Repurposing your college experiences on your resume

When it comes to job hunting, your resume is how you communicate to a potential employer what you have to offer. Traditionally, people include work experience and education. But for people who are just entering the workforce and do not have a lot of experience, producing an impressive resume can feel like an exercise in futility. Fortunately, the most helpful resumes focus on specific professional competencies, such as the ability to manage a project — and that type of experience can come from anywhere.

As a current or newly graduated college student with little professional experience, using your educational or volunteer experiences to highlight your capabilities is a great way to show potential employers that you have what it takes to do the job. Put your best foot forward by talking more about the specific competencies you have gained rather than the tasks you worked at or job title you held.

According to the Pew Research Center, 31 percent of college graduates in 2020 were unemployed and struggling to break into the labor force. To avoid this fate, make your resume work for you rather than against you. It is the first way potential employers interact with you. Ultimately, how you discuss your education, relevant coursework, research, extracurriculars, volunteer work, and internships could help you stand out from other applicants and be the deciding factor in whether you get an interview.

Highlighting your education

You may be tempted to believe that your college degree is the most important information an employer wants to know. You have just invested several years and a lot of money to obtain your education and a diploma. However, while this accomplishment will definitely distinguish you from candidates who don’t have a degree, it is merely baseline information for employers. They want to see that you have an education and, depending on the job, they will be more or less interested in your field of study.

Whether or not you have just finished your degree, put your education after your work experience and consider including the following information:

• The type of degree you earned and your major and minor fields of study.
• The month and year you completed the degree.
• The name and location of your school.

If your grade point average (GPA) was around 3.5 or higher, consider including it on your resume. If 10 or more years have passed since you graduated, it’s best to leave it off, even if you excelled. Be sure to list honors, positions, clubs, assistantships, or extracurriculars, especially if they support the narrative you are trying to create about the competencies you have developed.

In some cases, it is also appropriate to include your high school education. You should always include the name and location of your school. If you did well academically or have other leadership, service, or extracurricular accomplishments, you can list those too.

Whether or not you have formal work engagements to list on your resume, any experience related to the job you are applying for should be the first item on your resume. This is the most pertinent information employers need to know about you as an applicant, so it should be front and center. An eye-tracking study from career website Ladders found that recruiters spend an average of 7.4 seconds looking at a resume. You need to make the right information easy for them to find, or you run the risk of being overlooked, despite being a great fit for the role.

Experiential Learning and Internships

Part of a college education is the opportunity to have learning experiences outside the classroom — even when it is part of a course. Ideally, each of these experiences is an item you can list on your resume as related experience. This could include class projects, internships, field study, competitions, mentored research, and more. Whether the work was paid or unpaid, it is a valuable steppingstone that will help you transition into the professional world.

When listing a learning experience on your resume, think of it in terms of what you were “hired” to do. Consider the following:

• The basics: You should always include the name of the organization you worked for, the location of where the work was completed, and the start and end dates.
• The title: Just like you have to list what kind of degree you got, you have to list the job title you had at your internship. If you didn’t have an official title, create a generic title that describes the role you played. You shouldn’t lie, but try to be more descriptive than just “intern,” “consultant,” or “assistant.” Just adding the department or team you worked for, such as “design intern,” or “social media consultant,” or “data collection assistant” can add a little more oomph and make you seem like a stronger candidate.
• The responsibilities: Finally, describe some of the main responsibilities you had, quantify the scope of the work and articulate the value you delivered. Try to keep this concise, usually, three or so bullet point entries are enough to convey why each experience is relevant.

Depending on the nature of your experience, it may even count as job experience. For instance, if you completed project work or had similar duties to entry-level staff members at the same organization, that internship is functionally and essentially a job. This can be important if you are hired because you may be able to negotiate a salary that is a little higher than what they would pay an entry-level employee.

