High School Student Resume: Examples, Guide & Template

When I was your age…

That’s it. That’s the last straw.

Maybe your family didn’t need a resume when applying for a job, but you do. And you’ve been well aware of that for quite some time.

Once you’re done with this high school student resume guide, you’ll prove it indeed is not a walk-uphill both ways.

You’ll make it a full sprint.

OK boomer?

This guide will show you: 

• A sample resume for high school students better than 9 out of 10 other resumes.
• How to make a high school student resume with no work experience.
• Tips and examples of how to put skills and achievements on a resume for high school students.
• How to describe any experience you have to get the job you want.

Want to save time and have your resume ready in 5 minutes? Try our resume builder. It’s fast and easy to use. Plus, you’ll get ready-made content to add with one click. See 20+ resume templates and create your resume here.

Create your resume now

Sample resume made with our builder—See more resume examples here.

High School Student Resume Template

Now, here’s the job-winning high school resume formula:

1. Format Your High School Student Resume Template

To play a game, you need to build a character first. 

A well-formatted resume is money in the bank, and you’d instead create a Mortimer than a Bob. Motherlode is useless in a real world.

So, let’s learn the code language for high school student resume formatting:

High School Student Resume Format

• Create a header for your contact information that stands out from the rest of the resume. Don’t add your photo, date of birth, and any other sensitive information.
• Pick a font that’s easy on the eyes and scannable. Calibri, Arial, or Verdana are great choices. Make it 10–12 points in the resume font size.
• Set margins to 1-inch on every side and line-spacing to 1–1.15.
• Choose the reverse-chronological format for your high school resume. Start each section with the most recent entry.
• Divide your resume into sections: personal information, objective, education, experience, and skills. Later, you can add miscellaneous parts, such as certifications or extracurricular activities.
• Put your education above the work history section. It’s the most prominent section of yours due to having little to no work experience. You’ll shift the focus away from the fact that you haven’t got any professional achievements yet.
• Be consistent with the date format—month and year all the way through.
• Use bullet points to enter your examples.
• Stay on one page. Keep it short and simple.

Great! You know the basics.

Now take a look at the resume header formatting so that recruiters know how to contact you:

Full Name

Include your first and last name in the header. You can highlight it by changing the font size by 2 points max.

Phone Number

Add your correct phone/cell number to make sure the recruiter can contact you.

Email Address

Write your professional email address, e.g., cherylaustin@email.com. So if you have to create a new one because you’re still using your high school handle, do it.

Social Media, Blog, or Website

Whatever job you’re applying for, check your social presence. Recruiters do look at your profiles to get their first impression of you. Do yourself a favour and update your privacy settings to hide anything potentially controversial or embarrassing.

The other thing is to add your social media, blog, or website handles if you’re applying for creative jobs where employers wish to see a portfolio. Recruiters are fond of candidates who walk the extra mile, making their jobs easier. 

2. Show How You Excelled at School

Although you wish you were in Riverdale to deal with the mystery instead of your teach, you can’t quite run away from it. 

And that’s good. 

Resumes for high school students take pride in the education section. So to nail it, use it to show you’re an engaged student that knows where your priorities lay and what’s your approach to development.

You say boring, I say smart.

Check out the below example to see how to write education on your high school resume:

Sample Resume For High School Student—Education

There are quite a few rules to remember when writing the education section for a high school student:

• Write your most recent education at the top. If you changed schools, report the current at the beginning of the section.
• Mention the full name of the school and its location.
• Add your graduation date or when you expect to graduate with a diploma.
• Include a GPA score only if it’s higher than 3.5. You can also boast about your SAT scores.
• Name any awards, honours, or accolades you received during your high school years.
• List any relevant coursework if the courses you took are similar to the description of the job you’re applying for.
• Note extracurricular activities, volunteer work, or study abroad programs.They fit here perfectly, too.

Remember that whatever extra you add to your resume must be relevant to the position you wish to get. Or else, you risk losing against the Applicant Tracking Software (ATS). That’s how recruiters don’t get to read your resume.

ATS isn’t your enemy, though, as long as you know how to outsmart it. The trick is to use the keywords from the job description and stay relevant at all times. The keywords are words and phrases that describe desired skills, qualifications, and experience.

