A strong resume lists your contact information, a brief professional summary, your work experience in reverse chronological order, your skills, and your education. That’s the structure most hiring managers and applicant tracking systems expect. Getting the format right is straightforward once you understand what each section needs and how to make your experience stand out on the page.
Pick the Right Format
Three resume formats dominate, and the right one depends on where you are in your career.
- Reverse chronological: The most widely used format. You list your most recent job first and work backward. This works best when you have a steady work history in the field you’re applying to.
- Functional: This format groups your experience by skill area rather than by job title. It’s designed for people changing careers, re-entering the workforce, or dealing with gaps in employment. It puts what you can do front and center rather than when you did it.
- Combination (hybrid): This blends both approaches. You lead with a skills section highlighting relevant projects and abilities, then follow with a chronological work history. It works well when you have strong skills and solid experience but want to emphasize specific capabilities for a particular role.
If you’re unsure, go with reverse chronological. It’s the format recruiters scan fastest, and applicant tracking systems parse it most reliably.
Set Up Your Contact Information
Your name goes at the top in a slightly larger font, followed by your phone number and a professional email address. Include a link to your LinkedIn profile or a portfolio site if you have one.
A full street address is no longer expected. Most employers don’t require it, and leaving it off can protect your privacy and reduce the risk of geographic bias. That said, listing your city and state can help if the job has a location requirement or if living nearby might work in your favor. If you’re planning to relocate, you can note that directly, something like “Relocating to Denver, CO.”
Write a Short Professional Summary
Directly below your contact details, add two or three sentences connecting your experience, skills, and interests to the specific role you’re applying for. This is sometimes called a candidate statement or career summary. Think of it as your pitch: who you are professionally, what you’re strongest at, and why this particular job fits.
Tailor this section for every application. A generic summary that could apply to any job signals that you didn’t read the posting carefully. Pull language from the job description and mirror it naturally. If the posting emphasizes “cross-functional collaboration” and you’ve done that work, say so here.
Detail Your Work Experience
This is the section hiring managers spend the most time on. For each role, include the company name, your job title, and the dates you worked there. Then add bullet points describing what you accomplished.
The biggest mistake people make is listing duties instead of results. “Managed social media accounts” tells a hiring manager almost nothing. What happened because you managed them? A useful framework is the XYZ formula: accomplished X, as measured by Y, by doing Z. For example, instead of “Handled client accounts,” you’d write “Managed 20+ enterprise accounts, growing annual recurring revenue by 30% year over year by developing tailored sales strategies.” Instead of “Built internal tools,” try “Built 3 internal tools that automated QA processes, cutting manual testing time by 12 hours per week.”
You don’t need to quantify every single bullet point, but aim for at least one or two measurable results per job. Think about metrics like revenue generated, time saved, people trained, costs reduced, error rates lowered, or customer satisfaction improved. Even rough numbers are better than none. “Trained approximately 15 new hires per quarter” is far more useful than “Responsible for training new employees.”
Summarize your day-to-day responsibilities in two or three sentences at most, then let your bullet points do the heavy lifting with specific accomplishments. For older positions that are less relevant, you can trim down to just a couple of bullets or a brief description.
Add Your Skills Section
Create a clean list of hard skills (software, tools, certifications, technical abilities) and relevant soft skills that match the job posting. This section serves two purposes: it gives a recruiter a quick snapshot of your capabilities, and it feeds keywords to applicant tracking systems.
Read the job description carefully and include skills that genuinely match your experience. If the posting asks for proficiency in Salesforce and you’ve used it, list it. Don’t stuff keywords for tools you’ve never touched. Interviewers will ask about anything on your resume.
Include Education and Certifications
List your degree, the institution, and your graduation year. If you graduated more than a few years ago, you can drop the year entirely. Add relevant certifications, professional development courses, or training programs below your degree. If you’re early in your career and your education is your strongest credential, move this section above work experience.
Format for Applicant Tracking Systems
Most mid-size and large companies use applicant tracking systems (ATS) to filter resumes before a human ever sees them. These systems scan your document for keywords, job titles, and qualifications that match the posting. A well-qualified candidate can get screened out by formatting alone.
Stick to a single-column layout. Avoid tables, text boxes, graphics, headers, and footers. ATS software often can’t read content inside these elements, treating text boxes as images and skipping them entirely. Use a clean, modern font like Arial or Calibri in a consistent size throughout. Don’t mix multiple fonts or bullet point styles.
Use standard section headings: “Work Experience,” “Education,” “Skills,” “Certifications.” Creative labels like “My Journey” or “Career Story” might look distinctive to a human reader, but ATS software may not recognize them and could misfile or skip the content underneath.
When a job posting asks for a Word document, that’s usually a signal the company runs ATS software. Submit a .docx file in that case. If the posting doesn’t specify, PDF is generally safe and preserves your formatting across devices. Set your margins to at least 2 centimeters (about 0.8 inches) and make sure your content doesn’t bleed onto an otherwise empty final page.
How Long Should a Resume Be?
One page is the standard for anyone with fewer than ten years of experience. If you have a longer career with genuinely relevant roles, two pages is fine. The key is density of useful information. A two-page resume packed with quantified achievements is better than a one-page resume padded with vague responsibilities, and a tight one-pager is better than two pages of filler.
Cut anything that doesn’t help you get this specific job. That retail position from college probably isn’t relevant if you’re applying for a project management role ten years later. Trim old roles, remove outdated skills, and resist the urge to include everything you’ve ever done.
Tailor Every Application
A resume that works for one job won’t necessarily work for another. Before you submit, compare your resume against the job posting line by line. Mirror the language the employer uses. If they say “project management” and your resume says “oversaw projects,” change it. If they list specific tools or methodologies, make sure those terms appear on your resume (assuming you actually have the experience).
Reorder your bullet points so the most relevant accomplishments appear first under each job. Adjust your professional summary to speak directly to what this employer is looking for. This doesn’t mean fabricating experience. It means presenting your real experience in the way that’s most relevant to each opportunity. Hiring managers can tell when a resume was written with their specific role in mind, and that effort consistently makes a difference.