepreneurship club; grew Instagram from 800 → 2,400 followers in 8 weeks via 3 weekly posts and 2 IG-Live events.
Why it works: Leadership shown (Led, 5-person). Before/after numbers. Tactic specificity (3 weekly posts).
Non-CS senior, retail job
Worked as a barista at Starbucks. Made coffee and helped customers.
Served 180+ customers per shift at high-volume Starbucks location; trained 4 new partners on POS + drink prep, reducing onboarding time by ~30%.
Why it works: Throughput (180/shift). Training role flipped from 'helped' to 'trained'. % improvement on a process.
ONE page. Not 1.5. Not 2. Recruiters spend 6 seconds, make every line earn it.
Reverse chronological inside each section. Most recent first.
Same date format throughout ("Jan 2024" not "01/24" mixed with "January").
10–11pt body type. 0.5" margins minimum. Avoid two-column layouts, half of them break ATS parsing.
PDF, never Word. Filename: FirstLast_Resume_2026.pdf.
No photo. No address. No "References available upon request." No date of birth.