The blank "Experience" section is the reason a lot of people never build a personal website. If you haven't had an internship or a real job yet, it can feel like there's nothing to put on the page.
There is. Employers hiring for entry-level roles know you're early in your career. What they're looking for is evidence that you can learn, follow through and do good work. That evidence doesn't have to come from a job.
This guide covers what to put on your site instead of work experience, how to describe it so it reads as real proof, and a simple page structure you can copy.
Change the question you're answering
A résumé with no jobs asks, "What have you been employed to do?" That's a question you can't answer yet.
A personal website lets you answer a better one: "What have you done, made or figured out?" Almost everyone has an answer to that. It just takes some digging.
Grab a notebook and list anything from the last few years where you:
- Built, wrote, designed, organized or fixed something
- Taught or helped someone
- Stuck with something hard for weeks or months
- Got a result you can describe (a grade, a finished product, an event that happened, a number that went up)
- Did something for money, even informally
That list is your raw material.
8 things to put on your site instead of work experience
1. Projects (your strongest substitute)
A project is anything you made with a goal. It can be a class assignment, a personal side project, a hackathon entry or something you built just because you were curious.
For each one, write three short parts:
- The goal: what you were trying to do and why
- What you did: your specific steps, tools and decisions
- What happened: the result, what you learned, what you'd do differently
Add a screenshot, photo, link or file wherever you can. A project with something to look at is far more convincing than a description alone.
2. Coursework that produced something
Don't list every class. Pick the one or two that produced real work: a research paper, a case study, a design, a lab report, a business plan. Treat it like a project, with the goal, your part and the outcome.
"Completed Marketing 301" says nothing. "Built a launch plan for a local coffee shop's new location as a team of four; I owned the social media and budget sections" tells someone what you can do.
3. Volunteering
Volunteer work is work. Describe it the same way you'd describe a job: what the organization needed, what you were responsible for, and what changed. If you organized a food drive, how many people helped? If you tutored, how many students and for how long? Only use numbers you actually know.
4. Clubs, teams and leadership
Running a club, captaining a team or organizing an event involves planning, communication and dealing with problems, which is exactly what entry-level jobs need. Focus on one or two specific things you made happen, not just your title.
5. Informal and freelance work
Babysitting, lawn care, reselling clothes online, editing a friend's videos, helping a family business, running a small social account. If someone paid you, or relied on you, it counts. Describe it in plain terms: "Edited 12 YouTube videos for a local fitness creator over three months."
6. Skills you can prove
Skip the long list of buzzwords and the skill bars. Instead, name a handful of skills and link each one to evidence on your site:
- Excel: "Built the budget tracker our club uses (screenshot in Projects)"
- Writing: "Three published articles in the campus paper (links below)"
- Video editing: "60-second recap of our charity event (embedded below)"
If you can't point to an example, either leave the skill off or go make a small project that shows it.
7. Certifications and self-directed learning
Online courses and certifications show initiative, especially when they're related to the role you want. They're most convincing when paired with something you built using what you learned. "Finished an intro to Python course, then wrote a script that sorts my photo library by date" beats the certificate alone.
8. Writing, ideas and opinions
A short post about something in your field (a book you learned from, a trend you've noticed, an analysis of a company you admire) shows how you think. One or two thoughtful pieces are enough. This works especially well if you're aiming for marketing, policy, journalism or strategy roles.
How to describe things so they sound like experience
The words you use matter. A few rules:
Lead with action verbs. Built, organized, wrote, designed, analyzed, taught, launched, fixed.
Be specific about your part. In group work, say what you personally did. "Our team built an app" is vague. "I designed the sign-up flow and ran user tests with five classmates" is clear.
Show the result. Even small results count: the event happened, the club adopted your system, the professor used your project as an example, the shop sold out of what you made.
Don't inflate. Calling a class project "consulting" or a group chat "a community of members" backfires when someone asks a follow-up question. Plain and true is more impressive than big and vague.
A quick before and after:
Before: "Member of the environmental club."
After: "Organized our club's first campus clean-up. Recruited volunteers through Instagram and class announcements, coordinated supplies with facilities, and wrote the recap post that got us a feature in the student newsletter."
A simple page structure you can copy
Here's a layout that works well when you don't have job history yet. You can use the same order on a single page:
- Headline: "Second-year economics student interested in data analysis. Looking for summer 2027 internships."
- About: three to five sentences on what you study, what you're curious about and one memorable detail.
- Projects: two to four, each with goal, action and result plus a visual.
- Leadership and volunteering: one or two entries, written like jobs.
- Skills: a short list, each linked to evidence above.
- Learning: relevant courses or certifications.
- Contact: email, LinkedIn and a downloadable résumé.
Notice what's missing: an empty "Experience" heading. Leave it out entirely until you have something to put there. Your projects and leadership sections do the same job.
For more layout ideas by major, see our personal website examples for college students.
Getting the story out of your head
The hardest part is usually not design. It's remembering what you did and putting it into words. A few prompts help:
- What's something you've made that you'd show a friend?
- When did someone thank you for helping them?
- What's a problem you solved that nobody asked you to solve?
- What did you spend a lot of time on last year, and what came of it?
This is the idea behind the AI interview in CraftedBio. Upload whatever you have, even a very short résumé, and the AI co-writer asks follow-up questions like these about each project and activity. Your answers become the descriptions on your site, so you're not staring at a blank page trying to sound impressive.
What to leave off
- An empty or "coming soon" Experience section. Leave it out until you can fill it.
- High school activities, unless you're in your first year of college and they're strong.
- Every class you've taken. Pick the ones that produced work.
- Skill percentages and long buzzword lists. Show the skill instead.
- Filler statements like "hard-working team player." Let the examples say that for you.
Quick checklist
- A headline that says what you study and what you're looking for
- Two to four projects, each with goal, action, result and a visual
- Volunteering, leadership or informal work written like real roles
- Skills linked to evidence on the page
- No empty Experience section
- Contact info and a résumé download
- Checked on a phone
You have more than you think
No work experience doesn't mean nothing to show. It means your proof comes from projects, classes, volunteering and the things you did on your own time. Write those up clearly, add something people can see, and your site will do more for you than a résumé with a blank section ever could.
When you're ready, create your free CraftedBio site. Upload what you have and let the interview help you fill in the rest. Then put the link to work with our guide on adding a personal website to your LinkedIn profile.