General Resume Writing Tips for Fresh Graduates: Key Elements and Mistakes to Avoid

Data Science, Machine Learning, and AI remain among the most competitive fields, with hiring processes increasingly challenging. In such a competitive landscape, having the right skills is crucial, but a well-crafted resume can be your key to standing out and securing that coveted data science role.

A meticulously crafted resume showcases your technical proficiency and hands-on project experience and highlights your ability to translate data insights into actionable business strategies.

As a fresher, you might have many doubts and questions about how to begin. But before answering questions like how to make a professional resume, you need to familiarize yourself first with the purpose of a resume and its criticality in today’s job market.

Why You Need a Good Resume?

A resume is a potential employer’s first impression, which is crucial. In this competitive job market, where Application Tracking Systems (ATS) are widespread, freshers must understand the purpose of resumes and how they can be made ATS-friendly. Three basic things to know before you start with your resume modifications or drafting: 

• End goal of your resume

The primary goal of any resume is to showcase an applicant’s skills, qualifications, relevant projects, internships, etc., to the employer.

Your resume defines your potential for any job role that interests you. The underlying objective for a resume for freshers is to demonstrate that you can be an asset to the organization if hired. 

• Key must-have elements

There are a few key elements that you must include in a fresher resume. These include a firm summary, well-structured skills, an academic qualification section, and details regarding the internships you have worked on. Additionally, other key achievements, such as certifications, coursework, and personal projects, should be included in the resume.

• Aligning your resume with the job roles

While the elements mentioned above are essential, what’s equally important is that all these elements are relevant to the job you are applying for. For example, you should ensure that your resume loosely matches the job description so that the recruiters and ATS can pick it up.

Read more job role specific resume-writing guides:

• How to create a Data Analyst Resume?
• How to Write a Data Scientist Resume – Freshers’ Edition
• How to Write a Machine Learning Resume?

Here’s a quick recap of what we learned just now – 

You should have the skills, projects, coursework, internship, academic qualification, certifications, and numerous keywords that, along with the job role, help your resume to pass through the ATS filter.

The best way to answer how to make a resume for a job fresher is to understand a resume’s structure. Doing so can create a mental map of how to create a resume for yourself.

How to Create a Resume Structure?

A well-organized, clean, concise structure can help recruiters clearly understand your resume and identify your key strengths, skills, and qualifications. 

• Standard Resume Format

There are certain sections that any resume for freshers should contain. These are as follows-

1. Header: The first section should contain the applicant’s name and contact information (ensure you provide the latest working contact information and, if possible, provide an alternative contact number so the recruiters can easily reach you).
2. Summary: The next section should briefly overview your skills, qualifications, and career goals (they should be tailored to the role you are applying for).
3. Skills: The skills section should highlight both your technical and soft skills (technical skills can include programming languages, data analysis tools, etc., whereas soft skills can include communication abilities, teamwork abilities, etc.).
4. Education: Next, list your educational qualifications, including degrees, institutions, and any honors, certifications, or awards.
5. Experience: You must include any internship experience, part-time work, or relevant freelance work. Being a fresher, you will have limited experience and should focus on showcasing your projects.
6. Projects: Lastly, you should highlight relevant academic or personal projects that demonstrate your skills for the job role.

• Importance of a Clear and Organized Layout

Apart from having the relevant sections, it would help if you focused on the readability aspect of the resume, too. As per one study, recruiters spend only seven seconds on a resume, and therefore, you must ensure that the key information gets easily highlighted when the recruiters skim through it.

It is better to break down sections and demarcate them through sufficient gaps or horizontal lines. Headings and bullet points should be used for better readability, and critical sections like summary and skills should appear early in the resume (as indicated by the structure suggested above).

• Resume Length and Font Considerations

Resumes for freshers shouldn’t be longer than one page or one and a half pages unless you have a lot of relevant project work to showcase. Another aspect that often gets overlooked is the use of unprofessional fonts. The objective of a resume for freshers is to communicate a candidate’s potential to an employee; therefore, you must use forms that support readability.

Ideally, you should choose a font like Arial, Times New Roman, or Calibri in 11-12 point size. Avoid using decisive formatting, colors, or graphics that can hinder ATS’ ability to scan your resume properly.

After briefly discussing an overview of how to make a resume for freshers, it’s time to get into the details and explore the key sections of resumes separately. We’ll start with the summary section.

Crafting a Compelling Resume Summary

The summary section can help set the tone for the rest of the resume. If it properly highlights the key information, it can easily grab the recruiter’s eye.

What is a Resume Summary?

