As a person with none or a little prior work experience, resume building can seem to be a challenge in the absence of tested skills and experience. A newcomer with an attitude to contribute and be an active part of a team, fresh insight, willingness to question norms with maturity and abundant energy is an asset to most teams. Let your resume building focus on what you have done till now and your attitude to work.
Education qualification
Your priority when you have little work experience to show is to bank on your qualifications. Provide details of the course you have attended, specialisation, institute and location. Highlight the subjects that you particularly liked and provide your justification as to how the subject provides you with the insight to understand the nature of work you are expected to do. Resume building equips you with a medium to highlight your strengths. If your marks are not competitive because you have been an avid sports player or have focussed on extra curricular projects, highlight the fact.
Extra-curricular activity
Extra curricular activity brings out the leaders, managers, individual players, team players in the team. Some people display their skills when they are behind the scenes and laying emphasis on rules and guidelines. Others come forward and are strong at garnering support and guiding people on how to play their roles. Some play their role best when they work alone while others require team inputs and feedback. Which of these describes you? Flesh out this description with examples of how your style helped your team to carry out a large task successfully in your resume building.
Community work
There has been an upsurge in volunteering efforts by students as an effort to understand social ills and trying to help the needy. This type of work displays initiative, spirit of questioning, willingness to find solutions where others let go and a person with a healing touch. If you feel your resume building lacks punch because you have not been academically inclined nor sportingly gifted and been a mute spectator to college projects, focus on the community work that you have done. Consider providing details of your community welfare oriented work to a potential recruiter to highlight your skills in different areas. Describe the motivator to undertake this assignment and provide some details about your learning. Avoid long sentences and paragraphs. Let the introduction be a sentence long and the details be presented as bullet points in resume building.
Cover letter
Your cover letter is akin to a product package. It needs to look good, provide important information in a concise manner and be compact. Let your cover letter provide a short gist of your experience and talk about your attitude and the kind of work you look forward to do. Avoid clichés about wanting to learn and willingness to work hard, instead tell the recruiter what you bring to the table when resume building. Do not repeat words that you have used in the main bio data. Instead, use your creative skills to describe yourself. Make no promises of loyalty and use no adjectives, just be factual in your tone.