A question I often get is “I have no experience, what do I do?”

This question often comes from people early on in their educational career or they’re at high school or early in university.

The first thing I’m going to say is, don’t freak out, it’s okay!

Chances are the vast majority of people at your age, at your education level have about the same level of experience, which is probably not much.

Now, if you’re applying for retail or fast food jobs, having limited experience is going to be very normal.

One thing to realise is, a resume isn’t just about the jobs that you’ve had.

It’s also about the skills that you have, the achievements you have, any results that you’ve been able to achieve or different teams that you’ve been apart of.

I’m going to share in a moment what some of those things you can do to highlight those experiences and how those experiences can really play a part in helping you stand out with your resume.

One of the things we can look at is do you play any team sports or are you apart of any team activities?

Here’s a couple of things in here; if you are showing up to training 2 or 3 times a week every week for an entire season, that demonstrates a level of commitment, that demonstrates a level of reliability.

If you have some things or duties you do as part of a volunteering program, maybe at a local community group and you’re there doing that every single week.

It might occur to you that that’s just something that you do every week but it’s something that could potentially go on your resume and demonstrate reliability, accountability, your working with different people and your demonstrating that you’ve got something going for you.

If any of those positions have some form of leadership role, even if it’s a team manager, vice-captain, team captain. Things like that, if you are supporting or supervising other people, which is often quite common depending on your experience in volunteer type roles… those are really great for people to see that you are someone who has the ability to have those communication skills – which are actually so important when you are applying for a job.

If you don’t have any experience, don’t freak out! Start to have a look out at what some of the things that you already have, that you might recognise on your resume.

Your resume isn’t just about jobs; it’s about your skills.

If you’re thinking that you have absolutely nothing at all or that you really want to go out and make something, I’m going to say go out and create the experiences you want to create.

I had someone reach out to me the other day and they literally just sent me a message saying “ Hey, this is a cold message but I would like to have an internship, I’m studying in this particular area and I’m willing to do absolutely anything”.

Now, I sent him a message back and said, “Hey, let’s have a chat” and essentially I’ve given him an internship.

Partially the time was right, and it won’t always work out for that to happen but I asked him how long he waited to send that message and he said that he wanted to do that a year ago when he first met me.

So I’m going to invite you to just go out and do anything you can to let people know that you want experience.

If you’re willing to do a range of things, say” I’m willing to do a range of things” and then you can take that and actually build it up and create those experiences.

A lot of people think that they don’t have the opportunity, that nothing is going to happen or that there’s nothing available. This may be true, but I’m going to tell you that you have the ability to go out and take some action to create some experience for your resume for your future