Looking to create a high school student resume?
We know what you’re thinking – how supposedly pointless a resume can seem when you’re still in high school and has had no experience to fill your resume with tons of outstanding titles and experiences from careers as long as life.
Well, you may want to know that resumes are not only for adult job applications. You may want to know that you have more work experience than you think you do and we do not write this just to make you feel good. We will show you how now and by the end of this article, you would have learned how to write your high school student resume without stress.
When writing your college or scholarship applications, how do you grasp all your strengths and abilities in words to prove that you are a qualified applicant for the scholarship? That is how you write your resume as a high school too.
Experiences like volunteering to use your valuable skills for a cause, babysitting, lawn mowing, and a whole lot of others, are enough work experiences and abilities required in a high school student resume. Although this can be quite tricky, we will help you through all of the writing. Just read on.
Table of contents
What is a High School Student Resume?
A high school student resume is a resume highlighting the academic qualities, strengths, skills, and experiences of a high school student and not necessarily professional job titles and experiences.
The best high school student resumes are detailed but are usually not more than a page. It may surprise you to know that your high school experiences as much as your extracurricular activities are enough to make up an extraordinary resume. All you need to do is to recognize those experiences.
Although an adult job application resume is completely different from a high school student resume, the purpose, and idea stays just the same – to let your reader know who you are.
Your resume should be able to tell your interests, your goals, and educational background when read. However, if you are still yet to get what your resume should entail, we have a list of questions to help.
Read: What are Students Educational Tours? Best Places For Students To Go in 2023
Questions Your High School Student Resume Asks
- Beginning a resume – who are you?
- Your accomplishments – what have I accomplished? Even the littlest accomplishment is important. Your educational background comes in here too.
- Getting your reader to know you better – what am I good at? What can I do -, my special talents and abilities?
- How do you spend your time – what extracurricular activities m I involved in?
Did the questions help? If not completely, then follow our guide to writing a great high school student resume after you should be able to write resumes that can land you that college admission or scholarship acceptance, an internship, or even a job.
Wait! Before we go ahead, we will need to discuss what your high school student resume should include. Let’s look at them.
What Your High School Student Resume Should Include
Your Informal Work Experience and Activities:
If you have ever babysat, pet-seated, shoveled snow, done lawn mowing, or done anything else to earn money, you have work experience. Even so when you volunteer.
If you have never had any jobs – which actually mustn’t come with paychecks, then focus on all the things you’ve had to do to showcase your talents and abilities. Most importantly, these abilities should be related to the field of what you are applying for.
Your Leadership Roles:
If you have ever held a leadership role in any organization or club, do well to write that you have and list all your responsibilities and accomplishments.
Your Attitude and Performance Promotion:
What are your work habits and attitude like? Have you been punctual to school and has your attendance been top-notch? You could list all of these too. If you have ever had to work together in a group with some people and you played a key role in the group, you should highlight it too.
A Highlight of Your Achievements:
Review all your experiences and search for achievements in all of them – either in clubs, class, south, or at the workplace. While highlighting, we would recommend you use verbs like organized, upgraded, enhanced, improved, expanded, or increased to describe and show what you have achieved.
Now that you know the thing you need to put in your resume, let’s go on to learn how to create a quality high school student resume.
How Long Should a High School Resume Be?
When it comes to the length of a high school resume, it’s best to keep it concise and focused. Ideally, a high school resume should be kept to one or two pages. Remember, as a high school student, your work experience may be limited, so it’s important to highlight the most relevant information.
Keep it concise by including your education, academic achievements, extracurricular activities, skills, and any relevant work experience or volunteer work. By prioritizing the most impactful and pertinent details, you ensure that employers or college admissions officers can quickly and easily grasp your qualifications and potential.
How to Create a Quality High School Student Resume
Begin to plan early in high school
You need to begin to document your accomplishments, awards, and activities even before the end of high school.
Document everything – from your GPA to your extracurricular activities, your volunteer work, and community services.
Also, keeping track of your activities and accomplishments makes it easy for you to identify the parts of your life that might need more improvements than you feed it.
