How to Write a Resume: A Section-by-Section Guide

Before you write: decide what the resume is for

Most weak resumes are weak because they try to describe everything. Before writing a line, pick the kind of job you're applying for and keep a copy of one or two real adverts beside you. Every section should help answer the question the reader of that advert has: can this person do this job?

Keep a longer master version with everything you've done, and cut a tailored copy for each application. Tailoring is mostly deleting: removing the bullets that don't support this role and moving the ones that do higher up.

Choose a structure for your level

The reverse-chronological format — most recent job first — is what recruiters expect and what applicant tracking systems parse most reliably. What changes with experience is what comes first and how long the resume is.

Country conventions matter too. A UK CV usually runs to two pages with no photo; a US resume is often one page on Letter paper; employers in the Gulf commonly expect a photo, nationality and visa status. Follow the conventions of the country where the job is, not where you are.

Header and contact details

Your name, a one-line title, then contact details on one or two lines: email, phone, city and country, and a LinkedIn or portfolio link if it adds something. A full street address isn't needed and takes space.

• Use a plain, professional email address — firstname.lastname works.
• Put contact details in the body of the page, not in the document's header or footer area; some systems skip those.
• Your title should match the job you want, as long as it's honest — “Data Analyst”, not “Data Ninja”.
• Leave out date of birth, marital status and photo unless the country's convention expects them.

The professional summary: three lines that do real work

A summary sits under your name and answers three questions: who you are professionally, what you're especially good at, and what evidence backs it up. Aim for 40–80 words. It's not the place for what you want from an employer — that's an objective, and it wastes the most-read space on the page.

Students and career changers can use a career objective, but make it specific: name the field, the kind of role, and the skills you already bring. “Final-year economics student seeking a data analyst internship, with SQL and Python experience from a published capstone project” works; “seeking an opportunity to learn” doesn't.

Work experience: write achievements, not job descriptions

For each role give the job title, employer, location and dates (month and year), then three to six bullet points for recent roles and one or two for older ones. The bullets are where most resumes win or lose.

A strong bullet has three parts: an action verb, what you did it to, and what changed as a result. Duties — what you were responsible for — tell the reader what the job was. Achievements tell them how well you did it.

When you don't have a number

Not every result is a percentage. Other honest measures include scale (how many people, customers, sites or transactions), time (deadlines met, hours saved), quality (errors removed, audits passed) and recognition (chosen to train others, asked to cover a senior role). If you genuinely don't know a figure, describe the effect in words — “so the team stopped re-keying orders by hand” — rather than inventing one. Interviewers ask how numbers were measured.

Verbs that carry weight

Start each bullet with a verb that shows what kind of contribution it was, and vary them. Leading: led, coached, hired. Building: built, designed, launched. Improving: cut, streamlined, automated. Growing: grew, won, expanded. Analysing: analysed, forecast, audited. Avoid “helped”, “assisted” and “was involved in” unless that genuinely was your part — and then say what the part was.

Skills: specific, grouped and backed up

A skills section is a quick index for a human scanning the page and for keyword searches in applicant tracking systems. List tools, methods, languages, certifications and specialisms — things that can be checked. Group them if you have more than ten.

• Good: “Excel (Power Query, pivot tables)”, “SQL”, “IFRS 16”, “Salesforce”, “Spanish (C1)”.
• Weak: “Communication”, “Teamwork”, “Hard-working” — show these through results in your bullets instead.
• Put the skills named in the advert first, but only if you have them.
• Mention your most important skills in at least one bullet too, so the reader sees where you used them.

Education, certifications and the rest

List qualifications with the institution and year. Include grades if they're strong and recent; drop school-level qualifications once you have a degree or several years' experience. Certifications that matter in your field — PMP, ACCA, CIPD, AWS — deserve their own section near the top of the second half.

Optional sections earn their place only if they support the application: projects (essential for students and technical roles), volunteering (shows skills when experience is thin), languages (with a level), publications (academic and research roles). Hobbies rarely help unless they're unusual or relevant.

Format it for people and applicant tracking systems

• Use standard section headings: Experience, Education, Skills. Creative headings confuse parsers.
• Keep text as text: no skills shown only as bars, no important information inside images or text boxes.
• One readable font at 10–12 pt, consistent date formats, consistent bullet punctuation.
• Save as PDF unless the employer asks for Word; name the file with your name, e.g. “Priya-Raman-Resume.pdf”.
• Two-column designs are fine for sending to a person; for large company portals, a single-column template is the safer choice.

Final checklist before you send it

1. The title under your name matches the job you're applying for.
2. The summary has a specialism and at least one piece of evidence.
3. Every recent bullet starts with a verb and most say what changed.
4. The skills named in the advert that you genuinely have appear in the skills section and in at least one bullet.
5. No spelling mistakes — read it aloud, then run a spell-checker.
6. Dates are consistent and there are no unexplained gaps longer than a year.
7. It's one page (early career) or two (experienced), not one and a half.
8. The PDF opens on a phone and the text can be selected and copied.