A high school resume should include your contact information, education details, extracurricular activities, volunteer work, any paid experience you have, skills, and awards or honors. Even if you’ve never held a formal job, you almost certainly have enough material to fill a strong one-page resume. The key is knowing which sections to include and how to present each one so it works for your specific goal, whether that’s a college application, a part-time job, or a summer internship.
Contact Information and Header
Put your full name at the top in a slightly larger font so it stands out, followed by your address, phone number, and email. Use a professional-sounding email address, ideally some version of your first and last name. If you have a personal website or portfolio (for art, coding, writing), include the link here. Skip social media handles unless they’re directly relevant to what you’re applying for.
Education
For a high school student, education belongs near the top of your resume. List your school’s name, city, expected graduation date, and GPA if it’s strong. Use your weighted GPA when it’s higher than your unweighted one. If your school reports class rank and yours is favorable, include it.
Below the basics, add any coursework that won’t appear on a standard transcript. AP or honors classes, dual enrollment college courses, summer academic programs, coding bootcamps, or specialized workshops all belong here. These signal that you’ve pushed yourself beyond what’s required. If you’re applying for a college or job in a specific field, highlight the courses most relevant to that field first.
SAT or ACT scores can go in this section too, particularly if you’re building a resume for college admissions. For job applications, test scores are generally unnecessary.
Extracurricular Activities
This is where most high school resumes really take shape. List each activity with your role, the organization’s name, and the dates you participated. Then add two to four bullet points describing what you actually did, not just that you were a member.
Strong extracurriculars include sports teams, student government, debate or speech, theater productions, school newspaper, robotics club, academic competition teams, band or orchestra, cultural organizations, and faith-based youth groups. What matters more than the specific activity is how you describe your involvement. Instead of writing “member of student council,” write something like “organized a school-wide fundraiser that collected 500 canned goods for a local food bank.” Specific details and numbers make a much bigger impression than vague descriptions.
If you held a leadership position like team captain, club president, or section leader, make sure that title is clearly visible. Employers and admissions officers both look for leadership potential in student resumes.
Volunteer and Community Service
Volunteer experience carries real weight, especially when you don’t have much paid work history. Format it the same way you would a job: your role, the organization, dates, and bullet points listing your responsibilities or contributions. Tutoring younger students, helping at an animal shelter, serving meals at a community kitchen, participating in park cleanups, or volunteering at a hospital all count.
Be specific about what you did. “Greeted visitors and introduced them to available animals” is more useful than “helped out at a shelter.” Each bullet point should describe a concrete action so the reader can picture your contribution.
Work Experience
If you’ve had any paid work at all, include it. Babysitting, mowing lawns, retail jobs, food service, tutoring for pay, working on a family business or farm, and pet sitting all demonstrate work ethic, reliability, and time management. List each position with your title, the employer’s name, dates, and three to five bullet points describing your responsibilities.
Focus your bullet points on transferable skills. A fast food job involves customer service, working under pressure, handling money, and following safety procedures. Babysitting involves responsibility, problem-solving, and communication with parents. These part-time and informal jobs illustrate flexibility, attention to detail, and a willingness to learn, which is exactly what hiring managers expect to see on a student resume.
If you genuinely have no paid experience, skip this section entirely and let your extracurriculars, volunteer work, and skills carry the resume. An empty “Work Experience” section with nothing under it looks worse than not having the section at all.
Skills
A skills section gives you a quick way to highlight abilities that might not fit neatly into other sections. Split them into two informal categories in your mind: technical skills and interpersonal skills.
Technical skills include things like fluency or conversational ability in a second language, proficiency in specific software (Google Workspace, Excel, Adobe Photoshop), basic programming knowledge in Python or HTML, video editing, social media management, or CPR/first aid certification. If you’ve earned any formal certifications through school or outside programs, list them here.
Interpersonal (or “soft”) skills include communication, collaboration, leadership, problem-solving, active listening, and time management. These are worth listing, but they’re stronger when backed up by evidence elsewhere on your resume. Saying you have leadership skills is more convincing when your extracurricular section shows you were captain of the volleyball team.
Awards and Honors
List academic and extracurricular awards in reverse chronological order. Honor roll, subject-specific achievement awards (highest grade in math, French achievement award), most valuable player, perfect attendance recognition, scholarships, and competition placements all belong here. Include the year you received each one. Even awards that seem minor can reinforce a pattern of effort and achievement when grouped together.
Tailoring for College vs. Job Applications
A resume for a college application and a resume for a part-time job should emphasize different things. For college admissions, lean heavily on academics, coursework, test scores, extracurriculars, and community service. Admissions offices want to see intellectual curiosity, leadership, and well-rounded involvement. Mention class projects and topics you studied when they align with your intended major.
For a job application, prioritize any work experience (even informal), relevant skills, and reliability indicators like attendance awards or long-term commitments to activities. Hiring managers at entry-level jobs care most about whether you’ll show up on time, work well with others, and learn quickly. Frame your bullet points around those qualities.
In both cases, you’re selling potential rather than a track record of professional accomplishments. That’s completely normal and expected. Nobody reading a high school student’s resume is looking for ten years of industry experience.
Formatting That Works
Keep your resume to one page. Use a clean, simple font like Arial, Calibri, or Times New Roman in 10 to 12 point size. Set margins no smaller than half an inch on all sides. Avoid graphics, colors, or unusual layouts unless you’re applying to a creative field and know the resume will be read by a person rather than scanned by software.
Save the file as a PDF to preserve your formatting across devices, and name it something clear like “Jane_Smith_Resume.pdf” rather than “resume_final_v3.pdf.” When you’re working with limited experience, clean formatting matters even more because it shows attention to detail and professionalism before anyone reads a single word.
What to Leave Off
Skip your age, date of birth, photo, and references. You don’t need a line that says “References available upon request” since employers will ask if they need them. Leave out hobbies that don’t demonstrate any skill or commitment (watching TV, hanging out with friends). Personal opinions, political affiliations, and religious beliefs generally don’t belong on a resume headed to an employer, though faith-based volunteer work is fine to include as community service.
If something on your resume doesn’t help answer the question “why should we pick this person,” it’s taking up space that could go to something that does.