How to write a resume
All the tips, tools, templates, and examples you need to learn how to write a resume in 2023
Having a perfectly honed and well-written resume is like having a superpower during your job search.?
While most people walk up the hiring ladder, you put on your crimson cape and soar upwards at supersonic speed. This how to write a resume guide outlines the most important building blocks for creating exactly this type of amazing resume.
Imagine two great professionals with awesome credentials, talents and expertise. Except that one gets ignored by potential employers and stumped by automated application systems. While the other gets several interview calls each week from industry leaders.
What’s the difference between the two people? It could be connections or circumstance. But often, the difference is a great resume that “hacks” hiring situations. Marketing is just as important for professionals as it is for businesses. Present yourself as the obvious choice for the role.
It’s often the little things in life that matter the most.
The vital starting point: where to write your resume?
We’ll go straight to the golden rule, no beating around the bush.?Do not use basic text editors to write the final version of your resume. You can use them to craft your initial thoughts if you feel comfortable with them, but MS Word, Excel and similar programs have a host of potential problems that may hinder you.
These may include:
So, what’s the solution??
The accepted standard for submitting most resumes is the PDF file format. The benefits are clear in most cases: universal formatting that doesn’t change regardless of where you view it and readability by most software systems.?
The ideal tools to produce clean, concise and beautiful resumes in PDF format are?online builders. ?These web and/or software solutions are specifically made to be the perfect instrument for visually striking, technically functional and content-optimized resumes.?
By using a service/platform that is designed specifically for resumes, you save lots of time and avoid hidden problems. With an?online resume builder ?, what you see is what the hiring manager will see.
Visual character, templates and first impressions
We’re all visual creatures.?Our first impressions are always based on aesthetics, symmetry and images.
We choose our clothes for an interview with care, why shouldn’t we put the same effort into the appearance of our resume? It’s our primary ambassador before any sort of physical meeting, a first impression that will live long in the hiring manager's memory.
According to a study done by TheLadders, recruiters spend an average of 6 seconds glancing at a resume before moving on to another one (as we mentioned in our?profession-specific guides and examples ?). During this short time, a subconscious decision is often made based on the?“looks” ?of your resume. If it’s clean and beautiful, the hiring manager will infer a number of positive traits about your personality.
You can create your own templates, but unless you’re a professional designer, it may be best to rely on field-tested visuals. Templates project a certain character and mood with their design:?they can emphasize creativity, dependability, discipline and other qualities.
Resume formats: defining structure
Now that we’re done with the visuals, let’s move on to the magic of text. The most fundamental division of text in resumes is based on content format:?
The Reverse Chronological format?is not only the most common one, but also the most widely accepted among various employers and industries. The biggest benefit of a reverse chronological resume is its straightforward, easy to understand and linear structure.?
It displays your professional experience and past work experience from most recent to oldest. Your most recent roles are most relevant for your application. This is great when you have a continuous history of work, and you can showcase some important recent positions. But what should you do if you’re a fresh graduate or have a sizable gap in your employment history? This is where the Functional and Combination formats come in.
The Functional resume format?leans on soft and hard skills as its main focus-point. If you?lack experience? as an entry level job seeker due to recently graduating college, or are in the process of moving to a new industry, the Functional format is one you might consider. You can also make the resume more robust by mentioning past projects, social initiatives, experience in other fields and so on.
A Combination format?places equal emphasis on skills and relevant work experience, and is therefore appropriate for many technical and technological professions (though not exclusive to them). Many modern resumes have an expanded skills section at the top of the document before the reverse-chronological employment history, so they might be considered combination format resumes.
For visual emphasis, check out a strong example of how resumes can be structured:
To take a deeper dive into how you should arrange the structure of your resume, check out our dedicated?Resume Formats guide ?, as well as our articles on?Functional ?and?Chronological? resumes!
Resume sections: your professional feature list
There’s often a lot of confusion as to which sections to include in your resume.?
This isn’t surprising, since their importance can vary depending on your profession, industry and nature of your experience. We can divide section types into necessary and optional ones. Let’s assume for the time being that you’re using the?Reverse?Chronological ?format (as it’s used in more than 90% of resumes nowadays).
Necessary sections often include:
Optional sections can include:
These are not iron-clad rules, however. Sometimes certain sections change their importance depending on the job itself. For example, in our Nurse resume guide, we highlight the fact that belonging to professional organizations is much more important than usual. Some questions to ask yourself when deciding to include or resize sections are:?
Your resume may be Chronological, but your decisions should be functional and pragmatic!
The professional summary: your highlight, your story
The vital necessity of keeping your resume concise often leads some resumes feeling bland or emotionless. The Professional Summary is your biggest chance to add some color, life and?personality ?to your resume.?It demonstrates your determination, positive outlook and brings some emotion to dry facts.