The summary section acts as an introduction to the candidates and provides an overview of them. It should typically be two to four sections highlighting the career aspirations, skills, and capabilities. It’s the section where you can place the relevant keywords to enhance the chances of it getting shortlisted. 

Importance of a Strong Summary for Freshers

For freshers who have limited work experience, a firm summary can significantly enhance their employability. The summary section can help you demonstrate your enthusiasm for the job role and help convince the employer that your skillset and background make you fit for the job despite the limited work experience.

How to Write an Effective Resume Summary?

The first step in writing a summary is to review the job description and determine the skills, certifications, tools, technologies, and other qualifications relevant to the job. It would be helpful to list the keywords and then write the summary to include them. Once you have written the summary, the last step is to edit it so that its tone seems confident and minimizes jargon.

Example Resume Summaries: Data Science, Analytics, ML, & AI

Below, we’ve provided a few summaries for job roles in different fields-

• Data Science: “Recent graduate with a master’s degree in Data Science, proficient in Python, R, and SQL. Experienced in building data-driven predictive models through academic projects and Kaggle competitions. Eager to apply analytical and model-building skills in an actual business environment.”
• Machine Learning: “Machine learning enthusiast with experience developing regression, classification, and segmentation models using Python and Scikit Learn. I have in-depth knowledge of ML algorithms like Linear Regression, Logistic Regression, SVM, Decision Trees, KNN, Random Forests, etc. Passionate about applying ML techniques to solve real-world problems.”
• Analytics: “Recent graduate skilled in data visualization tools like Tableau and Power BI. Adept at analyzing raw data to find actionable insights, and great presentation skills, which allow me to communicate complex findings to the relevant stakeholders.”
• AI: “Aspiring AI specialist with a strong foundation in neural networks, deep learning, computer vision, and natural language processing. Completed several academic projects in AI using algorithms like ANN, RNN, LSTM, CNN, RSTM, etc.”

The next section, particularly critical in resumes for freshers, is the education section.

How to Include Education Details in Your Resume?

As a fresher, your education is one of the most critical components of your resume. You can effectively demonstrate your preparedness for the job by highlighting your academic background.

1) Highlight Relevant Coursework

You should include academic courses directly related to the job role you are applying for. For example, suppose you’re applying for a data science position. In that case, degrees in the fields of “Data Analysis,” “Machine Learning,” or “Statistics” can be helpful as they show to the recruiter that you have a solid foundation in the field.

2) Mention Any Academic Achievements

Academic honors or awards (e.g., merit-based scholarships or outstanding performer awards) should be listed to display your academic excellence. Additionally, you should provide your GPA if it’s above average, as this can be particularly valuable for freshers with little to no work experience.

3) Include Certifications and Online Courses

In the education sector, you can include relevant Certifications and online courses to help you demonstrate initiative, additional expertise, commitment to continuous learning, and willingness to stay updated with industry trends.

For example, suppose you’re applying for a data science job. In that case, you should list certifications involving Python, SQL, and machine learning obtained from platforms like AnalytixLabs. 

Building a good skills section is one of the most crucial parts of a resume. Let’s examine this section for freshers.

Tips to Include a Compelling Skills Section

Showcasing your skills is exceptionally critical for a fresher. The skill section should demonstrate the tools, technologies, and capabilities you possess, making you qualified for the job.

• Technical Skills

You can start with the technical skills that the recruiter is looking for. For instance, for data science and related roles, you should mention the relevant languages (Python, R, etc.), frameworks (Scikit-Learn, Keras, TensorFlow, etc.), techniques (hyperparameter tuning, k-fold cross-validation, etc.), algorithms (Decision Trees, KNN, ANN, SVM, etc).

You must ensure that you categorize the technical skills as we mentioned and, if need be, also rate your skill levels (e.g., proficient, intermediate, beginner)

• Soft Skills

The next part of the skill section should include soft skills. Several job roles require you to collaborate and communicate with numerous other departments.

Thus, you should highlight your ability to work in teams, solve complex problems, communicate effectively, etc.

You can use phrases like “Effective in communicating findings to technical and non-technical stakeholders” or “Problem-solver with strong analytical thinking.”

Also read: Why Problem Solving Skills are Important for Data Professionals?

Make Sure to Quantify Your Skills 

A common mistake in freshers’ resumes is not quantifying applicants’ claims. You must quantify your skills so that the recruiter can better understand your abilities.

For example, you can mention, “Developed seven ML projects using Python involving libraries like Scikit-Learn and Keras”.

Similarly, to quantify soft skills, you can mention, “Led a team of four to develop a chatbot project and demonstrated its functioning to a class of 40+ students and faculty.”

Providing information like this will give the recruiters quantifiable metrics that they can use to evaluate you better.

