How to Write a Resume: A Practical Guide From Blank Page to PDF

Three layouts cover nearly every situation:

Harvard recommends listing headings "in order of importance" and, within headings, "in reverse chronological order (most recent first)." In the US and Canada the document is a resume on US Letter paper; elsewhere it is usually called a CV and printed on A4. The CV format guide covers country differences, and the curriculum vitae page explains the naming.

Your name is the largest text on the page. Under it, one line with your phone number, a professional email address, your city and state (or city and country), and one relevant link such as a portfolio or professional profile. A full street address is not needed for most applications.

Leave out a photo, date of birth, age, gender and marital status. Harvard's resume guide lists "Include a picture" and "Include age or gender" under things not to do.

A summary tells the reader who you are before they read the details. Keep it to two or three lines: your current role or field, years of experience, your strongest skill with proof, and the kind of job you want.

Generic: "Hardworking, motivated professional seeking a challenging position in a dynamic organization."

Useful: "Accounts payable specialist with four years in manufacturing finance. Cleared a 600-invoice backlog in six weeks after a system change. Looking for a senior AP role with process improvement responsibility."

The useful version is specific, factual and checkable. Write it last, after the experience section, when you know what your strongest points are.

Each job gets a heading line (job title, employer, city, dates) and three to six bullet points. Harvard's guidance on language is the best short rule set there is: be "specific rather than general," "active rather than passive," and "fact-based (quantify and qualify)." It names "not demonstrating results" as a top mistake.

The bullet formula

Action verb + what you did + result or scale.

The numbers above are illustrations; yours must be real. If you cannot measure a result, describe the scale (how many people, accounts, items or locations) or the outcome (approved, launched, adopted by another team).

Action verbs that work

Harvard's resume guide groups action verbs into categories such as leadership, communication, research, technical, quantitative and creative. Examples of the kind of verbs that fit each: led, coordinated, trained for leadership; presented, wrote, negotiated for communication; analyzed, measured, forecast for quantitative work; built, automated, configured for technical roles; designed, produced, illustrated for creative roles. Harvard also advises against personal pronouns: write "Managed a team of four," not "I managed a team of four."

List your highest or most recent qualification first: degree or certificate, institution, city and graduation year (or expected year). Add honors, a relevant thesis or coursework only if you are early in your career. Experienced candidates can reduce education to one line per qualification.

If you are a student, education goes above experience, and class projects, labs or competitions can sit underneath it as evidence. The student resume example and resume with no experience show this layout filled in.

Read the job ad and list every tool, method, language or certification it mentions. Keep the ones you genuinely have and put them in your skills section, using the same words. If the ad says "Microsoft Excel," write "Microsoft Excel," not just "spreadsheets." That helps both the recruiter and any applicant tracking system that searches your resume for those terms.

Group skills if you have many: Software, Languages, Certifications. Skip soft-skill lists like "team player" or "good communicator"; show those in your experience bullets instead.

You do not need a new resume for every application, but you should adjust three things each time:

1. The summary: name the kind of role you are applying for.
2. The order of bullets: move the bullets that match the ad to the top of each job.
3. The skills: add skills from the ad that you have, and drop ones that do not matter for this role.

Keep a longer master resume with everything, then save a tailored copy per application. The builder lets you keep several documents in your browser at once.

There is no official rule for US resumes. Prospects notes that resumes "tend to be more concise and follow no particular formatting rules" compared with UK CVs, which careers services cap at two A4 pages. In practice, aim for a single page if you have a few years of experience and two pages if you have a long, relevant history. Academic and research roles use a longer CV.

If you are over, cut older roles to one line, remove bullets that do not match the target job, and shorten the summary. Do not shrink the font below a comfortable reading size to fit more in.

Many employers use an applicant tracking system to read resumes. Greenhouse documents what breaks its parser: "graphics, photos, or word art," "complex resumes with tables, headers, and footers," files "uploaded as an image," and "a resume with spaces between the letters." It recommends PDF uploads "for best results."

Harvard adds: "Be sure that your formatting will translate properly if converted to a .pdf." The ATS-friendly resume guide has the full checklist, and our PDFs are text-based so the words can be selected and extracted.

• Starting each line with a date. Harvard lists this as a don't; lead with the job title or the action.
• Gaps with no explanation. Harvard advises avoiding information gaps; a short line about study, caring or travel is enough.
• Inconsistent formatting. Dates aligned differently, mixed bullet styles, or two fonts.
• Listing references. Harvard advises not to list references on the resume; have them ready separately.
• Slang and abbreviations. Spell out terms the first time unless they are standard in your field.
• Typos in names. Check the company, software and certification names carefully.

Finished? Pair the resume with a tailored letter using the cover letter generator, and see how to write a cover letter for the method.