How To Make a Resume With Examples and Guide

Navigating a job search requires persistence, an understanding of how hiring managers filter applications, and a well-written resume that showcases your skills and experience. Today’s job market is competitive, with growth slowing a bit from the fast-paced demand for labor during the past several years, although there’s healthy employment growth ahead.

Landing a job requires more than responding to help-wanted ads. Across industries, from hospitality to data science and health care, a strong and compelling resume is critical for gaining attention from hiring managers. Many recruiters and human resources professionals charged with filling empty positions will view hundreds — sometimes even thousands — of resumes. They typically spend six to 10 seconds scanning a single resume before determining whether a candidate is interview-worthy.

Another frustrating reality: In some cases, you’ll only hear back if a hiring manager moves your resume to the next round. Don’t expect a confirmation that your resume was received or even a note that you aren’t a fit for the position. Because of the influx of job seekers and competitive market, hiring managers focus their time on ushering the most viable candidates through their review process.

If you’re looking for a job, want to escalate on an already established career ladder, change industries and occupations, or land the first opportunity, there are some important resume-building strategies to consider so you can put your best foot forward and compete against other qualified candidates.

Ready to prepare a success-driven resume that will impress hiring managers and position yourself to glide through the hiring process? This guide provides 10 practical steps to building a resume that will help you land your next job and grow a rewarding career. Let’s get started.

1. Include your contact information
2. Write an impactful professional summary or objective
3. Detail your work experience
4. Highlight relevant skills
5. Provide your educational background and credentials
6. Explain awards and achievements
7. Organize information in reverse-chronological order
8. Incorporate keywords that align with the job description
9. Select a resume template
10. Include a cover letter

Tip!

Tip!

When you finish your resume, don’t forget to write a cover letter. Download one of our free cover letter templates and get started with our cover letter builder.

Building Your Resume — Get Started

Much like sending a LinkedIn request to connect with a business professional you’d like to follow or add to your network, your resume is the “ping” — a notification of your interest in an available job. Submitting your resume does not guarantee it will earn more than 10 seconds of time with a hiring manager or even a response confirming the resume landed safely in their system.

Because your resume is a crucial first impression maker, selecting the best resume format, the right words and effectively communicating your experience is crucial. Understanding these resume basics and what to put on your resume will prepare you to build a resume that will advance you in the hiring process.

What’s the purpose of a resume?

Anyone can express interest in a job opening, but that doesn’t mean they have the appropriate skills or training. A resume lets an employer know you’re qualified for a position, either through your educational history, work experience, or a combination of the two. You can also share volunteer work, internships, and externships that illustrate why you’re a great fit for the position you’re seeking.

For example, if you’re applying for a position as an administrative assistant but lack professional experience, mention roles you’ve played in volunteer organizations, such as serving as the secretary or treasurer of a school club or local nonprofit.

Or, if you seek a position at a day care and want to be a teacher’s aide but haven’t worked in an educational environment, note an American Red Cross CPR class you successfully completed, a summer nanny gig during which you cared for young children, working at a camp, or assisting with an after-school club at an elementary school.

Think outside the box and don’t feel limited by the traditional resume sections if you lack work experience. By including valuable volunteer and internship experiences, you show future employers an eagerness to learn and succeed.

While writing your resume, whether it’s the first one or an update to include the latest experience in a long career, think of it as your social media profile for hiring managers. They will skim the document to determine if they want to connect with you.

Red flags such as typos may prevent you from landing an interview, even if you’re well qualified. Bland statements about your work experience will not earn a second look from the professional reviewing your resume. The same goes for skills that do not align with the job description or a lack of training or credentials to manage the job successfully.

The purpose of a resume is to show why you are the ideal candidate for the job with relevant experience and skills, along with metrics that demonstrate how you bring value to an organization.

What are the main sections of a resume?

Your resume should include six key sections, and we will go into detail about each of these, plus additional steps in this guide:

1. Contact information
2. Professional profile or objective
3. Work experience
4. Education and credentials
5. Key skills
6. Awards and achievements (optional)

While a basic step, your resume should include your name, correct address, phone number, email, and link to a portfolio or LinkedIn profile if relevant. You’d be surprised how often an overlooked typo in a phone number or email results in never hearing back from the employer. How can a hiring manager get in touch if they do not have your accurate contact information?

If you are in the early stages of your career and lack professional experience, your resume will also include a professional summary or objective. With a goal-focused objective, you express your enthusiasm for succeeding in your line of work. A professional summary is like an elevator speech that sums up your expertise and accomplishments in just a few sentences.

Back up your summary by listing key skills, employment history, and educational background. If this is your first job, focus on skills, training, or volunteer work instead. You can also list freelance gigs when relevant. For example, a five-star rating at a contract position delivering groceries shows you have strong customer service skills.

