An Entry Level Human Resources Resume Template You Can Copy

Human resources can be a rewarding industry. You’ll make a real difference to staff members’ quality of life and help shape the corporate culture of a company, as well as its productivity and engagement levels.

Plus, job security and wages tend to be higher than average — meaning you get to feel good about what you earn as well as what you do.

If you think human resources could be the right field for you, this entry-level human resources resume template will help you apply for jobs. Alternatively, use our resume builder to create a Human Resources Intern or Human Resources Assistant resume in minutes.

Entry Level Human Resources Resume Sections & Examples

Before we get started, here are some quick tips to remember:

• Make sure your resume is no longer than one A4 page
• Use keywords from the job listing to help you demonstrate your suitability for the role and beat ATS machine resume readers
• Customize your resume for each company and role
• Save your resume file as “First Name Surname Resume” so recruiters can quickly find it

You can read more general resume tips in our blog post on what to include in a resume. For now, however, let’s break down how you should structure your resume when applying for human resources roles.

Your Name and Contact Details

Don’t title your resume “Resume.” Instead, use your full name as the document title. For example: “Sarah Nguyen” or “Mark Wilson.”

Beneath your name, list your phone number and a professional-sounding email address. Gmail and other free email hosts are fine, as long as the address doesn’t raise eyebrows. You can also choose to include a link to your LinkedIn. Don’t, however, add your date of birth or a photo.

For a human resources role, you generally wouldn’t need to include any other contact details. However, depending on the company you’re applying for, you could choose to add additional relevant links. For example, if you were applying for an HR role at a graphic design company and had an actively updated DeviantArt portfolio, you might decide to include the link here.

Professional Summary

Your professional summary should be a brief description of yourself. Stick to a maximum of five sentences, although one to three will in most cases be sufficient for an entry-level role. Make sure to include key skills and any relevant achievements. For example:

Recent Human Resources graduate with good team skills. I have experience of rostering team members and training new staff.

Skills

As you have limited relevant work experience, this section will take on an important role in your resume. Use it to demonstrate how you have the required skills for your job, even though you may have gained them in other industries or through your studies.

Aim to include around five to eight skills. These will ideally be ones that are mentioned in the job listing, but make sure you’re being genuine too. Try to back them up with evidence where possible. For example:

Staff training: regularly trained new baristas HR law: maintained a 4.0 GPA in my HR Law modules

Certifications

If you have any relevant certifications or licenses, you can list them here. Bear in mind that this is not the same as your education section, which is where your college degrees and/or high school diploma should go. The certifications you include here should be more specialized and specific to the skills required for the workplace. For example:

Fundamental Payroll Certification (FPC) from the American Payroll Association Diversity and Inclusion Training Certificate from eCornell First Aid Certification from the American Red Cross

Work History

Jobs, internships and volunteer experience should be listed in reverse chronological order here. Structure them like this:

Job title, Company, Start month and year—End month and year

• Key task and/or achievement that’s relevant to the role you’re applying for
• Other relevant key task and/or achievement

For example: HR Intern, ABC Consulting, June 2021 — September 2021

• Screened resumes and scheduled interviews as part of staff recruitment
• Gathered and checked payroll data; commended by manager for lack of errors

Since you’re applying for entry-level human resources roles, you probably don’t yet have a lot of HR-specific experience. However, you might find you have more relevant experience than you think.

Mindmap all the times you’ve shown new staff members the ropes, helped out with rostering, reconciled problems or done other typical human resources tasks. These will be the points you want to highlight on your resume.

Try to include keywords from the job listing, and where possible, mention achievements and metrics rather than responsibilities. For example, it’s better to say “Created a training document that reduced errors among new hires by 30%” than “Responsible for helping new hires.”

As you gain more experience, you’ll want to prune your resume of less relevant roles. However, for entry-level positions, any work history is better than nothing! Just make sure that if you do have more impressive experience, it’s not pushed too far down your curriculum by other roles.

Education

The education section is normally one of the last things in a resume. However, you may want to move it above the certifications and work history sections if it’s more relevant for the role than your recent work experience or you’re a recent graduate.

List your education in reverse chronological order. If you’ve graduated from college, there’s no need to add your high school certificate. As for your GPA, only include it if you’re a recent graduate with a GPA of 3.5 or above.

For example:

Bachelor of Science in Professional Studies (BSPS), Major in Human Resources Management, 2021 (GPA: 3.7) University of Richmond

Apply for Entry Level Human Resources Roles with Confidence

Applying for jobs can be an anxious process, especially if you’re new to the workforce or targeting a human resources role for the first time. However, a polished and professional resume will help you make a positive first impression.

Your resume should demonstrate your strengths, as well as being tailored to each role and company you apply for. And since the use of applicant tracking systems is more common every year, it also needs to be machine-readable.

Here at Rocket Resume, we have hundreds of entry-level human resources resume templates for you to choose from. What’s more, our resume builder will suggest the ideal resume structure for applicants who have limited workplace experience.

You’ll be able to pick from and amend recruiter-approved phrasing to describe your strengths and accomplishments, plus review our suggestions for the tricky professional summary.

Craft your resume in minutes, so you can start applying for entry-level human resources roles with confidence.