Speaking of, let’s move on to the section you dread most—

3. Describe Your Work Experience, Or Any

I’ve heard that Matt got an A+ and you missed only one point to get it, too.

But hey! Next time, right?

Well, sorry to disappoint, but you won’t have the next time at a job. 

A Matt would take it.

Don’t let anyone do better than you and take what should be yours. Learn ways to write an A++ work experience section even if you’ve never worked anywhere.

Have you played in a team? Helped your neighbours regularly? Or maybe you did some volunteering? Each works just as well. 

Recruiters looking for juniors don’t want to know where you were employed, but whether you show transferable skills that your future employer can use.

Here’s the example that shows just that:

High School Student Resume With No Work Experience

Holy moly guacamole!

Do you know how to make your experience history such a success? Here’s how:

• Read and reread the job ad. You want to know what to include in your job application, all the keywords that describe desired qualifications and qualities. 
• Now have a think about all the stuff you learned at school, side gigs, extracurriculars or doing hobbies. Use those details to prove you can translate the skills you have to the skills they need.
• Write who you acted as, where, and when. Then move on to your key achievements.
• You heard that right. Write about accomplishments, not responsibilities.
• And you do that in 3-4 bullet points.
• Structure your sentences like accomplishment statements. Start each with an action verb in the past tense and quantify your results. You led a team that won the city championships 4 times in a row, or maybe you designed leaflets to increase your club’s attendance by 27%? Excellent. Keep up that vibe.
• Never lie and—
• Speak about your achievements only. Teamwork is a skill, not an accomplishment.

Pro Tip: If you have no work experience, don’t name that section “work history or “work experience.” Call it “experience” instead. It does the trick.

When making a resume in our builder, drag & drop bullet points, skills, and auto-fill the boring stuff. Spell check? Check. Start building a professional resume template here for free.

Create my resume now

When you’re done, Zety’s resume builder will score your resume and tell you exactly how to make it better.

But going back to the skills—

4. List the Skills You Need for the Job

Ever taken part in a talent show?

Hopefully.

It’s time to perform again. Show your talent, that is.

Make a shortlist of your transferable skills that’ll come in handy at work. Employers value employability skills because they give them insight into how you’re going to perform on the job. 

To pick the ones you need, use the job ad again. There are skills you need to have in your resume and make friends with the ATS.

But, have you heard of hard and soft skills? 

Those are the two types of skills you can learn on the job or have a natural aptitude for. The best skills section shows a mix of the two. 

Hard skills are particular to each role, e.g., InDesign for graphic designers or car engine structure for a car mechanic. 

Soft skills involve personal abilities, e.g., active listening, communication, or problem-solving. 

See what high school resume skills you could include in yours:

Resume Skills for High School Students

• Collaboration
• Communication skills
• Active listening skills
• Adaptability
• Attention to detail
• Interpersonal skills
• Empathy
• Critical thinking
• Decision-making
• Problem-solving
• Creative thinking
• Analytical thinking
• Computer skills
• Technical skills
• Leadership skills
• Organizational skills
• Project management skills

Work your skills into your experience and education as if you wanted the recruiter to read between the lines.

See these two high school student resume examples of Cheryl’s list of skills and then proof of aptitude for leadership in the experience history section:

High School Resume Examples—Skills

Remember that it’s never too late to get better at things. Work on your skills while you’re in high school and let employers enjoy your application.

So far, so good. Let’s keep on going, not to lose pace.

5. Add Other Sections to Your High School Resume

Remember when I spoke about the extras?

Fantastic.

Now it’s time to add them to your resume. And you have plenty of choices:

Resume High School Student—Additional Sections

Awards

Don’t get shy when it comes to writing your high school resume. It’s your chance to show off and not get called names. Awards are perfect indicators of your approach to the things you’ve been working on. Who wouldn’t love a motivated employee?

Volunteering

This is one of the easiest ways to convince the hiring managers to yourself. Sometimes it’s not what you do to get better at your job. More often, it’s about becoming a better human. And the best way to do it is through giving someone else a hand, showing you’re ready to help in times of need. That’s also teamwork, isn’t it?

Hobbies & Interests

You could write you read books or listen to music, but where would that get you? Somewhere but the job-valley. It’s safe to say that only relevant hobbies are worth claiming land on your resume. Relevant, meaning the ones that give your employer insights into your skillset.