A concise, bulleted key skills list shares relevant expertise that aligns with the job description. If you’re applying for a data scientist position, your skills might include data visualization or structured query language (SQL). Tailor qualifications to the position. Even if you are creating a general resume to use for multiple applications, you can use the document as a base and adapt it to include relevant keywords and skills.

What are some red flags for hiring managers?

Hiring managers skim your resume quickly in search of obvious red flags. Grammatical errors and typos, as well as slang, can immediately land you on the rejection list. Never include profanity in any business document. Also, avoid statements that indicate a potential for instability, such as mentioning you’ve had 20 jobs in the last five years. Keep personal info, such as that you have kids or are married, off your resume, and don’t include a photo unless you’re applying for a modeling job.

Inaccurate information can also cost you a position. Be honest and completely transparent about your education, credentials, technical skills, soft skills that employers love, and work experience. Don’t pretend you have a degree that doesn’t exist, and be truthful about certifications. Even if no one calls to verify your information, lying on a resume will catch up with you and cause serious reputational damage.

Steps for Creating Your Own Resume

There are a range of resume formats, including functional, combination, and targeted styles such as Applicant Tracking System (ATS) friendly resumes and modern resume templates. Your education, employment history, and career goals should influence which type you choose.

For example, if you are a creative director, a modern resume speaks to your industry and allows you to showcase your design expertise. However, if you are an accountant, select a highly professional executive resume template.

Job hunters who want a classic resume should choose a chronological format, while applicants with more education than experience can benefit from a functional template. A combination resume lists skills, as well as chronological work experience, and a targeted resume focuses on qualifications that match a specific job listing.

The steps for creating a resume are generally the same, regardless of which format is appropriate given your education and experience. We’ve broken them down in our step-by-step instructions below. It helps to start with a resume outline before choosing a template so you can organize the information, edit it, and prepare the content to input into a template if you choose to use one.

1. Include your contact information

A recruiter shouldn’t have to go on a scavenger hunt to learn your identity. Include your contact information at the top of your resume, including your name, phone number, email address, physical address, and links to a professional portfolio, website, or LinkedIn portfolio, if applicable. Including your mailing address is important because while communications are primarily digital, some employers will prefer to hire local candidates to expedite filling a position and eliminate moving expenses.

Make your name stand out in bold text, but maintain the same font for a consistent and clean look. Proofread your entire resume carefully, but pay special attention to your contact information. Typos will prevent hiring managers from successfully contacting you.

Your contact information may look something like this:

Do not include your date of birth or Social Security number on your resume. Also, avoid sending a headshot unless you are a professional model. Be wary of employers who request a photograph. This could indicate gender, age, racial, or cultural bias. (Professional hiring managers working for reputable organizations will not ask for your picture.)

Don’t use a nickname, and make sure your email address is professional. Some hiring managers may reject your application if you use an email address like [email protected], even if you would have otherwise been contacted for an interview. Potential employers want to know you can present yourself professionally.

2. Write a compelling professional summary or objective

In a few succinct sentences, the summary or objective section of your resume should display your expertise and experience, proving why you are the best candidate for the job. Some hiring managers don’t dedicate more than 10 seconds to your resume, let alone spend time reviewing the entire document. The summary is a snapshot that gives anyone evaluating your resume the Cliff’s Notes version of your career and experience.

When writing your professional summary, use strong action verbs and clear language, avoiding complex sentence structure and clunky wording. Remember, this section is basically the handshake of your resume. You have a small space and a minute of the reader’s attention span to sell your capabilities as the ideal fit for the role. Save details and metrics for the professional experience section of your resume.

While it’s good to call out especially attractive key skills in your resume summary, you can go into further detail in a bulleted key skills section. So, be selective. Ask yourself: Does this skill tell a future employer you are a different and better candidate than the rest? Also, when considering which skills to work into your resume profile, be strategic and avoid packing experience or skills into the summary that are not mentioned in the job description.

Some job seekers want to know if they should use an objective in their resume or a professional summary. If you have career experience, a resume summary is more effective because your profile will illustrate the value you can bring to an organization. However, if you have more training than work experience, an objective statement will highlight marketable skills and qualifications, along with stating your career goals. For instance, an objective might display an internship in a research lab or completion of graduate coursework, indicating a dedication to continuing education.

A resume summary works best when you have relevant experience to summarize. If you’re a teacher seeking a new position, you can mention you’ve taught for 17 years at an elementary school and hold a certificate in special education training. Include management experience at a local health care clinic if you want a front desk position at a hospital, or share how your skills as a sales manager boosted company revenue by 12% if you’re seeking a new commission-based job.

Remember to only choose a statement or objective for your resume. Including both can make your resume look cluttered and unprofessional.

