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I am a Computing Science student graduating soon. I have a lot of experience with many programming languages and other technologies, but no employment history.
How can I communicate my skills through my résumé without making it look like a laundry list?
I used to teach resume writing as part of a techical & professional writing class required of graduating university students, and this answer amounts to a summary of some of those lessons.
First, let's look at what we know from your question:
Your question is about "communicating your skills without it looking like a laundry list" -- that is the right attitude, but here is the truth which I think you already know: without proof to back up the items in your list, you really only have an invalid, unverified list. You could "list" that you have experience creating Ruby applications (for example), but if there's nothing at all on your resume to back that up, as the hiring manager I'm going to ignore your resume (even if it's for an entry-level position).
There's some good news, however:
This gets us back to the question of how to frame your skills and experiences in truthful and positive ways for you. First, ensure that you are not discounting any internships, side projects, or volunteer work. Next, think about the projects you've done in your coursework and the roles you've held.
A typical resume for a recent graduate might have sections that look like this:
What you're saying is that your resume might look only like this:
If that is true, then expand in your Education section:
Once you start expanding on your education, you start to have the proof behind the claims you are making about the skills you are listing. Similarly, if you were part of clubs and held offices in them, those actions count as well -- maybe more for soft skills, depending on the club and what you did, but those things still matter.
Also, go get some internships, do volunteer work, contribute to open source projects, if you can, not just to be able to list something in your resume, but to begin to gain experience outside of the classroom.
How can I communicate my skills through my résumé without making it look like a laundry list?
Consider what evidence do you have to show these skills. Generally, it'll come from a few sources:
Coursework - Courses taken to get the degree may have given you exposure to various concepts, languages and other things that may be useful to put on a resume.
Volunteer/side projects - This would be stuff outside of school and while you may not have gotten paid, there would be people capable of backing up the claim that you did do X.
Personal projects - This would be what I'd least likely list as this can open a can of worms depending on where the project went. By personal here I mean that the code wasn't released for others to see and the whole project is rather private.
Resumes should be targeted to the position you are applying generally and thus there can be tailoring done as the courses for one position may not be that applicable to another. For example, if you are applying for a Business Intelligence position then work with databases and statistics may be useful to list while wireless networking expertise may not be that useful as a skill. While you may want to have a general resume that you could post on Monster or other job boards, this should keep things fairly general and be what leads to interviews with recruiters generally. Companies hiring directly may well expect you to apply directly rather than go looking on the job boards. Also, wherever you are graduating from may have resume services that could be useful to use here in terms of getting your resume reviewed as well as having career fairs and other avenues of getting a job rather than going directly into paperwork. While this is a bit off of what was asked, it may be worth considering if the general question is, "How do I get a job without ever having one previously?" that is the general problem then networking and finding other ways to meet employers may work better than where when you apply you are one of dozens of applicants that you almost have to win the lottery to get an interview since there may be plenty of other qualified candidates.
