Entry Level 
New Grad Resume Guide
Build a compelling resume even with limited experience. Learn how to maximize your internships, projects, and education to land your first software engineering role.
Markus Fink
Senior Technical Recruiter, Ex - Google, Airbnb
Last updated: January 2026 • 10 min read
What You'll Learn
Resume Structure for New Grads
As a new grad, prioritize sections differently than experienced engineers:
- Education — Lead with this (move to bottom once you have 2+ years experience)
- Experience — Internships, part-time roles, research
- Projects — Critical for new grads—2-3 substantial projects
- Technical Skills — Languages, frameworks, tools
Keep it to one page. No exceptions for new grads.
Maximizing Your Education Section
Make your education section work harder:
- GPA — Include if 3.5+ (or major GPA if higher)
- Relevant coursework — List 4-6 courses relevant to the role
- Honors — Dean's List, scholarships, awards
- Teaching — TA positions show mastery and communication
Example: "B.S. Computer Science, GPA: 3.8/4.0 | Dean's List (6 semesters) | Relevant: Data Structures, Algorithms, Databases, Distributed Systems"
Showcasing Projects
Projects are your experience proxies. Structure them like jobs:
TaskFlow | React, Node.js, PostgreSQL, AWS
- Built full-stack task management app with real-time collaboration for 100+ beta users
- Implemented OAuth 2.0 authentication and RESTful API handling 10K+ daily requests
- Deployed on AWS with Docker, achieving 99.9% uptime over 6 months
Project selection tips:
- Choose projects with real users or metrics
- Include at least one full-stack project
- Show variety — web app, mobile, data/ML, systems
- Link to live demos and clean GitHub repos
Internship Experience
Even short internships matter. Maximize their impact:
- Quantify everything — Lines of code, users affected, performance gains
- Show ownership — "Led" and "built" instead of "helped" and "assisted"
- Include internship projects that shipped or were merged
- Mention return offers if you received one (shows you performed well)
No internship? Research assistantships, open source contributions, and substantial freelance work count.
Technical Skills
Be strategic about your skills section:
- Languages — List 3-5 you're genuinely proficient in
- Frameworks — Match to the role (React for frontend, Spring for backend)
- Tools — Git, Docker, AWS/GCP basics are expected
- Don't list — HTML/CSS (assumed), Microsoft Office, "soft skills"
Warning: Only list what you can discuss in an interview. Getting asked about something you listed but can't explain is a red flag.
Common New Grad Mistakes
- Objective statements — Waste of space. Remove them.
- Two pages — Never. You don't have enough experience yet.
- Course projects only — Add personal or open source projects too.
- No metrics — "Built a website" vs "Built website serving 500 daily users"
- Too many languages — Listing 10 languages suggests mastery of none.
- Unprofessional email — Get a simple firstname.lastname@gmail.com