How can I make a software engineer resume with no experience?

First and foremost, you will want to make sure that you highlight your educational background in the best way possible. This would be especially successful if you received your software engineering bachelor's degree from a top program like Carnegie Mellon or the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

However, no matter where you received your degree, you can make your educational background appealing by highlighting your completed courses.

The best courses to include are ones that show direct software engineering experience that can be more easily translated into work experience, such as:

• Programming and user interface design

• Software development

• Java programming

• Agile methodologies

Next, you should highlight any clubs, honors societies, or programs that you participated in that give software engineering experience. This can be in the form of a software engineering internship. Anything you have completed that could be classified as work experience should be included on your resume.

Finally, the best thing to include on a resume for software engineering if you have no work experience is professional certifications. This shows quantifiable knowledge and skills in software engineering.

The best certifications to include on your resume are:

• Certified Secure Software Lifecycle Professional: Offered by the cybersecurity organization (ISC)2, this certification tests your skills in software development safety and security practices.

  Earning the CSSLP certification demonstrates your ability to identify vulnerabilities in your software engineering projects, protect client data and guard against security breaches through best practices for cybersecurity.

• Certified Software Engineer: The Institute of Certification of Computing Professionals (ICCP) offers a wide range of certifications for IT professionals, including the Certified Software Engineer designation. You can earn this certification by taking three exams from ICCP: Information Systems Core, Software Engineering, and Object-Oriented Analysis and Design.

• CIW Web Development Professional: CIW offers certificates in several paths. Their web development series is especially useful for software engineers that want to display their programming knowledge, database engineering, and other web skills.

• C programming language: C is of the most integral programming languages for software developers and engineers. Many advanced certifications require certificates in C and its popular derivative C++ as a prerequisite, so getting certified is a great way to build your skills.

  The C++ Institute has four certifications you can take based on skill level, with the professional level certificates requiring you to first pass the associate level.

• Agile: While the Agile project management methodology is not exclusively a software engineering concept, many companies look for candidates with Agile certifications to facilitate their software development cycles.

  There are many different versions of Agile, so consider seeking multiple certifications to demonstrate your expertise to a range of potential employers.