Finding first job at 17 (resume writing)

arcticmonkeysfan

So here's the deal. I'm a 17 year-old grade 11 student living in Kanata (A suburb of Ottawa), Ontario, Canada. I have no former employment history. I have some volunteer experience. I worked for a month as a camp counselor working with children 6-12 years old. I received 40 hours of training before I did that. I'm a pretty responsible kid and I get good grades in school.

I live less than 5 minutes from a large outdoor strip mall where there are some places looking to hire. I am mainly looking for some help on what I should write on my resume (but any advice iwould be gladly welcomed). So far all I've put is contact information, short kind of personal profile (just stuff like highly motivated, punctual etc. no hobbies or shit), employment history (none), volunteer experience and education (completed grade 10).

SniperGuy

I wouldn't suggest actually putting "I don't have hobbies" on the resume. If you don't, just leave them out, and tell them you're available whenever after school/during the summer, etc. Saying you don't have hobbies makes you sound like you're boring, no offense.

Philodox

Since you have no work experience I would highly recommend you move to a skills based resume. Basically how a skills based resume works is instead of writing Work Experience and then listing what you've done at all your jobs, you have a section called skills where you list all your skills and where you acquired them.

E.g.

Skills

Leadership:
*organized schedule for group of volunteers
*assumed lead role in group project in class x
*chaired school _____ club

When you write a resume, make sure all the words that follow a bullet are verbs in the appropriate tense. You never want to write

Leadership:
*in school I tutored younger grades

MotherFirefly

You can usually find some Resume templates online, Windows office tends to have some ones that are okay, they tend to be a good guideline.

Good things to cover are skills you have, you could point out academic achievements and note that you're a hard worker. If you ever did anything like debate or any clubs you could use that to illustrate your communication skills.

I actually recommend the second one, and put some places where you volunteered in place of work experience.

Here are a couple of templates I found that might be a good start
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/TC062851841033.aspx?pid=CT101448941033
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/TC063685891033.aspx?pid=CT101449351033

supabeast

I don’t know much about crappy retail jobs for teenagers in Canada, but here in the states nobody really expects you to turn in a resume. American kids just fill out the job applications.

arcticmonkeysfan

Well I didn't write "I don't have hobbies" I just didn't list any.

Thanks for the templates MotherFirefly, they look pretty useful.

Tucanwarrior13

Any strip mall where you're going to find a job at 17 most likely won't ask you for a resume. They'll have you fill out an application, and in that application they'll ask you for prior work experience, and job skills. Don't worry about it too much.