Fresher Resume Guide India 2026: How to Write a Resume with No Experience

Fresher software engineer resume structure for India:

Recommended section order:

1. Contact information
2. Education
3. Technical skills
4. Projects (most important section; comes before any internships for freshers with strong projects)
5. Internships (if any)
6. Certifications
7. Extra-curricular activities (optional but valuable)

What to include:

1. Contact information: - Full name (at the top, large font) - Phone number with country code (+91) - Professional email (firstname.lastname@gmail.com; NOT nicknames like coolcoder99@gmail.com) - LinkedIn URL (set a custom URL: linkedin.com/in/yourname) - GitHub URL (if you have public repositories with real code) - City only (no full address needed)

2. Education: - Degree name (Bachelor of Engineering / Bachelor of Technology / Master of Technology) - Branch (Computer Science Engineering, Information Technology, Electronics and Communication) - College/University name - CGPA (include if 7.0 or above; add 'out of 10' for clarity) - Graduation year - 10th: board name (CBSE/ICSE/State Board), school name, percentage - 12th: board name, school/junior college name, percentage or marks/500

Why 10th and 12th matter: almost every Indian company (IT services and many product companies) asks for 10th, 12th, and graduation marks in their application form and initial screening. Do not omit them.

What NOT to include: photo (never on a resume in India; it creates bias and is not required), date of birth, father's name, religion, caste (none of these belong on a professional resume).

The projects section is the most important section on a fresher's resume:

1. What counts as a project: - Academic projects (even if assigned as coursework; reframe as your own work if you contributed significantly) - Personal projects you built to learn a technology - Projects from hackathons - Contributions to open source repositories - Freelance work (a website you built for someone, even for free, counts)

Do NOT list:

• Projects where you only watched a tutorial and copy-pasted the code
• Projects that are clearly just a tutorial (Todo app in React from a YouTube tutorial is not a project)
• Group projects where you did not meaningfully contribute

2. How to describe each project: Format: Project Name (Technology Stack) | GitHub link | Live URL (if deployed) Description (2-3 bullet points): - What the project does: 'A full-stack expense tracker that allows users to log, categorise, and visualise their monthly spending.' - Technology and technical decisions: 'Built with React (frontend), Node.js + Express (REST API), and PostgreSQL (database). Used JWT for authentication and deployed on Vercel + Railway.' - Quantified impact or notable feature: 'Used by 50+ users in its first month. Reduced manual expense logging time by 70% vs spreadsheets for target users.'

3. Ideal projects for an Indian fresher resume: - Full-stack web application with authentication, CRUD operations, and deployment - REST API with documentation (Swagger/Postman collection) - Data science project with a real dataset and a deployed Streamlit or Gradio interface - Mobile app (Flutter or React Native) with a real use case - LeetCode-style competitive programming tool or Discord bot (shows coding ability and creativity)

4. Deployment matters: A deployed project with a real URL is worth significantly more than a GitHub repository. Free deployment: Vercel or Netlify (frontend), Railway or Render (backend), Supabase or PlanetScale (database), Hugging Face Spaces (ML models).

Technical skills section for fresher resumes:

1. What to include in technical skills: List only technologies you can confidently discuss in an interview. Categories: - Programming languages: Python, Java, C++, JavaScript, SQL - Frameworks and libraries: React, Node.js, Express.js, Django, Spring Boot, Pandas, NumPy - Databases: MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB - Tools and platforms: Git, GitHub, Docker (basics), Linux/Bash, Postman, VS Code - Concepts (optional): REST APIs, OOP, Data Structures and Algorithms, Agile, CI/CD (if you have used GitHub Actions)

Never list: technologies you only know by name (Kubernetes, Kafka, Kubernetes, gRPC if you have never used them). If an interviewer asks you about something on your resume and you cannot answer, it creates a bad impression.

2. ATS (Applicant Tracking System) optimisation: Large IT services companies (TCS, Infosys, Wipro) and many product companies use ATS systems to filter resumes before a human sees them.

ATS best practices:

• Save your resume as a PDF (most ATS systems parse PDFs correctly; avoid Word .doc files with complex formatting)
• Use a clean, single-column format (no tables, no text boxes, no images)
• Include keywords from the job description (if the JD says 'Java' and 'Spring Boot', make sure these appear in your resume)
• Use standard section headings (Education, Projects, Skills; non-standard headings like 'My Creations' may confuse ATS parsers)

3. Resume formatting: - Length: 1 page for freshers (strictly; 2 pages is acceptable only with significant internship experience) - Font: Calibri, Arial, or Times New Roman; 10-12pt for body text - Margins: 0.5-1 inch on all sides - No colours (except possibly your name in a dark professional colour) - No photos, no graphics, no fancy borders

Resume tips for specific Indian placement scenarios:

1. TCS NQT (National Qualifier Test): TCS primarily filters on: CGPA (minimum 60% aggregate, no active backlogs), and performance on the NQT (aptitude, numerical ability, verbal ability, programming logic). The resume is less important than the NQT score for the initial filter. Resume matters for the technical interview round. Include: all academic marks (10th, 12th, graduation CGPA), a clean project section, and relevant skills (Java/Python is preferred; TCS trains in Java internally).

2. Infosys, Wipro, HCL, Cognizant: Similar to TCS: aptitude test first, then technical and HR rounds. Resume matters for the interview stage. Include clear, jargon-free project descriptions. Communication in the HR round is often as important as technical knowledge at these companies.

3. Product company off-campus drives (Flipkart, Swiggy, CRED): These companies use online coding tests (HackerRank or similar) as the first filter. Only candidates who score above the cutoff on coding tests are reviewed by HR. Your resume matters significantly more here because the pool is smaller and HR is looking for candidates who stand out. Projects with real deployments, open source contributions, and competitive programming achievements (Codeforces, LeetCode rating, ICPC participation) are all valuable.

4. Startup off-campus applications: For Series A-C startups hiring freshers: the resume is your primary filter. Your GitHub profile and deployed projects matter as much as your resume text. A fresher with a live, deployed project that solves a real problem is often preferred over a fresher with a high CGPA but no projects.