Tips to Write Your First IT Resume for Beginners

The IT field is growing rapidly, and you can take advantage of the available opportunities. A well-written and to-the-point resume create higher chances of selection. It impresses the recruitment team immediately as it presents you in a strong way and puts forward your experience, education, and accomplishments emphatically.

If you are struggling to write one, you are not alone! But it shouldn’t be intimidating. There are so many IT beginners like you. What matters is experience and whether you have the right tips to craft a great resume. Here are tips to get started.

Pick the right template for IT 

While it’s ok to use any template for your resume, you need to do it wisely. Some templates are not as “bad” as some people claim to be. But with your experience in the IT field, you have to decide which one of them displays your skills greatly. There are three main formats that are used. That’s a functional, combination, and reverse-chronological resume.

With a functional resume, more focus is on your skills and achievements. A combinational resume focuses both on work experience and skills. Then, your work experiences and education are listed in reverse order in reverse-chronological. And if you think you need professional IT resume writing services to boost your employment chances, you have to figure out which one will do the best job.

Ensure that contact information is clear

When writing your resume, you should ensure that all your contact information is at the top of the page. The employer needs to get at least two ways to contact you. And this includes first and last name, phone number, email, and location. Missing contact details or errors made in the contact details will deter the employer from reaching back to you. 

Apart from what’s mentioned in the above paragraph, you should include your relevant social media, website, and LinkedIn URL. With LinkedIn, your recruiter can correctly match your contact details and check whether the skills mentioned are consistent. 

List your education qualifications 

What your education and training qualifications can say about you, none of the job experience can. That’s why education qualifications are a vital asset to IT beginners. How many IT-related training workshops and additional courses have you taken apart from your regular education? 

With detailed education qualifications, you will be able to tell the employer the accomplishments and the skills you have developed over time in the field. The more or the better the qualifications, the more will be employer be convinced that you have a strong desire for success.  

Focus on internships, projects, extracurricular activities 

As a beginner in the IT industry, you hardly have any experience not unless you have been working on a part-time basis. And your recruiter knows this! Here, you have to play your cards well. Otherwise, opportunities will slide away. 

Then, how do you play your cards well? The trick is just simple. Focus on the internships, projects, and other extracurricular activities you have been involved in. When talking about the experience gotten from these activities, you have to format them just like work experience. Just focus on your achievements and not the responsibilities you were entitled to. 

Highlight your skills clearly

Any undergraduate job seeker can talk about what they are capable of, but it takes a significant step to be able to highlight your skills clearly. Here, you are trying to win a job with minimal experience, and you will face some challenges in highlighting your skills. 

In some cases, you might not even know whether you are better at some of them because you have never put them into practice. As a beginner, you must stick to the hard skills. Simple attributes like “critical thinking” or “teamwork” can be confusing! How will the recruiter know you aren’t lying?

Tailor your resume to advert

Every employer out there knows what they are looking for. Do you feel confused about the skills you should include in the resume? That’s normal for the first time. The simplest way to get started is by looking at the job description in the advert. What does it say about beginners?  

The skills mentioned should be the first ones included in the resume. That’s if you have some of them. For instance, if you are applying for a software developer position, you have to highlight skills in the languages mentioned in the advert. That depends on the company. Some will require a description for every skill added. 

Include optional sections

Employers can exhaust everything they are looking for in their candidates. What if there is a conflict with another applicant that you match in skills? With the optional sectionals, you can easily win the job, depending on your explanation. There are various great ideas for the optional sections. You can include volunteering, awards, certifications, languages, and hobbies.

Volunteering shows the commitment and dedication you have to your course. With most companies becoming more international, the ability to speak different languages is an added advantage. If your hobbies are greatly aligned with the IT field, you are likely to win the job. 

Keep it short 

To be clear and avoid repetition as a beginner in the IT field, there is nothing much that you can write about. Keep off repeating yourself by highlighting most things in point form. The standard size of a beginner resume should be one page long. It doesn’t harm if you don’t fill the whole page. 

Ensure that you leave out what is not relevant. Your resume should only emphasize your value, not things you find hard to do. A programming internship without so many explanations can communicate better. This is where you have to cut off our hobbies if possible.

Conclusion 

Your resume tells your employer what you have done in the past. This includes your skills, training, and work experience. Accomplishments and education are added to the list too. A well-written resume will do more than half of the work for you. If you are facing challenges, you can use the tips mentioned above to write a great one. It’s about convincing the employer that you have the right skill set for the job you are applying for.