Business Resume Examples and Templates for 2023

How to Write a Business Resume

Your business-sector resume has one purpose: to get you interviews for jobs you want. You can ensure your resume serves that purpose if you focus on your most relevant skills and display them as clearly as possible. The tips and examples below will help you give your resume the focus and clarity it needs to move your corporate job search forward.

1. Write a dynamic profile summarizing your qualifications

In most cases, your resume Profile is your very first impression on hiring managers. Make it a good one. Use your Profile to call out your top qualifications. What sets you apart from other candidates for the same position? For instance, maybe you have international experience or fluency in a foreign language. Or perhaps you’ve mastered a sales technique that led to double-digit revenue growth. Or maybe you have an MBA or other advanced degree in your field. Whatever your top qualifications, feature them in your Profile and you can compel recipients of your resume to keep reading.

Don’t be afraid to get specific in this section. A well-chosen achievement in your Profile can drive home the broader themes you’re showcasing. Try to use an achievement that quantifies your results in terms of a specific ranking, percentage, or dollar amount.

(Note, it’s usually easier to write your Profile after you’ve built the other sections of your resume.)

2. Add a focused experience section

Careers evolve. If you’re one of the many professionals whose focus has changed over time, some parts of your work history will now be more relevant to your goal than others. But resist the urge to divide your work into “Relevant Experience” and “Additional Experience” sections. When you label a section “Relevant Experience,” you undermine your resume by indicating the other sections are irrelevant. In fact, your resume should be ALL relevant experience, with the only possible exception of your recent work history outline. You can and should leave out any details about you that don’t speak to your target job.

With that principle in mind, keep one “Professional Experience” section and indicate the disparity by the detail you give on each job. Try to flesh out the details of your most relevant jobs while giving just the basics on your least relevant jobs. This resume structure clearly focuses on advancing your goals while offering employers an accurate view of your recent work history.

3. Include relevant education and certifications

Your education and any licenses or certifications are the basis for your work experience and so deserve a prominent spot on your resume. List each credential in a separate section right below your Experience section, and apply similar formatting. For instance, if in your Experience section you’ve italicized employer names, also italicize the school names appearing in your Education section.

Following are templates and examples to help you format your education and certification details:

4. List relevant key skills and proficiencies

You can improve your resume by adding keywords.

Most hiring companies now use an applicant tracking system (ATS), which scans each submitted resume for keywords relevant to the job opening. When the company’s ATS finds a resume with many relevant keywords, it flags the document for the hiring manager.

Add a keyword-rich “Skills” or “Expertise” section to make your resume ATS friendly. Here are some common keywords for professionals in the business world:

NOTE: As the above list indicates, you should only use noun phrases in this section. Reserve personal attributes and adjectives (like “highly collaborative” or “strong work ethic”) for your Profile summary. Here’s a good litmus test to know whether any term fits this section: Plug it into the phrase “I’m skilled in [term].” If the term makes a correct sentence (“I’m skilled in team leadership”), you can add it. But if it makes nonsense (“I’m skilled in highly collaborative” … “I’m skilled in strong work ethic”), that’s your cue to leave it out.

5. Tell the story of your business-sector experience

You may have been told to avoid passive phrases like “Responsible for” or “Tasked with” on your resume. But that’s hard to do when you’re unsure what the “active” alternative would be.

For an active resume tone, first think of your career as a story with “characters and their actions.” (For more on this principle, see Joseph Williams’s popular writing book “Style: Toward Clarity and Grace.”) And who’s the primary character of your resume? You, of course. Your resume may contain many details on various jobs and projects, but you should center it all on yourself and your actions in relation to them. A simple way to make sure you’re doing this: Begin every job description sentence as an “I” statement, then just take out the “I” and leave the rest of the phrase on your final resume.

How to Pick the Best Business Resume Template

A clear and straightforward resume template is usually best for corporate job seekers. “At its core, the resume is a business document,” write resume-industry leaders Wendy Enelow and Louise Kursmark in their book Modernize Your Resume. “And those receiving it expect to see a fairly traditional presentation.” Choose a visual template that lets the recruiter or hiring manager quickly take in relevant information about you and your background. Use a simple font, and avoid any template that calls undue attention to itself with more elaborate design elements.

Business Text-Only Resume Templates and Examples

Years of Experience

Frequently Asked Questions: Business Resume Examples and Advice