Making a job resume comes down to four essential sections: a header with your contact information, your work experience, your education, and your skills. That’s the foundation every hiring manager expects, and it’s the structure that works best with the applicant tracking systems (ATS) that screen resumes before a human ever reads them. The good news is you don’t need to start from scratch or pay anyone to build one for you. Here’s how to put together a resume that gets read.
Pick the Right Format
Most job seekers should use a chronological resume, which lists your work and education history in reverse order, starting with your most recent position. This is the most widely recognized format, and it works well if you’re staying in the same field, have a clear career path, and don’t have major gaps in employment.
A functional resume organizes your experience around skills and qualifications instead of a timeline. This format makes more sense if you’re changing careers, have gaps you’d rather not spotlight, or have a mix of experiences that don’t follow a straight line. It lets you lead with transferable skills rather than job titles and dates. That said, many recruiters prefer chronological resumes because they’re easier to scan quickly, so use a functional format only when your situation genuinely calls for it.
Set Up Your Header
Your name and contact details go at the very top: full name, phone number, email address, city and state, and a LinkedIn profile URL if you have one. Type this directly into the body of the document rather than placing it inside a header or footer. Applicant tracking systems often ignore content in headers and footers, which means your name and phone number could be stripped out before a recruiter ever sees them.
Write a Strong Summary or Objective
Just below your contact info, add two to three sentences that frame who you are and what you bring. If you have work experience, write a summary that highlights your top qualifications and the kind of value you’ve delivered. If you’re entering the workforce for the first time or switching fields, an objective statement that names the role you’re targeting and the skills you offer works better. Either way, keep it short and specific to the job you’re applying for.
Build Your Work Experience Section
This is the section hiring managers spend the most time on. For each position, include your job title, the company name, its location, and the dates you worked there. Use a consistent date format throughout, like MM/YYYY, so both humans and software can parse it easily.
Under each role, write three to five bullet points describing what you did and, more importantly, what you accomplished. The difference between a forgettable bullet and one that lands an interview is specificity. A weak bullet states a task: “Managed club budget.” A stronger one adds a number: “Managed $7,000 club budget and invested funds in appropriate bonds.” The strongest version adds context and results: “Managed $7,000 club budget and invested $5,000 in appropriate bonds, returning 6% over the year.”
Follow that pattern whenever you can. Combine what you did, a measurable result, and the method or context that made it happen. Think about revenue generated, costs reduced, time saved, people managed, projects completed, or customers served. Even rough numbers (“reduced processing time by approximately 30%”) are far more persuasive than vague descriptions.
Start Each Bullet With an Action Verb
Every bullet should begin with a strong verb, not “Responsible for” or “Helped with.” Choose verbs that match the type of work. For leadership roles, try words like streamlined, established, consolidated, or supervised. For communication-heavy work, use negotiated, presented, persuaded, or recruited. For technical roles, engineered, debugged, programmed, or designed carry more weight. For research or analytical positions, verbs like analyzed, evaluated, diagnosed, or identified work well. Starting with a specific verb immediately tells the reader the scope of your contribution.
Add Your Education
List your highest degree first: the degree name, your major or concentration, the school name, and your graduation year. If you graduated within the last few years and had a strong GPA (generally 3.5 or above), you can include it. Otherwise, skip it. Relevant coursework, honors, or academic projects can be listed here if they relate to the job you’re targeting, but don’t pad this section with every elective you ever took.
If you have certifications or licenses relevant to the role, you can add a separate “Certifications” section right after education. Include the full name and any abbreviation: “Project Management Professional (PMP),” for example. Spelling out the credential and including the acronym ensures that keyword filters catch it regardless of which version the employer’s system searches for.
List Your Skills Strategically
A dedicated skills section gives ATS software a clean place to find keywords, and it gives recruiters a quick snapshot of your capabilities. Include both hard skills (specific tools, software, languages, or methodologies) and soft skills (communication, project management, problem solving), but lean heavily toward hard skills because those are what automated filters tend to scan for.
Here’s the key: mirror the language from the job posting. If the listing says “project management,” write “project management” on your resume, not “overseeing initiatives” or “leading cross-functional efforts.” ATS filters match exact language, so paraphrasing can cost you. Read the job description carefully and weave its specific terms into both your skills section and your bullet points. Where it makes sense, add context to skills by noting your experience level, like “Python (5 years)” instead of just “Python.”
Format for ATS and Readability
Most large and mid-size employers use applicant tracking systems to filter resumes before a human reviews them. A resume that looks beautiful on screen can be completely unreadable to these systems if the formatting is off. Follow these rules to make sure yours gets through.
- Use a single column layout. Multi-column designs, sidebars, and tables get scrambled or lost when software tries to read them.
- Stick to standard fonts. Arial, Calibri, Times New Roman, and Garamond are safe choices.
- Avoid graphics, logos, text boxes, and images. ATS software can’t read visuals, so any information trapped inside them disappears.
- Use plain section headers. Label your sections “Work Experience,” “Education,” and “Skills.” Creative headers like “My Journey” or “What I Bring” confuse parsing software.
- Save as .docx unless told otherwise. If a job posting specifically asks for a PDF, submit a text-based PDF (not a scanned image). When no format is specified, .docx is the safest choice.
You can test your formatting with a simple trick: open the PDF version of your resume, select all the text (Ctrl+A), and paste it into a plain text editor like Notepad. If the text flows in the correct order from top to bottom, your formatting is ATS-friendly. If it’s jumbled or out of sequence, you have a layout problem to fix.
Leave Off References
Don’t list references on your resume, and skip the “References available upon request” line. It takes up space you could use to highlight your qualifications, and hiring managers will ask for references when they’re ready for them. Use every line of your resume to make the case for why you should get the interview.
Using AI Tools the Right Way
AI resume builders can be genuinely useful. The better ones prompt you for key information, flag weak spots, and help you rewrite bullets to target a specific job description. They’re also tuned to produce ATS-compatible formatting, which removes a lot of guesswork. Some can tailor your resume’s language to match a particular job posting, which helps with keyword alignment.
A general-purpose chatbot is less reliable for this. Dedicated resume tools are designed to ask the right questions and catch common problems, while a general chatbot might produce polished-sounding text that’s vague or generic. If you use any AI tool, always review the output line by line. Make sure every claim is accurate, every number reflects your real experience, and the final product sounds like you. A recruiter who interviews you will notice if your resume’s tone doesn’t match the person sitting across from them.
Final Checklist Before You Submit
- Tailor it for each job. Adjust your summary, skills, and bullet points to reflect the language and priorities of each posting. A generic resume sent to 50 employers will underperform a customized one sent to 10.
- Keep it to one page if you have under 10 years of experience. Two pages are fine for senior professionals, but only if every line earns its space.
- Proofread ruthlessly. Typos and inconsistent formatting signal carelessness. Read it aloud, run spell check, and have someone else look at it.
- Use consistent formatting throughout. If one job title is bold, all job titles should be bold. If one date reads “01/2023,” don’t write “January 2024” elsewhere.
- Name your file professionally. “FirstName-LastName-Resume.docx” is clean and easy for recruiters to find in their downloads folder.