A high school resume feels impossible for one reason: the section everyone thinks matters most, work experience, is empty. Here is the reframe that fixes it. The managers who hire teenagers, at grocery stores, fast-food counters, pools, and summer camps, are not screening for work history. They are screening for three things: will this kid show up, can they follow instructions, and can they talk to a customer without freezing. Every line on the example below exists to answer one of those three questions with evidence, and none of it requires a previous paycheck.
Know who reads it. A store or shift manager spends under a minute on a teen application, usually while doing something else, and half of that minute goes to two practical items: your availability and how you would get to work. The other half goes to anything that signals reliability, like a GPA, an attendance record, a sports season completed, or a volunteer commitment kept for more than a month. That is the whole read. A high schooler who states availability clearly and shows one sustained commitment beats a vague one-page essay every time.
The structure that works for a student with no job history flips the adult resume upside down: education first with real detail, then an experience section built from babysitting, volunteering, and school responsibilities, then activities, then skills. The one-line objective sits at the top and does the work a summary does for adults: who you are, what you are applying for, and when you can work. Our full no-experience guide covers the same framework for any age; this page applies it to the specific case of a 15-to-18-year-old.
Before writing anything, take inventory of what actually counts as experience, because almost every teenager undercounts. Paid but informal work counts: babysitting, lawn care, snow shoveling, pet sitting, tutoring a neighbor's kid, reselling sneakers. Unpaid responsibility counts: running the concession stand at games, managing a club's social media account, organizing a fundraiser, shelving at the library, watching younger siblings every day after school. Each of these produces real bullets with real numbers: how many kids, how many hours a week, how much money raised, how long you kept the commitment.
Make education the strongest section on the page, because right now it is your job. List your school, expected graduation date, and GPA if it is 3.0 or above. Then add the lines adults skip: honor roll semesters, perfect or near-perfect attendance, relevant electives (a foods class for a restaurant job, business math for a cashier job), and any academic awards. Attendance is the sleeper item; a manager hiring for weekend shifts cares more about "missed two days in three years" than about your GPA, because attendance is the exact behavior they are trying to predict.
Write your informal work like a job, with numbers. "Babysitter" becomes an entry with dates, and the bullets follow the same shape professionals use: what you did, at what scale, with what result. "Provide regular after-school care for three children ages 4 to 9, including homework help and dinner prep, for four families who rebook weekly" is a real work-history line. Repeat clients are your version of a performance review: they prove someone trusted you with something that mattered and chose you again. The bullet-writing guide shows how to find honest numbers in small jobs.
Turn activities into evidence of showing up. Sports, band, theater, clubs, and church groups all prove the same things a job proves: commitment over a season, being on time for practices, working inside a team with a role. Write them with duration and role, not just membership: "varsity soccer, two seasons, led warm-ups as team captain" or "stage crew for three productions, responsible for scene changes under 40 seconds." One sustained activity beats five one-time entries, so lead with whatever you have stuck with longest, even if it feels ordinary to you.
Keep the skills section practical and honest. First employers want a short list they can act on: cash handling from a fundraiser, Google Docs and Sheets from school, Spanish at home, CPR certification from a babysitting course, comfort talking to strangers from retail volunteering. Skip personality claims like "hard worker" as skills; those belong as evidence in your bullets, not as words in a list. Six to ten concrete items is plenty, and every one should survive the follow-up question "tell me about a time you used that." The skills section guide covers what belongs where.
State your availability and logistics where the manager can't miss them. Put your available days and hours in the objective or a short line near the top: "available weekends and weekday evenings after 4 p.m." If your state requires a work permit and you have one or know how to get one, say so. If you have reliable transportation, say that too. These unglamorous lines answer the manager's first three practical questions before the interview, and teens who answer them on paper get called back first because they are easier to schedule.
A note on the objective line, because this is the one resume situation where objectives beat summaries outright. You have no career to summarize, so a summary would be padding; an objective states the goal and your two best facts in one or two sentences. The three examples further down this page show the pattern for retail, food service, and summer-camp applications. Rewrite the objective for each application so it names the actual job; "seeking a cashier position at your store" reads generic, while naming the role and your availability reads like someone who wants this specific job.
Formatting rules for a first resume: one page with room to spare, one column, a normal font at 11 or 12 points, and a PDF file named with your actual name. No photo, no colors, no graphics, no template with a sidebar. Have one adult proofread it, because a single spelling error weighs more on a short resume than on a long one. If you submit through an online application portal, the same parsing rules that apply to adult resumes apply to yours; the resume format guide has the complete checklist, and all of it applies at 16.
Use this page as a kit. The example below is a complete, realistic high school resume rendered by our real template engine; the "Use this example" button opens it in the builder so you can swap in your own school, jobs, and activities instead of starting blank. Then pull phrasing from the bullet bank, check the keyword list against the application, and read the ATS section at the bottom, because plenty of chain stores run even teen applications through screening software before a human reads them.
Frequently asked questions
- I have literally nothing to put on a resume. What do I do?