Certifications

Ooh, these look great on a high school student resume. Understandably, you may not have one yet, but you could get some. Udemy, Coursera, HubSpot, and even YouTube, where you spend so much time, offer free courses. Take the opportunity while seeking employment and make your resume so much stronger.

Languages

Young people learn languages far quicker than adults. Use that to your advantage, especially if you’re about to work in communications. Cultural sensitivity and awareness are Yeezy-new-collection-level desired. And that’s what knowing foreign languages means.

Extracurriculars

If you’re using your time at school not only for schooling, then mention it. Student president or club member? These are fantastic examples to prove you’re an interesting person and education isn’t a joke to you.

Take a look below at an example of additional sections on a resume for high school students:

Wowza!

The potential is striking. You can see it, and so can recruiters. 

The resume objective is another way to show it.

6. Be Game in the Resume Objective

It’s almost over. 

I promise.

Before landing here, you may’ve probably heard or read about resume summary or objective. So to recap—

A career summary is a gist of your work experience, plus a brief introduction of your skillset. It’s best for candidates with an established career or a couple of years of experience. 

On the other side stands a resume objective.

A career objective is a 2-3 sentence statement about what you want to bring to the table, together with your transferable and employability skills and why it’s of interest to your employer.

As much as I wish it were, it’s not a cooking recipe in which you can guesstimate the contents. Instead, you should go for the must-have ingredients:

You must be wondering, “Why now?” as this section is at the very top of a resume?

I just wanted to make it easier for you so that you don’t have to create an objective anew, only reuse the working parts. Now you can pick up all the skills and accomplishments from the education, experience, and skills sections. 

See how Cheryl used the objective template in her high school resume:

High School Student Resume Objective

Are you yawning? 

I’m sure you are.

The second example is so generic that recruiters fall asleep mid-sentence. And there are only two.

But you have one more chance to evidence you’re an engaging writer. Or, more importantly, a perfect candidate.

7. Attach a Cover Letter

You’re big enough to stop believing in tall tales your lazy friends tell you. 

So, don’t get mad, but if you thought you needn’t have to write a cover letter, then you were wrong. Unless, of course, you want to lower your chances.

Remember Matt? He wrote a cover letter. And got that fancy job in a French café where you like to spend time.

Let’s do better. 

Let’s write a cover letter to a high school resume that swipes recruiters off their feet and give you a job in a pâtisserie opposite where all the cool kids hang:

• Copy the resume template design and formatting to your cover letter. Leave a lot of whitespace for your content.
• Add your contact details again, but also address your hiring manager. Find their full name and job title. If that proves impossible, write “Dear Hiring Manager” as the salutation. Everything else is Carnage-bad.
• Create a compelling outline that introduces you, speaks about your qualities, and reinforces your motivation to join the company.
• Show your personality. Facts are already in your resume. Don’t repeat yourself.
• Ask them to schedule a meeting with you and sign off.

Alright, alright.

You’re good to go.

It wasn’t so hard, was it?

A great cover letter that matches your resume will give you an advantage over other candidates. You can write it in our cover letter builder here. Here's what it may look like:

Create my resume and cover letter

See more cover letter templates and start writing.

Key Takeaways

Here’s how to write a high school resume step by step:

• Format it first. Pick a template you like, create enough room to write on, and have a go right at it.
• Next, give your educational background the fullest attention. If you do that, recruiters will focus on that instead of your lacking professional accomplishments.
• Even if you don’t have a work history, tell the recruiter if, from any of your experiences, you gained the skills applicable to the role you’re trying to get.
• Mix hard and soft skills. Show your qualifications and qualities tailored to the job description.
• Additional items on a resume for a high school student can get you the job. Awards, certifications, or volunteer work show what personal growth means to you.
• Write a compelling resume objective that proves you have the skills and willingness to apply them on the job. And that you can bring the results your employer anticipates.
• Attach a cover letter to your job application. Show you’re not only dry facts but an exciting personality worth knowing.

Thanks for reading my guide! Now I’d love to hear from you: 

• What are the biggest challenges of writing a resume for the first job? 
• Which part do you struggle with the most as a high school student?
• Would you like to know more? Have I missed anything?

Let me know. Let’s get the discussion started!