JSON Resume for New Graduates

New Graduate Resume in JSON Resume Format

As a recent graduate, your resume needs to compensate for limited work experience by highlighting education, academic projects, internships, and relevant skills.

Education-Heavy Structure

"education": [
  {
    "institution": "University of California, Berkeley",
    "area": "Computer Science",
    "studyType": "Bachelor of Science",
    "startDate": "2020-08",
    "endDate": "2024-05",
    "score": "3.8 GPA",
    "courses": [
      "CS 61B: Data Structures",
      "CS 162: Operating Systems",
      "CS 186: Database Systems",
      "CS 189: Machine Learning"
    ]
  }
]

Internships as Work Experience

Internships go in the work section, not a separate section:

"work": [
  {
    "name": "Google",
    "position": "Software Engineering Intern",
    "startDate": "2023-06",
    "endDate": "2023-09",
    "summary": "Cloud Infrastructure team",
    "highlights": [
      "Built internal tool for monitoring Kubernetes cluster health (Go, React)",
      "Reduced alert noise by 30% through improved anomaly detection thresholds",
      "Presented project to 50+ engineers at end-of-internship showcase"
    ]
  }
]

Academic Projects

Use the projects section for capstone projects, research, and class projects:

"projects": [
  {
    "name": "Distributed Key-Value Store",
    "description": "Capstone project: Raft consensus-based distributed KV store in Go",
    "highlights": ["Implemented leader election, log replication, and snapshotting", "Handled network partitions and node failures gracefully"],
    "keywords": ["Go", "Distributed Systems", "Raft"],
    "startDate": "2024-01",
    "endDate": "2024-05",
    "type": "academic"
  }
]

Tips for New Grads

• Include relevant coursework in education — it shows depth in your CS foundation
• List GPA if 3.5+ (or equivalent)
• Emphasize internships with the same detail as full-time roles
• Include hackathon projects — they show initiative and ability to ship quickly
• Don't pad — a concise resume with 2-3 strong projects beats a padded one