This isn’t to say that academic or research-based experiences are not valuable — they are — but they serve a slightly different purpose. Instead of counting as job experience, they will emphasize the depth of your knowledge in a particular discipline and also demonstrate that you have vital soft skills, such as the ability to take initiative, overcome obstacles, and complete a project. All of these competencies prove a strong work ethic and that you will make you a great employee.

Discussing an incomplete degree

Whether you have yet to graduate or you left school with no intention of going back, it is still worth including an unfinished degree on your resume. It is best to do so when the degree is relevant to the job you are applying for. For instance, if you are applying for an internship at a digital marketing company, employers will probably be glad to see that you were previously enrolled in a marketing degree program, even if you didn’t yet graduate.

How you list this information on your resume will depend both on the position and your previous educational experience:

• The basics: If you didn’t attend school for very long, you didn’t do very well, or the degree is unrelated to the position, you should only include basic information, such as the name and location of the school and expected date of graduation if you were to continue.
• A little more: If you completed most of your degree or did well while you were there, you can disclose more specific information, such as the amount of time you spent in college or your GPA.
• The nitty-gritty: If it has been a while since you were in school, identify the coursework you completed, especially if it was relevant to the position. Feel free to include any accolades or praise you received, too.

As always, be honest when putting this information on your resume. You should not lie or pretend you finished your degree. If the employer does a background check and discovers the truth, you almost certainly will not get the job.

Ultimately, you should only include information that makes you a stronger candidate. It is better to leave out anything that weakens your application. After all, you are trying to convince an employer to hire you. Do not give them any reasons not to.

Listing any relevant coursework

When you are still in school or a very recent graduate, you can devote some space on your resume to any relevant coursework you have completed. If you didn’t include a class project under the related experience section of your resume, you can get more specific and illustrate how those educational experiences have contributed to your expertise in this field or otherwise prepared you for this job.

Only include information that is directly related to the position, however. You may only need to list out the names or descriptions of classes you took to communicate your knowledge level in those areas. House these classes in the “Education” section, placing them under the degree and institution where you took them. If the position is highly technical or education-based, you can go into greater detail, going over the general curriculum and concepts you learned in each course.

You should also consider submitting specific projects or assignments with your job application. Certain professions require entire portfolios of work, but this can still be a useful strategy even if it is not the norm for your industry. It’s best to do this when a position calls for supplemental materials or examples of your past work.

Rather than give up valuable space on your resume or creating a lengthy document, attach separate projects or documents with the rest of your application. Generally, you will want to convert Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and PowerPoint presentations into PDFs, or whatever format that the employer prefers, before sending them over.

Showcasing your volunteer work and extracurriculars

The experiences you had outside of the classroom — like playing on a university sports team or donating your time to a cause you care about — can be similarly useful when applying for jobs. Volunteer work and extracurricular activities may not provide professional experience, but they are another way to show employers that you have relevant, transferable skills and are an interesting well-rounded individual. Even participating in an on-campus club or getting involved in a fraternity or sorority can help fill out your resume.

Typically, you should only include extracurriculars if they are related to the position or you need more information to complete your resume. You can put any school-specific activities under the education section. If you have more than one activity that relates to the job, consider creating a specific “Extracurricular Activities” section on your resume.

No matter where you put this information, do not forget to include:

• The name of the organization
• Your role or title in the organization
• The dates you were active in the organization

If you are relying heavily on these activities to convince employers that you are a good fit for the job, feel free to disclose the exact nature of what you did in that role, such as your responsibilities and the skills you learned or developed.

If your extracurricular activities are not as important as other parts of your resume, keep things short and sweet. Put them at the bottom of your resume, so the most compelling information is right at the top and impossible for employers, hiring managers, and recruiters to miss.

Though these strategies can work well for entry-level positions and internships, they will only get you so far. Whether you are working with a rough draft in a Word document or need to update the finished PDF, you should update your resume each time you gain more experience, whether with a new job, a promotion, or simply completing a large project. Leverage all your experience no matter where it was gained to help you get that first job, and then add professional experience along the way so you will be ready when it’s time to take your career to the next level.