Prepare to write before you begin
You do not just begin to write a resume else, there are bound to be mistakes. Take the time to improve and think about your skills, special talents, and your abilities, and then make a quick list or outline of all reasonable experiences. These experiences don’t all have to be paid for.
Now put them down and brainstorm on how they can fit into your resume and the right language to describe them.
Focus on Your Skills and Accomplishments:
If there’s ever a thing you need to focus on, it should be on your skills. There are two main types of skills for your resume; soft and hard skills.
While soft skills are generic skills like being a great communicator, hard skills are direct and specific. Some examples of hard skills would be coding, word processing skill, or social media management.
The trick is to focus on your skills and bring them to life on that one page of your resume. This also includes a second language. Whatever – soft and hard skills does the job.
Coming to your educational background section and highlighting your academic achievements, you need to be diligent.
You have had years of profitable education and you can find some important details to include in your resume from there.
Your GPA could be a great start. If you have a high GPA, advertising can portray your great work ethic. The same as if you have taken honors and awards or any related courses.
Also, if you have ever been a team member or taken a leadership role or position before, highlight your abilities, roles, and responsibilities too.
And lastly, if you have ever volunteered to work anywhere and at anything, make sure to include this.
Also, read: How To Write An Irresistible Study Abroad Essay
Make Use of Action Words:
Using active language in your resume makes it alive. Using it to describe yourself and your experiences describes you as active.
Some examples of action words to use are, organized, researched, tutored, trained, created, served, designed, drafted, taught, and a lot of others.
Make Use of the proper format
A high school resume as well as any other kind should never be too wordy or difficult to read. As mentioned earlier, one-page resumes are usually best but a second is okay too especially when you have lots of activities and experiences.
Ensure you write in an easy-to-read don’t and keep it in a professional format. Go through your resume; word by word, to ensure your smell is correct and your grammars and punctuations are in place.
When formatting, remember that the contact information should sit at the top of the resume and every specific area or section should have a bold heading.
Keep It Short
Keep it short! Simple. However, ensure you include every relevant information.
Employ your storytelling ability:
The best way to highlight and connect your skills with the qualifications for the role you are applying for is through storytelling.
Stories are quite captivating and no employer would want to abandon especially when it’s an interesting one highlighting very relevant skills and experiences.
Now, Proofread.
No number of going through your resume is ever too much. Or too enough.
Proofread your resume. Read over and over again until you are sure there are no grammatical errors. When you are done, you could give a guidance counselor or a family me never to read and critique while you make corrections.
Resume writing tip:
Present yourself honestly. Never try to become in your resume what you are not in real life just to impress your reader. It never ends well.
FAQs
Including your GPA is optional. If your GPA is strong (3.0 or above) and relevant to the job or opportunity you are applying for, you can include it. However, if your GPA is lower or not directly relevant, it is better to emphasize other achievements, skills, and experiences.
Absolutely! Volunteer work is highly valued and showcases your dedication to community service. Include any volunteer experiences, highlighting your responsibilities and the impact you made through your service.
It is not necessary to include references directly on your resume. Instead, you can mention “References available upon request” at the end. If a potential employer or college admissions officer requires references, they will request them separately.
To make your resume stand out, focus on highlighting your unique qualities and experiences. Tailor your resume to match the requirements of the job or opportunity, use strong action verbs, and provide specific examples of your achievements and skills. Additionally, consider adding a professional summary/portfolio website to showcase additional content.
Including hobbies or personal interests is optional. If your hobbies or interests are relevant to the job or opportunity you are applying for, you can include them. For example, if you are applying for a position in a sports-related organization and you are an athlete, it can demonstrate your passion and commitment. However, if your hobbies or interests are not directly relevant, it is best to prioritize other sections of your resume.
Conclusion
High school student resumes are quite tricky but easy especially when you have already formed the habit of documenting your accomplishments in even the littlest details.
We are sure that using our guidelines will help you to write an irresistible high school student resume if followed properly. And by the end of the day, you will realize that more than half the battle was in taking the time to do it.
Congratulations on completing your high school student resume!
