How to write a resume with no experience (and what to put instead)

The hardest resume to write is the first one. You open a blank document, type your name, and then stare at a heading called “Experience” that you have nothing to put under. School leavers hit this. So do people changing careers at 35 who have a decade of work that looks irrelevant on paper, and parents coming back after six years at home.

The fix is to stop thinking of a resume as a work history. It is a one-page argument that you can do a specific job, backed by evidence. Work history is one kind of evidence. It is not the only kind, and for entry-level roles it is often not the kind the employer cares most about.

This guide covers what to put on the page instead, how to describe skills so they sound earned rather than claimed, a full sample layout you can copy, and the things that quietly sink first resumes.

Start with the job, not with yourself

Before writing a word, pull up three or four listings for the type of role you want and read them properly. Not the “about us” paragraphs. The responsibilities and requirements. Highlight anything that appears in more than one listing.

For a retail sales assistant, that will be things like handling cash, working weekends, dealing with customers, keeping displays tidy. For a junior admin role: scheduling, spreadsheets, answering phones, keeping records accurate. For an entry-level software job: a named language or two, version control, willingness to learn.

That list is your target. Everything on your resume should point at it.

This matters more now than it used to. Many employers run applications through applicant tracking software before a human sees them, and those systems look for the terms in the job description. We cover how that works in how AI screening is changing the way you should apply. The short version: use the employer’s own words for skills, and do not try to game it with a wall of keywords.

The skills that transfer, and how to prove them

“Transferable skills” is one of those phrases that gets nodded at and then ignored. The reason is that people list them as adjectives. “Hardworking, reliable, good communicator.” Every applicant says that, so it carries no information.

A transferable skill only counts on a resume when it comes attached to a situation where you used it. The pattern is simple: skill, where you used it, what happened.

Compare these two lines:

• “Excellent teamwork and communication skills.”
• “Coordinated a team of six volunteers across two weekends for a school fundraiser, assigning shifts and handling last-minute dropouts; the event ran without a gap in cover.”

The second one is longer, but it is the only one of the two an employer can picture. It also quietly demonstrates scheduling, responsibility and calm under pressure without using any of those words.

Here are the skills most entry-level and career-change employers are looking for, with the kinds of evidence that back them up:

• Reliability. Anything you did on a fixed schedule for months: a paper round, a sports team, a weekly volunteering slot, a part-time course completed alongside other commitments.
• Handling people. Customer-facing anything, but also refereeing, tutoring younger students, working a charity shop till, being the person who dealt with complaints at a club.
• Handling money or records. Treasurer of a society, cash handling at an event, managing a household budget through a hard patch, keeping attendance registers.
• Working with tools and systems. Spreadsheets you actually built, a website you set up for a club, a point-of-sale system you learned in a weekend job, CAD software from a college module.
• Physical work and safety. Manual handling, food hygiene certificates, first aid, a forklift ticket, a clean driving license.

Write your own list, then cut anything you cannot attach to a real situation.

What to put instead of a work history

Rename the section. If you have no paid jobs, do not title a section “Work experience” and leave it thin. Use “Experience” and fill it with whatever is genuinely closest to work. In rough order of how much weight employers give them:

Work-like unpaid roles. Volunteering with a fixed commitment, work placements, internships, school work experience weeks, helping in a family business. Describe them exactly as you would a job: organization, role, dates, two or three bullet points of what you did.

Projects. For technical, creative or trades roles, a project can outweigh a job. A rebuilt engine, a portfolio of joinery, a small app with a link, a short film, a garden you designed and planted. Give it a name, a one-line description, and the outcome.

Education, done properly. School leavers should give education real space: relevant subjects and grades, coursework that maps to the job, any modules where you did something practical.

Certifications and short courses. Even cheap ones count if they are relevant: food hygiene level 2, a first aid certificate, an online spreadsheet course with a completion date, CSCS or OSHA cards in construction. Date them, so the reader can see they are recent.

Responsibilities at home, for returners. If you have been caring for children or a relative, do not leave a blank. A short line such as “2019 to 2025: full-time carer for a parent; managed medical appointments, medication schedules and benefits paperwork” is honest, explains the gap, and shows organization. Keep it to one or two lines and do not apologize for it.

For career changers, your previous jobs go in as normal, but the bullet points get rewritten. A restaurant manager applying for a logistics coordinator role should stop talking about menu development and start talking about stock ordering, supplier deadlines, rota planning and cost control.

The profile: three lines, no adjectives

Most resumes open with a short profile paragraph. On a no-experience resume it earns its space, because it is where you say what you are aiming for and why it makes sense. Keep it to three sentences and ban adjectives about your personality.