The Summary should be energetically written to capture attention. Use action verbs and strong descriptive terms. Avoid lengthy, grammatically complicated sentences. This lets the achievements and facts stand out.?
There are some resume action verbs you may want to use in your resume:
Some guides favor the Resume Objective, yet we believe that the Summary is a more robust and universal tool.?
The Objective can have its role in certain circumstances (for example, when you lack work experience or wish to make a career change). You can also include an objective as a part of the summary but it would be rare to call this section "objective." The hiring manager understands that your objective is to get the job, otherwise why would you apply?
For a look at the specifics, check out our dedicated article on Personal Statements in the resume (Summaries and Objectives alike).
Work experience: professional experience
If you’ve chosen the Reverse Chronological format (and in 9 out of 10 professions - you probably should), then this section is the backbone of your effective resume.
This is not only the place where you list your most impressive past employment, but you may also elaborate on each position by giving important facts, achievements and figures that describe you as a great professional. It’s not necessary to include your?entire employment history ?. Tailor your job mentions so that you impress your future employer with the most relevant?work experiences for this specific job ad. This also keeps your resume short, clean and concise.
Each position should be outlined in the following approximate format:
It’s a great idea to keep a separate file or list with you can consider to be your milestones, achievements, projects and numbers. That way, you always have an arsenal of illustrative facts ready to go. Take a deeper dive and learn more about this important section in our dedicated Work Experience guide.
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The skills section: competencies and superpowers
The skills section is your professional feature list, your superpowers, your abilities.?
This is where you pass your first “competency test”. This part is more pragmatic than the Summary, because recruiters and automated systems will be appraising your skills based on a certain checklist. If something is missing from a hiring manager's wish list, you can be sure they will quiz you on your suitability during an interview.
Moreover, there are certain hard skills (and sometimes - even soft skills, once again, check out our?Nurse ?or?teacher ?guides as an example) that are absolutely necessary for a position. So here’s two important pieces of advice: prioritize what you include and analyze the job description! Use the same words to describe your skills that the employer uses in the literature about the role.
Space is finite and you may have many skills. Make sure the ones you describe (especially at the top) are the ones that fit the job listing.
Education: a story of growth and intelligence
The education section varies in importance?depending on your profession and industry.?
For example, in our?Web Developer guide ?, we emphasize the fact that formal education isn’t a make-it-or-break-it factor. Many developers are self-taught to a certain extent. However, no good resume is complete without some sort of education section, and many employers DO strongly value a formal?degree.
Like in many other situations, there is no “one size fits all” approach to education sections. Professions like lawyers, doctors and hard-sciences positions (chemist, biologist etc.) will have a very strong emphasis on formal education. You may even want to include scientific or similar?publications in your resume ?for some of these (in your Education section or in a separate category). Academic CVs will likely contain a long list of academic publications.
It’s important to note that in our era of accessible information and technology, your education listing can include things like online certificates, bootcamps, specialized seminars or?courses ?and so on. To understand how high to prioritize this section, check out or dedicated?Education guide ?or take a deeper look at our Profession Guides and Examples.
Technology and psychology: ATS checks and recruiters
We’ve covered a large portion of the important fundamentals you need to understand when composing a job-winning, attention-grabbing resume.
But there’s still two vitally important aspects to making your resume that perfect professional key: interacting with Applicant Tracking Systems and understanding how a recruiter views your resume.
Applicant Tracking Systems ?(ATS)?have become ubiquitous for large and medium-size employers in most developed countries around the globe. With the amount of applications and potential employees coming in each month, human specialists can’t always keep up.
So, instead of expanding recruiting departments to ludicrous sizes, employers are using automated systems to help with hiring. The task of an ATS is to analyze, filter (and sometimes score) your resume based on keywords. It may even morph your resume into a different format for the hiring manager.
One of the big reasons for using online tools instead of text editors is that ATSs are often inflexible. They process your resume based on a specific algorithm. A huge percentage of resumes get filtered out regardless of their professional content?due to formatting errors, images,?margins ?, graphs, bugged out?header ?information etc. This is why using tested tools that produce a clean resume without hidden formatting pitfalls is so critically important.
But how does an ATS filter and score your resume? The answer is simple: based on keywords defined by the potential employer, hiring manager or job-specific system parameters.
There are three methods to picking out keywords: industry knowledge, manually analyzing the job description and using word clouds.
Industry knowledge?is based on your own expertise and research. You can rely on your experience or refer to job-specific guides. For example, in our Web Developer resume guide? we emphasize what relevant skills, programming languages and interests that have been trending in the last couple of years. In our?Nurse resume guide ?we mention the two statistically most common job skills requested by employers for this position.