The next step in answering how to write a resume for freshers is to understand the role that projects and internships play in a fresher’s resume. Below, we will explore the section about it.

Leverage Projects in Resume

As a fresher, any experience counts and can take you a long way; hence, projects become critical. The answer to questions like how to create a resume for freshers always underlines the importance of the projects section. 

Project Idea Repository:

• Top 15 FullStack Project Ideas to Start Working On
• Top AI Project Ideas
• Interesting Data Analytics Project Ideas
• Machine Learning Project Ideas

As a fresh graduate, you have much theoretical knowledge but little real-world experience, which is crucial for technical roles. Therefore, you must convince recruiters that you can apply what you have learned to solve actual problems, and this section becomes critical.

• How to Showcase Projects Effectively?

It would help if you listed your projects by providing a title and a project description. The description should explain what you did in the project, the tools and techniques you employed, and the outcome you achieved.

Hosting your projects on repositories like GitHub and attaching their hyperlinks to your resume can help the recruiter directly review your project in detail.

• Quantifying Project Outcomes

As mentioned, you must quantify your work and provide some metrics. For instance, you can mention achieved accuracy, reduced error, or optimization achieved. Statements like “Improved regression model MAPE by 25% using Linear Regression with L2 regularization” can help the recruiter better gauge you.  

• Handling Limited Project Experience

Just in case you don’t have a lot of actual business projects to showcase, you can include academic or personal projects you have worked on. You can also include capstone projects you have worked on during your certification to demonstrate further your willingness to apply your knowledge, even in non-professional settings.

Your projects (if they are done while working) should be accompanied by information about your work experience. Hence, the next section that should follow is the experience section.

Creating an Impressive Experience Section

Any relevant work done as an intern, freelancer, or part-timer can significantly impact your application. The experience section, if written properly, can do wonders for a fresher.

1) Relevant Work Experience

Always remember to include the relevant work experience. For example, if you are applying for a job that requires you to deal with data, you can include the internship where you applied data analysis techniques and detail the tools and methodologies you used.

Work experiences not directly related to the job you are applying for can be included if they demonstrate soft skills like teamwork, communication, problem-solving, etc.

2) Using Action Verbs to Describe Responsibilities

While writing the experience section, you need to use action verbs to make responsibilities sound more dynamic and impactful. You can describe your role using verbs like “developed,” “implemented,” “designed,” “analyzed,” etc.

Also, use more impactful words; e.g., rather than writing “Worked on ML models,” you should go for “Analyzed and cleaned datasets to develop ML models”.

3) Quantifying Achievements

Again, quantification is the key. Try to give recruiters a sense of scale by mentioning your work in terms of percentage improvement, size of data analyzed, the quantum of accuracy achieved, and the amount of money saved for the organization. For example, you can mention, “Optimized data pipeline by speeding up the process by 30% and automated report generation freeing up resources saving $1000/week”.

A key aspect of answering how to make a resume for a job fresher is addressing the criticality of keywords. Below, we will explore the need for and ways to optimize keywords in your resume.

Keyword Optimization in Resume

As mentioned before, ATS filters resumes and finds potential candidates. Therefore, you must optimize your resume with the right keywords to pass through the automated filters.

• Importance of Keywords in a Resume

ATS ensures that your resume is relevant to the job description. It looks for technical skills, job titles, certificates, software tools, etc., to find the appropriate resume and thus acts as the first screening level. Your resume must first pass through this level to land an interview.

• Incorporating Relevant Keywords Contextually

The best way to effectively optimize keywords is to incorporate relevant terms naturally into your resume. You should analyze the job description and identify the skills, tools, and qualifications mentioned.

You can then integrate them by mentioning them in the various resume sections discussed. While you must ensure that the exact phrase is mentioned in the resume, you need to avoid overloading it with too many keywords, as that can make it seem unnatural.

• Using Keyword Analysis Tools

A few online resume makers can help you with the keyword aspect. For example, analysis tools such as Jobscan or ResumeWorded can help you to optimize your resume as these tools compare your resume against job descriptions and recommend additional keywords to improve your ATS score.

Remember, however, that when you use any online resume maker, you must thoroughly proofread your resume afterward to ensure that the output from such tools makes sense.

Another aspect that needs a closer inspection is the resume format for freshers.

Resume Design and Formatting Tips

Resume design and formatting are critical aspects and should be highly focused on when answering questions like how to make a professional resume. While several online resume makers can give you some idea regarding resume design and formatting, it’s better to understand what makes a resume seem professional.

• Choose a Clean and Professional Template

When choosing a resume template, choose a simple, elegant, professional one. Don’t opt for elaborate and cluttered templates, which force you to add unnecessary elements and information.

