Most placement officers and HR managers spend under 15 seconds on a fresher resume. In that window, your resume either earns a closer look or gets filtered out. This guide tells you exactly what decisions to make, section by section.
The One-Page Rule Is Not Flexible for Freshers
Your resume must be exactly one page. If you are struggling to fill a page, your font size is too small — use 11pt for body text and 13pt for section headings. If you cannot fit everything on one page, you are including irrelevant content — remove it. Recruiters at large IT companies process 200 to 500 resumes per opening and physically discard multi-page fresher resumes.
Contact Section
Include: full name (large, at the top), personal email (professional format — not nicknames), mobile number, LinkedIn URL, GitHub URL if you have repositories. Do not include: date of birth, photo, marital status, full home address, father’s name. These are not legally required and consume space that should go to your skills.
Education Section
List in reverse chronological order: degree, college name, CGPA or percentage (whichever is higher — if your CGPA is below 6.5, show percentage), and graduation year. Include Class 12 and Class 10 marks only if both are above 75%. If your CGPA is below the company cut-off, you cannot change that — but do not falsify it. Verification catches this every time.
Skills Section
Separate into: Programming Languages (list only what you can write real code in — not “familiar with”), Tools & Technologies, and optionally Soft Skills (keep to three items maximum). The biggest mistake freshers make is listing technologies they vaguely know from YouTube tutorials. Interviewers will probe every item on your skills list.
Projects Section — The Most Important Section for Freshers
Include two to three projects. For each: one-line title with tech stack, two-sentence description (what problem it solved, what you built), one bullet point on your specific contribution if it was a group project, and a GitHub link if the code is clean. A project without a GitHub link is 40% less credible than one with it. Clean up your repositories before applying — delete placeholder code and write a one-paragraph README.
ATS Formatting Rules
ATS (Applicant Tracking Systems) are used by TCS, Infosys, Wipro, and Accenture to pre-screen resumes. Rules: use standard section headings (Education, Skills, Projects — not creative names like “My Journey”), avoid tables and columns (ATS cannot parse them reliably), use a plain PDF export, and include keywords from the job description in your skills and project descriptions. The keyword that appears in the job description but not in your resume is an automatic filter-out in most ATS systems.
What Not to Include
Objective statements that say “seeking a challenging position” — they add zero information. Class 12 and 10 marks if below 70%. Extra-curricular activities that have no professional relevance. References — “references available on request” wastes two lines. A “hobbies” section unless you have a genuinely interesting one (published writing, competitive programming, open source contributions).