Resume format for freshers

A fresher resume has one job: get you shortlisted for an interview. Recruiters spend well under a minute on a first read, and most use an applicant tracking system (ATS) to search and sort applications. The format below works for both.

• One page. Without full-time experience, a second page only dilutes your best points.
• Single column, with standard section headings.
• Education first, then skills, projects, internships and achievements.
• Newest first inside every section.
• A PDF with selectable text, unless the job post asks for Word.

1. Name and contact details
2. Education
3. Skills
4. Projects
5. Internships or work experience
6. Achievements and positions of responsibility
7. Certifications (optional)

If you have a solid internship, move it above projects. Once you have a full-time job, experience moves to the top and education goes to the bottom.

Put your name in large type, then one line with your phone number, a professional email address, your city, and links to LinkedIn and GitHub or a portfolio. Write links out in a short form like github.com/aarav so they still work on a printed copy.

Leave out your photo, date of birth, gender, marital status, father's name and full postal address. Indian companies and recruiters abroad do not need them, and they take space from things that get you shortlisted.

List your degree, college, CGPA or percentage, and year of graduation (or expected graduation). Most campus recruiters also expect Class XII and Class X, with the board and your percentage, until you have your first job. A table with degree, institution, score and year, like the Campus placement template, fits all of this in a few lines.

Write your score the way your college reports it ("8.4 CGPA" or "86%"). Add a line of relevant coursework only if it matches the jobs you are applying for.

Group skills by type so they are quick to scan, for example Languages, Frameworks, Tools and Databases. List only what you could answer interview questions on: a recruiter or interviewer will pick anything on the page and ask about it.

Leave out soft skills like "hard-working" or "team player" here. Show them in your bullets instead ("Led a team of 4 to build…").

For most freshers, projects are the strongest section. Pick your two or three best, and for each one give the name, the tech stack and a link to the code or a live demo. Then add two or three bullets that say what you built, how, and what came of it.

A weak bullet and a strong one:

• Weak: "Made a food delivery website using React."
• Strong: "Built a food ordering app in React and Node.js with UPI payments; 120 students in my hostel used it in its first month."

Numbers make a bullet believable: users, speed, accuracy, rank, time saved. Small, honest numbers are fine.

Give the company, your role, the dates and two to four bullets on what you did. Unpaid, remote and short internships all count, and so do freelance work and teaching assistant roles. Start each bullet with a verb (built, analysed, reduced, launched) and end it with a result where you can.

This is where hackathons, coding contest ranks, scholarships, paper presentations and club roles go. Be specific: "Winner, Smart India Hackathon 2025 (team of 6)" or "Organised a 3-day tech fest with 40 volunteers and 2,000 attendees" says far more than "Active member of the coding club".

• A generic career objective ("Seeking a challenging position…"). Use a two-line summary only if it says something specific about you.
• The declaration line ("I hereby declare…") and your signature.
• "References available on request".
• Hobbies, unless they are unusual or relevant to the job.
• Skills ratings drawn as bars or stars; an ATS cannot read them.

• Font size 10 to 11 pt, with margins of about half an inch.
• One date format everywhere, like "Jun 2025" or "06/2025".
• No text inside images, icons or text boxes, and nothing important in the page header or footer.
• Name the file after yourself: Aarav-Sharma-Resume.pdf, not resume_final_v3.pdf.

The Campus placement template follows this format exactly, and Jake's Resume is the standard for software roles. Both are free on Shortlist: fill in a form or import your current resume, and it is typeset for you. When you apply, paste the job description to tailor the resume to that role.

Before you send it, run it through the free ATS resume checker to catch anything a parser would trip on.