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What counts as experience when you've never had a job?
"I don't have any experience" is the sentence that can stop many students before they start. It's often untrue. What they mean is "I've never been paid", which is a different thing entirely.
Experience is anything you've done that shows what you're capable of. Employers hiring school students know they're not getting a work history. What they're looking for is evidence — and evidence comes from wherever you've actually been.
The translation problem
The trick isn't finding experience. It's describing it in a way that means something to someone who doesn't know you.
Every activity has two halves: what you did and what it required of you. Students usually write the first half and stop.
- "I play basketball" → what it required: two trainings and a game every week for four years, taking direction from a coach, adjusting when the game plan changed.
- "I helped at the school fete" → what it required: running a stall for three hours, handling cash, explaining things to customers, working with people I'd never met.
- "I build computers" → what it required: research, patience, working carefully with expensive parts, fixing it when it didn't boot.
Same activities. The second version is what an employer can actually use.
Where your experience already is
Go through these and write down anything that applies. Don't filter yet — get it all down and decide later.
School projects and assignments
A major assignment you planned over weeks. A design project. A research task you went beyond the brief on. Group work where you kept the group on track. These show planning, deadlines and follow-through.
Team sport
Consistency, teamwork, responding to coaching, playing a role you didn't choose, turning up in bad weather. Length of involvement carries a lot of weight here.
Individual sport
Self-discipline, training without supervision, tracking your own progress, managing setbacks and injury.
Performing arts
Drama, dance, band, choir, eisteddfods. Rehearsal commitment, performing under pressure, memorisation, working to a director's instructions.
Clubs
Debating, robotics, chess, coding, ag club, environment group, cadets. Whatever the topic, regular attendance and skill development is the point.
Volunteering
Canteen, working bees, coaching juniors, refereeing, animal shelters, community events, Clean Up Australia Day, tuckshop.
Caring responsibilities
Looking after younger siblings, helping care for a family member, walking a sibling to school daily. This is genuine responsibility and reliability. You can describe it without going into private family detail: "regular after-school care responsibilities at home" is enough.
Helping in a family business
Even unpaid and informal. Stocking shelves, taking bookings, cleaning, deliveries, weekend help. Say clearly that it was helping out in a family business — that's honest and still counts.
Community and cultural activities
Church or community group involvement, cultural performance groups, Scouts or Guides, local festivals, Landcare, surf lifesaving.
Fundraising
Organising a sausage sizzle, a raffle, a shave-for-a-cure, a class fundraiser. Planning, promotion, handling money, hitting a target.
Leadership
Formal roles like captain, prefect or SRC. Also informal: training a new junior player, running a warm-up, being the one who organises the group chat that actually gets things done.
Hobbies
Only where they demonstrate something. Photography, sewing, cooking, small engine repair, 3D printing, music production, coding, restoring furniture, gardening, fishing rigs you tie yourself. Say what the hobby involves, not just that you have it.
Competitions
Maths or science competitions, eisteddfods, hackathons, agricultural shows, esports tournaments. Entering counts; you don't have to have won.
Practical projects
You built a trailer, a deck, a garden bed, a website, a mod, a small business selling something at markets. Practical projects are strong evidence because there's a finished thing at the end.
School events
Helping run an assembly, open day, sports carnival, formal committee, year book, school production crew.
Two worked examples
Netball, four years, club and school
Played club netball for four seasons, training twice weekly and playing Saturdays. Selected for the school team in 2025. Helped run warm-ups for the under-12s during Terms 2 and 3.
That paragraph shows commitment, reliability, teamwork and a bit of responsibility, and every line of it can be checked.
Helping at a family café on weekends
Helped out at my family's café most Saturday mornings for about two years — clearing and setting tables, restocking, and taking orders during busy periods.
Note what it doesn't say: it doesn't call itself employment, doesn't invent a job title, and doesn't claim a wage. It's honest and it's still convincing.
Describe it honestly
This is where students go wrong once they realise how much they have. The temptation is to dress it up — unpaid help becomes "employed at", a one-off becomes "regularly", a group project becomes "led a team of five".
Don't. Rules that keep you safe:
- Don't present unpaid or family help as paid employment. Say it's what it is.
- Don't invent a title you weren't given.
- Don't claim frequency you can't back up. "A few times" is fine.
- Only claim a skill you could actually be asked to use tomorrow.
- Make sure anyone you list as a referee would recognise your description.
Honest and specific usually beats vague and inflated. An employer would rather read one true paragraph than five impressive-sounding ones that fall apart when they ask a question.
Getting it down
Strive's profile is built for exactly this — activities, achievements, skills, academics and informal responsibilities all sit in one place, and your school can verify awards and add references alongside them. Once it's in there, Strive can help turn it into a résumé that reads properly instead of listing "hardworking and motivated".
Start with the list above and add the five things you'd forgotten you'd done. Then read what employers actually look for in high-school students to work out which of them to lead with.