Step-by-step guide
How to make a resume for freshers, one section at a time.
Everything below assumes you have no job history — only college, projects, and maybe an internship. That is enough. Work through the six steps in order and you will finish with a one-page resume that a recruiter can skim in ten seconds and an applicant tracking system can read without choking.
- • Step 1 — collect projects, internships, coursework, and certifications.
- • Step 2 — header and a two-line objective, no generic filler.
- • Step 3 — education first, with CGPA only if it helps you.
- • Step 4 — projects written as action, method, result.
- • Step 5 — skills grouped and honest.
- • Step 6 — ATS check against the posting, then export the PDF.
Step 1 and 2: raw material, then the top of the page
Open a blank note and dump everything: every project, internship, workshop, certification, club position, hackathon, and relevant subject. Judge nothing yet — you are choosing from a list later, not inventing under pressure.
The header holds five things: your name, the single role title you are applying for, your city, one phone number and one professional email, and a LinkedIn or GitHub link. No photo, no full address, no date of birth.
The objective is two lines and mentions your degree, the role, and one thing you can demonstrably do. 'Final-year B.Tech CSE student targeting backend roles, with two deployed Node.js projects handling live user traffic' beats a paragraph of ambition.
Step 3 and 4: education, then the section that actually decides
Education sits above everything else while you are a fresher, because it is your strongest verified credential. Degree, institution, graduation year, CGPA or percentage if it is above 7.5 or 75%. Class 10 and 12 get one line each, or none if space is tight.
Projects are where the resume is won. Two or three, each with a one-line description of what it does and one to two bullets on what you personally contributed.
Weak: 'Made a web application using React for college project.' Strong: 'Built a React and Firebase attendance dashboard adopted by 4 faculty members, cutting manual roll-call time from 10 minutes to under 1 per class.'
Weak: 'Worked on machine learning model.' Strong: 'Trained a scikit-learn classifier on 12,000 labelled reviews, reaching 91% test accuracy, and exposed it through a Flask endpoint.'
If it is live or on GitHub, link it. A working link is the single most convincing thing on a fresher resume.
Step 5 and 6: skills, matching, and the final check
Group skills as languages, frameworks, tools, and databases. A recruiter scans that shape in two seconds. List only what survives an interview question.
Now match. Paste the job description into the free ATS check and read what it flags as missing. Add the genuinely true items into your project bullets and skills — that is the whole job of tailoring, and it takes two minutes per application.
Before exporting, read the page once for these: one page, single column, no tables, no declaration block, consistent tense, and no typos in your own email address.
Export as PDF unless the employer explicitly asks for Word, and name the file with your name and the role.
Frequently asked questions
Collect your education, projects, internships, and skills first. Then write the header, a two-line objective, education, two or three projects with quantified bullets, internships, and grouped skills. Check it against a real job description and export a one-page PDF.
About fifteen minutes with a builder that drafts the bullets for you, and an hour or two from a blank document. Most of the time goes into the project bullets, which is where it should go.
One page, single column, reverse chronological, standard section headings, no tables or photos. That format reads well to a recruiter and parses correctly in an ATS.
For off-campus and email applications, yes — it is often the only place you explain why this company. DraftlyCV generates one from your resume and the job description.
Yes. Building, the ATS check, and a PDF download are all free on DraftlyCV's free plan.