Recent college graduate resume example

What recruiters look for

• Degree, school and graduation date: plus GPA if it is 3.5 or higher, and a minor or certificate that matches the job.
• Internships and research: the closest thing to real work in your field. Give each the detail of a full-time job.
• Skills that transfer on day one: the specific tools the job ad lists, used on real data or real projects.
• A thesis or major project: shows you can carry a long piece of work to the end.
• Proof you can work: any part-time job over months or years, especially one with responsibility.

Writing the summary

Give your degree, school and graduation month, then the experience and tools that fit the job. End with the role you want. Avoid “eager to learn”; show what you already know.

Bullet points that work

Strong lines for this role, beyond the ones in the example. Borrow the shape and put in your own numbers.

• Built a demand forecast in Excel for a student-run café that cut food waste by 25% over a semester.
• Wrote a 40-page honors thesis using 10 years of Census data, awarded highest honors by a 3-person committee.
• Analyzed 5,000 customer survey responses in R during an internship, identifying the 3 issues behind most complaints.
• Interned at a city planning office, mapping 1,200 vacant lots in ArcGIS for a housing report.
• Led a 6-person capstone team that delivered a pricing study to a local business, which raised two prices as a result.
• Tutored 20 students a semester in introductory statistics at the campus learning center.
• Created a Tableau dashboard of student organization funding for the student government, used to set the next year’s budget.
• Worked 20 hours a week throughout college while graduating with a 3.5 GPA.
• Presented research at a regional undergraduate conference to an audience of 80.

Skills to list

Certifications and licenses worth listing

• Usually not needed for new graduates; the degree, internships and projects do the work.
• Google Data Analytics or Microsoft Power BI Data Analyst (PL-300): helpful if your degree is not quantitative and you want analyst roles.
• Field-specific entry exams where they exist, such as the FE exam for engineering graduates or SIE for finance.

Length and format

One page. Education first, with GPA, a certificate or minor, relevant courses and a thesis if you wrote one. Then internships and research with three bullets each, part-time work with one or two, and a short activities line. After your first full-time job, experience moves to the top.

Common mistakes

• Burying your internship under coursework and clubs.
• Listing every course you took. Keep four or five that match the job.
• A skills section full of tools you used once in a class.
• Dropping part-time jobs. Years of steady work show maturity.
• One resume for every application. Tailor the summary and order of skills for each role.