Tip!

Tip!

Add a tagline. What’s your brand? Much like slogans and taglines for everyday products, a trend in resume writing is to include a tagline that can consist of a handful of words positioned above your resume summary or objective. Taglines can showcase your impact or approach to business. They can center on your philosophy or approach, include a testimonial quote from an employer, or be an inspirational quote from a thought leader that you consider a cornerstone. The point of a tagline is to illustrate your values — and the value you can bring to an employer.

3. Detail your work experience

Work experience lets a hiring manager know you have the skills needed to do the job. There are several different ways you can approach work experience on your resume:

• List all positions in chronological order, beginning with your current or most recent position and working backward.
• Only list relevant jobs, such as positions involving children or education if you’re applying for a day care manager position or sales jobs if you want a marketing position.
• Include volunteer work, internships, and externships in the format usually reserved for employment history if this is your first job.

Adding all of your jobs is common if you use a chronological format for your resume. However, this is not ideal if you’ve had numerous gaps in your employment, even those due to unexpected circumstances such as illness or a spouse’s military relocation. If you have an extensive work history with multiple job changes, focus on including the positions that align with the job description.

For example, if you’ve served as an executive in a financial institution for 30 years, you do not need to include college internships, even if they were prestigious. And there is no need to add the fast-food job you held while paying for school. Again, always consider the job description, key skills required, and your related value when creating a resume.

Also, keep in mind your resume experience section will need to be adapted for each application if the position descriptions are considerably different. Focusing on relevant work experience works well in a targeted resume and will make you look more stable. Plus, it shows you have the marketable skills a future employer is looking for in candidates and that you read and understand the job responsibilities and employers’ expectations.

Back up work experience statements with data, metrics, and other measurables whenever possible. It’s easy to make a generic statement about an accomplishment, such as “Delivered presentations at a national conference.” But how impactful is this information? (Hiring managers will tell you it’s not very.) Instead, quantify your success by writing something like, “Delivered a three-part seminar series at a national conference, earning 5-star ratings from attendees and media exposure in the industry trade magazine.”

When you write statements about your experience, always ask yourself: How much? How many? What was the measurable outcome? How did I drive value? Remember, employers are making a human capital investment when they recruit new team members. Like any “buying decision,” you want to go into the situation with confidence. You can give future employers that level of confidence by including as many numbers and metrics as possible in your resume.

Always avoid first-person statements. Instead, start each experience statement with a strong action verb. First-person language in a resume is very “me” focused, and the document should demonstrate your interest in a future employer’s interests. Starting sentences with strong action verbs is basically a way to power up your resume and separate it from the flood of other applicants who might not have the same strong command over their content.

Remember, you can also emphasize achievements in your resume’s professional experience section, such as an employee of the year award or a certificate for managing the top-earning sales team that beat a company record by 17%.

These examples illustrate quantifying your experience.

Incorporate powerful action verbs into your experience section

Add energy and purpose to your resume by starting each sentence of your professional experience section with a meaningful action verb, avoiding overused words like managed and led and weak verbs like used or completed. These generic verbs lack luster and are easily glossed over, plus they indicate mediocrity because they are typical. Your resume must stand out. Action verbs vary based on your industry and the position you are seeking, but here are some effective power words to start sentences in your work experience section.

4. Highlight key skills

A concise, bulleted key skills section formatted as a sidebar or graphic box allows hiring managers to quickly scan your capabilities to see if they align with the job description. This is essentially the short-list companion to your work experience section, but it’s an important part of a resume. A key skills list offers an opportunity to incorporate keywords that will pass through resume ATS so you can advance to the next step in the hiring process.

When writing your key skills list, include hard skills that demonstrate specific capabilities and knowledge. By doing so, you will show potential employers that you have the expertise and training required to fulfill the position. Also include some applicable soft skills, though focus mostly on hard skills because a resume with only the former will not capture the attention of ATS. Consider which soft skills are important for successfully executing the desired role.

For instance, if you are applying for a data science position, even though this is a highly technical job, you still need to collaborate with team members in other divisions and possibly interface with a consumer audience.

Following are some examples of key skills to include in resumes when applying for positions in real estate, data engineer, warehouse worker, and host/hostess. Select a half-dozen of your strongest skills, avoiding a laundry list approach that can look overplayed.

5. Provide your educational background

Many employers prefer candidates with some type of formal training, even if you don’t have a college degree. List all of your relevant education on your resume, from the bachelor’s degree you received 10 years ago to the special certifications earned throughout your career or education. Also include internships and externships, especially if you haven’t had much work experience in your field.