Researching the employer’s website is also always a great idea. It can hint at what the company values, what kind of language they use and so forth. Such knowledge can be the necessary “ace up your sleeve” and it demonstrates that you have taken the time to tailor your application. Generic resumes are worryingly common.
The job description is your most important ally in picking ATS keywords for your resume sections. Job descriptions often outline the vital requirements and soft skills for the position. Make sure to find these and include them in your resume text.
If the job description is too vague or too wordy, don’t worry, there’s a handy tool to make sense of it: Word Clouds.?These are useful instruments (easily found through Google, like Wordle or Worditout.com) where you can simply copy-paste the text of a job description and get a visualization of its terminology.
Moving on to the human side of hiring: consider two main points on how a potential employer views your resume. First of all, understand the volume of submitted?applications. Hundreds of resumes is the reality for some companies. Avoid being bland, generic or low-energy. No need to overdo it (hiring managers have a keen eye for "artificially hyped" resumes) and don't use adjectives that you can't back up with a fact.?
You should certainly consider whether your text is too low-key - cultivate a warm conversational tone where possible.
Second, don't overload recruiters with technical terminology.?All professions have their jargon and "inside lingo", but not all recruiters are equally knowledgeable. Highlight your?technical skills ?, but make sure to space them out (especially in the Summary) and mention soft skills and qualities?to feel relatable and human.
Should you include resume references?
While every resume should include summary, work experience, education and skills sections, whether you should include references from previous employers is far less clear cut. Let’s explore in more?detail ?.
If the job description requests references on a resume, then follow it to the letter, but if references are not requested it doesn’t mean that they may not contribute to your application when you write it.
As you should seek to use your resume space to create the optimal impact, here are a few tips about when including references might be appropriate:
How to write a cover letter alongside a resume
As you consider how to write a resume, you should not forget to consider the advantages of pairing it with a well-written?cover letter ?.?
In actual fact, employers will request a cover letter the vast majority of the time. For good reason: there are certain aspects of a cover letter that make the content very different (and highly complementary) to a resume.
For a start, a cover letter is a free-form piece of writing that allows an applicant to outline the finer details of their application. It is a personal pitch to the hiring manager, it can be closely tailored to the role in question and its arguments should form the core of a future interview process.
The format of a cover letter should follow the structure of any persuasive argument: the introduction sets the scene; the body of the cover letter contains the key arguments; and the conclusion ends on a high note and includes a call to action. Differentiate yourself with your story, not by breaking this widely accepted structure.
The cover letter distils your career story into 300-400 words of compelling and relevant copy. Your potential future boss should be able to read it and create a mental picture of how you will fit into their future plans. Everyone likes a good story, especially if they feel that it could become their story too. If you were them, what would you want to read?
The most important aspect to consider when writing a cover letter is whether every sentence makes an impact.
Cover letters help to explain complex career issues, in a way that resumes could never manage. There has to be some degree of repetition of the core achievements, but in a cover letter you can add so much more personality and emotion to nudge your future boss in the right direction.
The art of proofreading a resume
Once you have sent your resume in to a potential employer, there is no “edit” button. Multiple people will read it over the course of the interview process, and they will assume what you write reflects the best of what is on offer.
When you are considering how to write a resume, it is vital to check for careless mistakes and lazy language choices, which tend to slip in all too easily in your excitement to send the application.
Proofreading a section of text requires a slow-motion thought process that is forensic in its approach. Every word counts and you have to consider how they will be received by the reader rather than how they sound in your head.
We have written a comprehensive expert?guide ?to proofreading your resume. Doing it right could make all the difference. Here are three of the tips that far from every candidate will consider:
International vs. country-specific resumes
Last but not least, if you're looking to relocate or find a job abroad, consider the geographical specifics of hiring.
Every region or even country has cultural, ethical and technical nuances when it comes to good resumes. Asia, Europe and the United States may be drastically different in some aspects. It's a great idea to do your research on the country in general and your specific local industry too. Find expat communities, networking events and online resources to expand your knowledge.
Generally speaking, the "geographical" resume types that often come up are:
If you're interested in the career expert tips of writing a resume for a certain geography, check out our?guide on regional resume types ?: it includes all the categories listed above, as well as resume tips on how to write a resume as a non-native English speaker.?
While we’ve provided you with the most fundamental and important information needed to create a resume that secures amazing opportunities, our useful resources don’t end here!
You can check out our guides on additional sections and topics, once you feel like you need to polish up these areas.
And don’t forget to take a look at all the amazing functionality of the resume.io builder tool. It’s likely to save you time and effort and take your resume to the next level!?