- You have more than you think; the problem is that none of it feels official, so you discount it. Run this inventory honestly. Money you have earned any way at all: babysitting, mowing, pet sitting, tutoring, reselling, helping a parent's business. Responsibility you have held: watching siblings, a role in a club, a team position, managing anything for a group, from a spreadsheet to a social account. Commitments you have kept: a sport for a season, volunteering for a summer, band for two years. School evidence: GPA above 3.0, honor roll, attendance, relevant classes. Almost every teenager can fill a page from that list, and each item converts to a bullet with a number: how many kids, how many weeks, how much money, how many hours. If the inventory is truly thin, spend the next month creating one entry: sign up to volunteer somewhere with regular shifts, get a CPR or food handler certification (both are cheap and fast), and put those on the page. A resume with one certification, one volunteering commitment, and a clear availability line is a fully competitive first-job resume. The no-experience guide walks the same inventory in more depth.
- Do I even need a resume for a fast-food or retail job?
- Often the application form is technically enough, and plenty of teens get hired without a resume. You should bring one anyway, for three reasons that have nothing to do with formality. First, it changes how managers read you: a 16-year-old who hands over a clean one-page resume has already demonstrated preparation, which is the exact trait the manager is trying to screen for, and it separates you from every applicant who scribbled the form in the parking lot. Second, it makes the online application better: most hiring portals ask you to describe experience in free-text boxes, and having your bullets already written means you paste strong, numbered lines instead of improvising weak ones. Third, it is your interview script: managers interviewing teens work straight down the page ("tell me about the babysitting"), so a resume you wrote carefully turns the interview into questions you have already answered. Print two copies on plain paper, bring them to the interview even if you applied online, and hand one over when asked about your experience. Worst case, nobody looks at it and you lost nothing; the common case is that it quietly moves you to the top of a stack of identical applications.
- Should I include my GPA, and what if mine is low?
- Include it at 3.0 or above; leave it off below that, with no explanation needed, because an absent GPA on a teen resume is unremarkable while a 2.4 in print invites a question you do not want to lead with. If your GPA is under 3.0, replace it with whatever academic evidence is stronger: attendance ("missed two days in three years" beats most GPAs for an employer scheduling weekend shifts), an upward trend you can state honestly ("B average junior year, up from sophomore year"), specific class performance ("A in Business Math"), or teacher references who will vouch for effort. Managers hiring for hourly roles are not admissions officers; they read GPA as a proxy for follow-through, and any other proof of follow-through substitutes cleanly. Two edge cases worth knowing. Some competitive programs for teens (bank internships, hospital volunteer programs, junior counselor roles) do screen on GPA and say so; for those, the stated minimum is real, and your school counselor can sometimes provide context if you are close. And if you are asked your GPA directly on an application form, answer truthfully; the resume is where you choose emphasis, but a form question is a direct question, and getting caught rounding up ends the process everywhere.
- How do I list babysitting, lawn mowing, and other odd jobs so they look real?
- Format them exactly like employment, because they are employment: a role title ("Babysitter", "Lawn Care, self-employed"), dates with a start month and year, and bullets with numbers. The credibility comes from three details most teens leave out. Scale: how many families, lawns, or clients, and how many hours a week. Duration and repetition: "four families who rebook weekly" or "six lawns on a weekly schedule for two summers" proves people trusted you repeatedly, which is the entire question a first employer is asking. Money handling where true: invoicing, collecting payment, making change, or balancing a fundraiser drawer all map directly onto register work. Under a role like babysitting, one bullet about responsibilities (meals, homework, bedtime) and one about trust signals (rebooking, references available) is enough; do not pad to four bullets. List yourself as "self-employed" or "private families" in the company field rather than naming clients, and have one or two of those adults ready as references, asked in advance. Written this way, informal work reads as what it is: paid, repeated, accountable work. Written as a vague line ("some babysitting"), the same history reads as filler. The difference is entirely in the numbers and the dates.
- Should I put references or "references available upon request" on my resume?
- Skip the "references available upon request" line; it is assumed and spends a line saying nothing. But for a teenager, references deserve more preparation than for an adult, because you lack employers and the people who can vouch for you are non-obvious: a babysitting parent, a coach, a club advisor, a teacher, a volunteer coordinator. Do three things before you apply anywhere. First, choose two or three adults who have seen you keep a commitment, and ask their permission directly; an adult who has agreed in advance gives a warmer, faster reference than one caught off guard by a call. Second, collect their preferred contact info and how they know you, and keep it in a separate one-page document you bring to interviews, because hourly employers often ask for references on the spot and teens who produce a prepared sheet stand out sharply. Third, tell your references what job you applied for, so their comments land on the right traits (reliability, punctuality, honesty with money). One family-friend rule: references should not share your last name. A parent's praise counts for nothing, but the parent of the kids you babysit is one of the strongest references a first-time applicant can have.
- What about work permits, age rules, and putting my age on the resume?
- Do not put your age or birth date on the resume; employers who need age information will ask on the application form, where it is a legitimate question for minor-labor compliance, and the resume is not the place for it. What you should handle proactively is the paperwork that makes you easy to hire. Rules vary by state: some states require a work permit or working papers for minors (often issued through your school office), some only require an age certificate on request, and federal law restricts hours and certain tasks for 14- and 15-year-olds, with looser rules at 16 and 17. Find out your state's requirement from your school counselor or the state labor department site, and get the permit process started before you apply, because "I already have my work permit" removes the manager's last administrative reason to prefer an older applicant. If your state requires nothing, say nothing. Hour limits are the manager's problem to schedule around, not yours to apologize for; your job is to state availability precisely so scheduling is easy. And expected graduation date on the education line already tells any manager your approximate age, which is all they need at the resume stage.