Always list your highest degree first, such as a doctorate or master’s degree, followed by other degrees, credentials, and certifications. If you are currently enrolled in a program you have not yet completed, include this on your resume. You will include start and graduate dates, so potential employers will recognize you are still finishing the program.

Here is an example of an education and certifications resume section that is organized and will give hiring managers the information they want and need.

6. Explain awards and achievements

Can you prove your abilities have been tested and you succeed in challenging environments? Awards and achievements show potential employers how you bring value to an organization and your stand-out capabilities. If you have earned an award for customer service, this recognition will not only demonstrate your ability to retain clients but also that you resolve issues and mediate conflict. If you were recognized as the top sales agent of the year, the award will exhibit how you strive for excellence and contribute to a company’s bottom line in a tangible way.

Stand-alone awards section or include with professional experience?

You can incorporate awards and achievements in the professional experience section of your resume, which is especially helpful for quantifying statements such as “Surpassed sales goals” or “Delivered impeccable customer service.” If achievements are numerous and especially prestigious, a stand-alone awards and achievements section will call attention to the distinguished recognition. A separate awards section is also appropriate for someone with less work experience who would benefit from displaying their educational background, credentials, and awards.

7. Organize information in reverse-chronological order

Reverse chronological format is ideal for most resumes. This approach ensures that your most recent and relevant experience is featured at the top of your document. Even at the entry level, a reverse chronological order resume will give hiring managers a more organized view of your experience, education, key skills, and additional credentials or awards.

On the other hand, chronological-order resumes illuminate your career progression and give hiring managers a picture of how you have grown, accomplished milestones, and gained increased levels of responsibility and leadership over the years.

In most cases, your current job will be the most attractive to potential employers and demonstrate your rise as a professional. For this reason, we generally recommend a reverse-chronological resume format. Doctors and academics, however, usually prepare a curriculum vitae (CV) in addition to a resume, and CVs are formatted in chronological order, listing published studies, appointments, and presentations in the order in which they were accomplished.

Since we’re focused on resumes, go in with the idea that you’ll build a document that positions your most recent experiences first.

8. Incorporate keywords that align with the job description

Most organizations rely on some form of ATS to identify qualified candidates for job openings. To get your resume through the initial screening process and into the hiring manager’s hands, incorporate keywords from the job description directly into your profile, professional experience, and skills sections.

Not all employers use ATS for filtering resumes, but including keywords is still important because it allows those reviewing your resume to quickly scan your capabilities to determine if you fit the position. We offer some helpful guidance on keywords commonly used in a wide range of resumes with these examples as a tool to fuel your resume-building efforts.

Warning: While including keywords is important, lifting entire phrases word for word from a job description will show hiring managers that you are fabricating a resume that probably doesn’t reflect your actual experience and skills. Never copy/paste, and remember that complete transparency is of utmost importance when creating a resume that will land you the job you’re seeking.

Tip!

Tip!

Recruit a proofreader

A single typo may result in a rejection letter, so proofread your resume before you submit it. Consider having a second set of eyes look at your resume as well. Sometimes we skim over our mistakes or get too close to the information, and having an outside reader will help you spot content that needs clarification. Also, double-check your contact information, otherwise you could miss out on an interview offer because a hiring manager cannot reach you.

9. Select a resume template

Where to start? If you have researched resume templates and are struggling to figure out which design is the best given your industry, experience, and career goals, you are certainly not alone. What is the best resume template for you? Here are some considerations to factor into your resume template decision as you make a choice.

• Changing industries or occupations
• Education vs. work history
• Experience
• Industry
• Sought-after employer brand vibe

10. Include a cover letter

When you apply for a job, include a cover letter with your resume. This is an optional step, but an introductory letter may help you land the job you want. In fact, some hiring managers automatically reject resumes unaccompanied by cover letters.

A cover letter builder will guide you as you create an introduction that showcases your personality and explains the experiences and skills listed in your resume. You can highlight achievements, mention how you learned about a position, and discuss why you feel you’re a qualified candidate. This is a good time to name-drop by saying sales manager Jennifer McMann told you about the open position or Professor Raymond, a long-time friend of the company’s owner, referred you because you seemed like a shoo-in for the role.

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Start Writing

Now, let’s answer the most common questions about how to make a resume.

Frequently Asked Questions About How To Make a Resume

Jacob Meade

Certified Professional Resume Writer (CPRW, ACRW)

Jacob Meade is a resume writer and editor with nearly a decade of experience. His writing method centers on understanding and then expressing each person’s unique work history and strengths toward their career goal. Jacob has enjoyed working with jobseekers of all ages and career levels, finding that a clear and focused resume can help people from any walk of life. He is an Academy Certified Resume Writer (ACRW) with the Resume Writing Academy, and a Certified Professional Resume Writer (CPRW) with the Professional Association of Resume Writers & Career Coaches.