• Ensure Visual Appeal and Readability

Your resume design is critical, as it can make or break your application. While you should opt for a visually appealing resume, it shouldn’t look overtly designed or too fancy (unless the job role somehow involves graphic design).

Go for straightforward visuals and avoid using too many colors or extremely contrasting color schemes. A neutral color scheme ensures readability, allowing recruiters to skim the resume.

• Use Consistent Formatting

Consistency is critical for a resume to look professional. Choose classic font options like Arial, Calibri, or Times New Roman for the heading and paragraph front and fix their size (e.g., 14 for the heading and 11 for the paragraphs).

Also, ensure that the spacing between sections is consistent. Lastly, ensure that your resume is formatted for ATS compatibility, i.e., it should be free of tables, graphs, or intricate designs that can confuse the ATS software.

Common Resume Mistakes to Avoid

The resume is your first impression; therefore, you must avoid the pitfalls that make you seem unprofessional. Following are the critical mistakes that you should avoid:

• Overcrowding the Resume

The most common mistake is information overloading. Being a fresher, your resume should contain all the relevant information within one page without being too cluttered. Cluttered resumes often have many unnecessary in-depth details written as paragraphs. Use headings and bullet points to quickly and concisely get your point across.

• Using Unprofessional Language

The tone of the resume makes a big difference. Avoid overly complicated words, jargon, and especially slang, as you can come across as a novice, significantly reducing your chances of landing an interview. As mentioned earlier, use strong action words to emphasize your skills and experience.

• Typos and Grammatical Errors

The biggest mistakes in a resume are typos and grammatical mistakes. Such mistakes indicate your lack of attention to detail, a critical skill for most jobs. Ideally, proofread your resume multiple times and use tools like Grammarly or inbuilt spell checks to resolve such issues.

• Lack of Customization

Freshers often submit to hundreds of job openings, irrespective of the job description. To ensure that your resume stands out, make a primary resume and then make copies of it, modifying it based on the job you are applying for.

This should include customizing your skills, certifications, and, most importantly, the keywords related to the job description, making you seem like a worthy candidate.

In the section below, we have provided a few critical tips on writing your resume in addition to the pitfalls we mentioned.

Last-minute Tips for Freshers 

As a fresher, breaking into the job market can be difficult, but the right strategy can sometimes maximize your opportunities. The following are a few simple tips that can significantly enhance your prospects of getting shortlisted.

• Network and Build Relationships

Apart from building a strong resume, you should build professional relationships that can provide you with recommendations, job referrals, and knowledge about lucrative job openings. By attending industry events, job fairs, workshops, and webinars, you can maximize the reach of your resume.

• Utilize Online Platforms

Stay active on LinkedIn and upload your latest resume so recruiters can easily contact you. It would help to use code repositories like GitHub to choose your coding projects.

• Continuous Learning and Skill Development

Keep yourself informed about the latest industry trends and upskill yourself accordingly. You can learn about various topics by enrolling in certification courses on platforms like AnalytixLabs.

• Seek Feedback on Your Resume

Before submitting your resume, take feedback from your mentors, professionals, and peers in the related field. By incorporating the feedback, you can improve your resume further.

Conclusion

Creating a solid resume is essential for any job seeker, especially freshers. Your resume should be readable and concise, with all the necessary sections. Your initial aim should be to beat ATS systems and keep the resume closely aligned with the job description. We hope this article answered vital questions like how to prepare resumes for freshers and more satisfactorily.

FAQs

• How can I highlight my skills as a fresher with limited work experience?

You can mention your technical and soft skills, academic achievements, certifications, and project details in your resume to highlight your skills, even if you have limited work experience.

• What should I include in my resume summary as a fresher?

A resume for freshers must include the skills, education, and projects section.

• How can I tailor my resume for data science, analytics, ML, and AI roles?

Regarding how to make resumes for freshers in data science and related fields (such as ML, AI, and Analytics), I suggest you include those skills, projects, and internships that explore the related tools, algorithms, and techniques.

• What is the best way to showcase my data science projects on my resume?

You should prepare your data science project in Jupyter Notebook with visible output, host it on GitHub, and provide the hyperlink in the resume.

• How important is the design of my resume for a fresher?

The design and the resume format are highly important for freshers; a simple resume format is the best option for a fresher, as it is ATS-friendly.

• Should I include a cover letter with my resume as a fresher?

Cover letters help you personalize your application. You should create one based on the job description to highlight the relevant strengths.

• How often should I update my resume as a fresher?

Update your resume whenever you complete new internships, get project certifications, or gain new skills.