A weak profile: “A highly motivated and enthusiastic individual seeking an exciting opportunity to grow.”

A usable one: “School leaver with A levels in maths and business, applying for trainee accounts roles. Two years as treasurer of a 40-member sports club, handling subscriptions and producing a simple annual report. Completed an online Excel course in March and comfortable with lookups and pivot tables.”

That is the whole job of a profile: what you want, two pieces of evidence, one concrete skill.

A full sample layout

Here is a complete one-page layout for a school leaver applying for an entry-level office role. The names are placeholders; replace every detail with your own and keep the structure.

Your name Town, postcode area · phone · email · LinkedIn URL (optional)

Profile School leaver with a BTEC in Business (Distinction), applying for administrative and customer service roles. Spent two summers on the front desk of a community leisure center handling bookings and payments, and ran the membership spreadsheet for a youth football club. Comfortable with Microsoft Office and quick to pick up new booking systems.

Experience

Front desk volunteer, [Local] Community Leisure Center · June to August 2024 and 2025

• Handled walk-in and phone bookings for classes and courts using the center’s booking software, averaging around 60 enquiries on a busy Saturday.
• Took card and cash payments and reconciled the float at the end of each shift.
• Dealt with complaints about cancelled sessions by offering rebooking or refunds within the center’s policy.

Membership secretary (volunteer), [Local] Youth FC · September 2023 to present

• Maintain a spreadsheet of 85 players including contact details, subscription status and medical notes.
• Chase overdue subscriptions by email and text, cutting the number of unpaid accounts each season.
• Prepare the sign-in sheets and match-day paperwork for coaches.

Education

[Name] Sixth Form College · 2023 to 2025 BTEC Level 3 Extended Diploma in Business: Distinction. Units included business finance, customer service and using spreadsheets for business.

[Name] High School · 2018 to 2023 Nine GCSEs including English (6) and maths (7).

Skills and certificates

• Microsoft Excel (lookups, basic pivot tables), Word, Outlook. Google Workspace.
• Emergency first aid at work certificate, March 2025.
• Full clean driving license.

Interests Play five-a-side weekly; coach an under-10s side on Sunday mornings.

That fits comfortably on one page. Notice what it does: every bullet describes an action and, where possible, a scale (60 enquiries, 85 players). Nothing says “I am a people person.”

One formatting note. Keep it to a single column, standard fonts, no graphics, no photo (unless you are applying in a country where a photo is expected; it is not in the US, UK, Canada or Australia). Save as PDF unless the employer asks for Word.

What to leave out

• An objective statement about what you want from the company. The profile replaces it, and it should be about what you offer.
• Every subject you ever studied. Pick the relevant ones.
• Personality adjectives. Motivated, passionate, dynamic, hardworking. Cut them all. Show them through what you did.
• Your date of birth, marital status, nationality or a photo. Not required in the four countries above, and including them invites bias you do not need.
• References on the page. “References available on request” is filler. Employers will ask.
• Hobbies that say nothing. “Reading, music, socializing” tells an employer nothing. A hobby earns its line if it shows commitment, skill or something the job needs: coaching, a long-running project, competitive sport, anything you organize.
• A second page. With no work history there is no reason for it, and a padded second page reads as exactly that.
• Lies and inflation. Calling a two-week placement a “role” is fine. Calling it “Assistant manager” is not, and the reference check will find it.

Adjusting for your situation

The bones above work for everyone, but the emphasis shifts.

School leavers should lead with education if grades are strong and the role is office-based or technical; lead with experience if you have a solid unpaid role and the job is practical. Include the profile either way. If you have literally nothing outside school, the honest move is to get something in the next month: a weekend volunteering slot, a short certificate, a small project. One month of that changes the resume.

Career changers should treat the profile as the bridge. Say plainly what you did, what you are moving into, and the one or two things that connect them. Then rewrite every old job’s bullets through the lens of the new role. If you are making a bigger move, our guide to changing careers at 40 goes into the adjacent-move strategy that makes the resume easier to write.

Returners should keep the gap visible and brief, then put the weight on the most recent relevant thing, even if that is a refresher course finished last month. Employers are more relaxed about gaps than they were a decade ago, but they still want to see that your skills are current. A recent certification or a returner program does that job. For the wording on the page and in interviews, see how to explain a gap in your employment history.

Before you send it

Read the job listing one more time, then read your resume and check that the top third of the page contains at least three things the listing asked for. If it does not, move things around until it does.

Then hand it to someone who knows nothing about you and ask them one question: “What job is this person applying for, and why would they be any good at it?” If they cannot answer in two sentences from the page alone, the resume is not finished yet.