How should a student with little job experience go about crafting a resume?
Most colleges/universities do not ask applicants to submit resumes. Instead, students will be requested to provide on their applications the information that the institutions are interested in knowing. Someone writing a recommendation for a student, however, may find it quite useful to have a resume of that student's past accomplishments.
While resumes/CVs for people who have been in the work force will focus on their work experience, the expectations for students (who, in most cases, will have had little or no work experience) are different. Other aspects of a student's life experience will come into play.
Things you might consider including, when applicable, are:
- Identifying and contact information (always)
- Foreign Language Proficiency, indicating language(s) and esimated level(s) of
expertise, number of years studied
- SAT/ACT Score Results, with dates of various test sittings
- School/Extracurricular activities (Indicate applicable years)
- Academic awards received
- Student government involvement, including offices held
- Sports participation, including name of sport(s), leadership roles, awards
received
- Art activities, including exhibitions, awards received
- Music activities, including instrument, musical groups - bands, ensembles,
awards received
- Drama activities, including names of productions, roles played or backstage
contributions, awards received
- Club and organization involvement - Social or academic clubs, including
leadership roles
- Community service involvement, including nature of service, leadership roles
- In-school volunteer activities
- Other
- Non-School activities (same criteria as above)
- Sports
- Music
- Drama
- Volunteer work
- Organizations: Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, etc.
- Other
- Work experience, if any, indicating name of employer, type of work, length of
employment
- Additional interests, hobbies, skills
This should give you a good start on crafting an effective resume. As you begin to collate information about your various accomplishments, you may think of some other things you would like to include which are not mentioned above.