Entry-Level Resume Examples of 2023

Entry-Level Text-Only Resume Examples

Years of Experience

Five Tips for Writing a Better Entry-Level Resume

1. Brainstorm things you’re proud of

The foundation for a great resume is your enthusiasm for the things that interest you. To start building that foundation, take 10 minutes to brainstorm and write down your answer to this question: What are you most proud of in your last year’s worth of school, work, internship, volunteer, or general life experience?

As you jot down your answers, don’t worry yet about making them fit any resume conventions you already know of. Your goal at this early stage isn’t to write a polished resume. It’s to gain some momentum in the overall writing process and start generating the raw material from which you can then make your best resume.

Once you’re done with brainstorming the past year, you’ll want to repeat this process for the previous four years or so. Date each group of notes (“January 2022 to January 2023,” “January 2021 to January 2022,” etc.) and then save and name the document something like “Resume Brainstorming.”

2. Filter info based on your target entry-level job

Once you’ve completed the brainstorming process above, save a copy of your document and filter your information based on your target job. You can do so by taking it one detail at a time. With each point, answer the same yes-or-no question: Does this help qualify you for your target position? If your answer is No, delete that detail. If Yes, plan on including that detail in your final resume.

This filtering process reflects the most important thing to know about your resume: It shouldn’t be an overview of your experience but a summary of your relevant experience. It should take whatever shape is needed to accurately show you as someone who will thrive in your target job. (For many entry-level jobseekers, that means detailed Education and Internship Experience sections and a smaller or even nonexistent Work Experience section.)

In a sense, your aim here is to make the hiring manager’s job easier. You want to give them a clear view of your relevant credentials, so they can be sure it’s worth their time to call you for an interview.

To that end, don’t be shy about paring back info that doesn’t add to your qualifications. English professor Peter Elbow makes a good case for ruthless self-editing in his classic guide Writing Without Teachers: “Think of throwing away not as negative … but as a positive, creative, generative act. Learn to play the role of the sculptor pulling off layers of stone with his chisel to reveal a figure beneath. Leaving things out makes the backbone or structure show better.”

3. Tell the story of your relevant experience

Someone may have told you to avoid passive phrases like “Responsible for” or “Tasked with” on your resume. But that’s hard to do when you’re unsure what the “active” alternative would be.

For an active resume tone, think of your experience as a story with “characters and their actions.” (For more on this all-important writing principle, see “Style: The Basics of Clarity and Grace” by Joseph M. Williams and Joseph Bizup.)

And who’s the primary character of your resume? You, of course. Your relevant points may pertain to various school, work, and internship projects, but you should center them all on yourself and your actions in relation to them. A simple way to make sure you’re doing this: Begin every job description sentence as an “I” statement, then just take out the “I” and leave the rest of the phrase on your final resume.

4. Don’t worry about graduation dates

It’s generally suggested that jobseekers leave education dates off their resume to avoid age discrimination. But this rule doesn’t typically apply if you finished school in the past few years and are seeking entry-level jobs. In your case, you can leave your graduation date on your resume at your discretion – employers might still use it to figure out your age, but that won’t matter if your age level is inclusive of your current career goals.

5. Keep your format clean and simple

Your resume’s design should aim to “get out of the way” of your career information. That is, it should frame your details clearly and simply and not call undue attention to itself with elaborate visual elements. Doing so lets a hiring manager quickly take in details about you and your background. Here are some tips for a simple format:

— Try a traditional serif font style like Century or Cambria for your body text and a clean sans serif font like Calibri for your subject headings.

— Use color sparingly, if at all. If you use color, reserve it for border and shading elements, and don’t apply color to the text.

— Avoid fancier Microsoft Word format options like SmartArt, Tables, and Text Boxes (which can interfere with ATS anyway).

This conservative approach is often the best way to design your resume, even and especially if your career information is complex or covers various areas. As Leonardo da Vinci once said, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

Key Skills Hiring Managers Look for on Entry-Level Resumes

You can give your resume a big boost by adding keywords.

That’s because most employers now use an applicant tracking system (ATS), which scans each submitted resume for keywords relevant to the job opening. When the ATS finds a resume with many relevant keywords, it flags the document for the hiring manager.

To make your resume ATS-friendly, add a keyword-rich “Skills” or “Expertise” section (as in the resume samples above). The keywords you choose will largely depend on the specific job you’re targeting, but below are some commonly useful skills for entry-level applicants:

NOTE: As the above list indicates, you should only use noun phrases in this section. Reserve personal attributes and adjectives (like “highly collaborative” or “strong work ethic”) for your Profile summary. Any time you’re unsure whether a term fits in this section, plug it into the phrase “I’m skilled in [term].” If the term makes a correct sentence (“I’m skilled in team collaboration”), you can add it. But if it makes nonsense (“I’m skilled in highly collaborative”), that’s your cue to leave it out.

Great Action Verbs for Entry-Level Resumes

The best resume verbs will always reflect your having created or improved something, for example:

If your experience is limited, you may find it hard to rely on the above verbs exclusively. Take heart that English has plenty of other verbs that, while less dynamic, can still help you give your entry-level resume a lively and active tone. For example:

How to Align Your Entry-Level Resume With a Job Posting

A quick and effective way to align your resume with each posting is through the Key Skills section. For each entry-level job that interests you, follow these steps:

1. Identify the most important skills required. These often appear toward the top of the job posting and/or are cited repeatedly. Consider using an online tool like wordclouds.com to visualize which terms in the text are most frequent or prominent.

2. Among these required skills, highlight any you possess. For example, if one of the posting’s top skills is “teamwork,” consider how collaborative your experiences have or haven’t been, then highlight it if you feel it’s a strength you’ve gained.

3. Compare the skills you’ve highlighted to your resume’s Key Skills section, and add any that are missing. Continuing the above example, say you’ve identified teamwork as one of your strengths. Is this reflected in your existing Key Skills section? If not, add a term like “Team Collaboration” or “Cross-Functional Coordination.”

4. Finally, consider deleting any terms in your resume’s Key Skills section that don’t correspond with the most important skills cited on the job posting.

Through this simple exercise, you can give each hiring manager a clear view of your relevant skillset, making your resume that much more relevant to the job at hand.

More Resume & Cover Letter Resources

The Bureau of Labor Statistics forecasts that entry-level jobs will increase by about five percent between 2021 and 2031. For more on finding entry-level career opportunities, check out the links below: