You're applying for your first co-op, internship or part-time job. Every posting asks for experience. But you can't get experience without a job. It feels like a trap.
Here's what most students don't realize. A recruiter hiring for an entry-level role isn't expecting a career history. They're looking for proof that you'll show up, learn quickly and get along with people. You almost certainly have that proof. It's just not written down yet.
This guide shows you how to build a strong one-page resume when your work history is short or empty.
Start with a short summary that says what you offer
A two or three line summary at the top tells the reader who you are before they scan anything else. Focus on what you bring, not what you want.
Third-year Computer Science student at York University with hands-on experience in React, Python and SQL from two shipped course projects. Looking for a 4-month co-op starting May 2027.
Notice the last line. For co-op and part-time roles, your availability is one of the first things a hiring manager checks. Putting it up front saves them a question.
Put education near the top
When you don't have much work history, your education is your strongest section. Move it up, right under your summary.
Include your program, school and expected graduation date, like "Bachelor of Computer Science, York University, expected April 2028." Then add anything that shows effort: a strong GPA, the Dean's List, scholarships, or two or three courses that relate to the job. Applying for a backend role? "Relevant courses: Data Structures, Databases, Operating Systems" earns its space.
Once you're in university or college, you can usually drop high school. The exception is if you're in your first year and have a high school award worth showing.
Count everything that's real work
Work doesn't have to mean a paycheque from a big company. Volunteering, campus jobs, helping in a family business, tutoring, freelance gigs, hackathons and running a student club all count.
The trick is to describe them like a job. Compare:
Before: Made a website for my uncle's store.
After: Built and launched a website for a family-run grocery store in Scarborough, adding online order requests that brought in 30+ orders in the first month.
Same experience. The second version tells a hiring manager you can ship something real for an actual user. That's exactly what a junior developer role needs.
Add numbers wherever you honestly can. How many users, students, events, hours or people? "Tutored 6 first-year students in intro Python, all of whom passed the course" beats "Programming tutor" every time.
Turn class projects into experience
For tech students, projects are often the most important section on the page. Create a section called "Projects" and treat each one like a mini job.
Budget Tracker Web App (Winter 2026)
Built a budgeting app with React and Firebase for a software engineering course. 30 classmates used it during the term, and I fixed 12 bugs from their feedback.
This shows the tools you used, that real people used it, and that you responded to feedback. Link the GitHub repo or live demo for each project if you can. For co-op applications, a solid projects section can carry the whole resume.
Make your skills section specific
"Hard-working, team player, fast learner" doesn't help. Every student writes that, so recruiters skip past it.
List things someone could actually check. Group them so they're easy to scan:
Languages: Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, SQL
Frameworks: React, Node.js, Express
Tools: Git, Docker, Firebase, Postman
Only list what you'd be comfortable answering questions about in an interview. If you followed one tutorial in Rust, leave it off.
And don't forget spoken languages. If you speak English and Punjabi, Tagalog, Bengali, Mandarin or French, add a line for it. Plenty of Canadian teams work with clients and users who speak those languages.
Keep it to one page and keep it simple
With little experience, one page is the right length. Stretching to two pages with filler makes a resume weaker, not stronger.
Use one column, clear headings (Summary, Education, Experience, Projects, Skills) and a standard font like Calibri or Arial. Save it as a PDF. Most tech companies and banks use software called an ATS to sort resumes before anyone reads them. Fancy templates with tables, icons, skill bars or two columns can confuse it, and your resume may be filtered out before a person sees it.
Put your GitHub and LinkedIn URLs in the header as plain text, not just icons. An ATS can't read an icon.
Match your resume to each posting
Read the job description and look for the words that come up more than once. If a posting asks for "REST APIs," "PostgreSQL" and "unit testing," and you've done those things, use those exact phrases in your bullets.
You don't need a whole new resume for every job. Just adjust your summary and two or three bullets. It takes five minutes and makes a real difference in how many callbacks you get.
A few mistakes to skip
Use an email address with your name in it, not the one you made in Grade 8. Leave out your photo, age and full home address, since Canadian resumes don't include them. Drop "References available upon request." And have one person you trust read it before you send it. A typo in "JavaScript" on a developer resume is an easy reason to get passed over.
Get your first draft done today
The hardest part of a first resume is the blank page. If you're stuck, write down everything you've done in the last two years in plain sentences: jobs, projects, hackathons, clubs, anything. Then turn each one into a bullet using the before-and-after approach above.
If you'd like help with that step, ResumeStart can turn a few lines about your experience into a full first draft, then show you how well it matches the job you're applying for. It's free to start, and the PDF has no watermark.
The bottom line
No experience doesn't mean nothing to show. It means you need to look a little harder and describe what you've done clearly. Lead with education, show your projects, add numbers, and keep it to one clean page. That's enough to get your first interview.
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