How can I make a good resume even if I have no job experience?

How can I make a resume if I have no job experience whatsoever?

• I'm a junior in high school and I'd like to volunteer at an animal related place (vet clinic, animal shelter, boarding kennel, etc) but I'm having trouble finding places ...show more

• Answer:

  Break it up into categories. My resume has my name as a header at the top, then my address, phone number, and email address right underneath that (smaller of course). As my categories, I have: --Education . . . including my school [high school], how long I've attended (in my case, it was 2006-Present), my GPA and my graduation date --yours would just be "anticipated graduation date". --Areas of expertise. . . here I listed specific classes I'd taken that could help me out. . .if you have enough on the resume, you can always opt to leave that out. --Work experience. . . ANY work you've done where you've been paid. This includes mowing lawns, babysitting, family work, etc. I had the title of what the job was, the year(s) I worked at it, and a few words explaining the nature of the work. --Honors. This would include any awards you may have gotten; for sports, but more importantly, scholastic achievements. For example, honor roll, if you've been on it, and specific years. --Volunteer. . . work you have not been paid for. It works the same way as the work experience, though.. you'd list the organization, the years, a little bit about what you did. --Activities. . .what you've been involved in in school, how long, anything of importance (lettering, band trips, etc) --At the bottom should be "References". . .you can do an attached page and say "see attached page" or you can just put "avaliable upon request" and do it that way. That was just MY resume; yours can be totally different--you can pick and choose what is important, and you can add categories and omit some. I'd say in your case it would be important to keep "Education", "Work Experience", "Volunteer" and of course "References" . . .maybe even "Activities". Anything else, play with it a little. It's very important to keep it very organized, and very neat. It should be a page in length; not over, and not much under, so find what's important and make it work :). If you have Word, you can use a template--however, my business teacher always advised against that. So many people use those templates that a perspective employer has likely seen them before; they'll appreciate if you take the time to create one of your own. Maybe not a big deal in a shelter environment, but it's not hard, it doesn't hurt, and you can use this resume for more than just that as well :) Good luck!