Crafting a resume can seem challenging, especially if you don’t have much work experience yet. But, there are several strategies you can use to showcase your skills and potential.

Add School ProjectsThe projects section is a super important section to curate if you don’t have much real-world software experience. School projects are a great way to add experience and beef up your resume. Even for relatively-simple school projects, we’ve heard interviewers say “She’s got this Sudoku Solver project on her resume. I love to see that.” List the project title, what class you completed the project in, the date of the project, the technologies used, and what the project accomplished.

Include Any ExperienceInclude any job experience you’ve had, even if it’s babysitting, helping out in a family business, or participating in community activities. With these less technical experiences, you can focus on soft skills that you learned, such as communication, organizational skills, or time management. Make sure to emphasize what you accomplished in each role. If software or coding was part of your day-to-day on the job, definitely highlight that!

While employers obviously would prefer more technical experience, they understand that some students don’t have that experience yet. For most internships, they’re just looking to see if you’ve applied yourself to something in the past, which will tell them that you’re responsible and hard-working.

Take CoursesConsider taking online courses related to your interests. You’ll find tons of free courses online in areas like web design, neural networks, and data science. An added benefit of these courses is that they often culminate in projects, which you can add to your resume. Codecademy is a great resource in this area. Plus, tons of YouTube videos will take you step-by-step through building a project. It doesn’t have to be original or new, it just has to show that you’re taking an interest in coding and can learn on your own.

High School ExperienceIf you’re just starting out in college and have relevant high school experience, include it. Sports, extracurriculars, and academic achievement can all add value to your resume. You can start to phase these bullet points out and replace them with more recent and relevant experience as you go.