OVERVIEW
This guide will summarize effective methods to convey and communicate your experience on your resume.
We have broken down each part of the resume into different sections, where we dive deep into the do’s and don’ts. While we realize that there is no perfect resume, we believe in providing you with the tools and resources to confidently craft your own resume and proudly highlight your achievements.
At the end of this guide, you will find a few different samples of resume templates which compile all of the advice recommended.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
FORMATTING
Your resume should be a 1 page (Letter size - 8.5 x 11 inch) document consistently formatted throughout:
- Font Type
- Font Style (Bold, Italics, Underlined)
- Font Size - (e.g., Headings should be the same font size, subheadings should be the same font size, etc.)
- Capitalization
- Punctuation - (e.g. Decide whether or not each of your job description bullet points will have periods at the end of them)
- Dates (Month, Year) - Be consistent on whether you write out the full month name or the abbreviation (e.g. December versus Dec)
- Work Experience - Stick to a consistent format when describing your work experience. If you start with listing the company first, ensure to continue to do so throughout the rest of your experiences.
Try to stick to fonts such as Arial or Times New Roman as they are concise and easy-to-read.
When writing your resume, don’t be sloppy - make sure to double-check for grammar and spelling mistakes or ask your parents, friends, or university career center to look through it as well. Also, check out the free service, Grammarly, to help you triple check your work.
Headers should always start and delineate a new section of your resume. Feel free to rearrange the different sections to fit your unique position and needs.
Here are three different career situations in which you may want to consider changing the order of sections:
- If you are a student looking for an internship, list your education section at the top as most internship programs require you to be currently continuing your education. This will allow the recruiter to validate your eligibility quickly and easily when scanning your resume.
- If you are a recent graduate, you can choose whether to list your education or experience section first. This can depend on how much relevant experience you have for the role you are applying for.
- If you are looking for a full time position, it is more relevant to list your experience first to communicate to the recruiter you meet the requirements for the job.
If your unique situation does not fall into one of these three situations, a great rule of thumb to follow is to list whichever section you have the most experience in or you believe would be most relevant to the opportunity you are applying for.
There is no need to include a headshot/picture of yourself on your resume (however, make sure to have one on your LinkedIn profile). This is not expected, nor common in resumes for jobs in the United States and Canada.
Try to stay away from fancy resume templates that are hard to read and follow along. While pretty in design, these templates may not be ATS compliant, meaning that the automatic system will not properly analyze your resume into the system. The template examples below are ATS compliant. From the perspective of a recruiter, an ideal resume would be one that requires very little effort to decipher and understand. Therefore, make it as easy as possible for the recruiter to go down the list of job requirements and check off all of those boxes as they are reading your resume. There is no perfect resume template !
If your resume is too long using the template, you can reduce the font size by 1-2 pts max. However, instead of listing everything you have ever done, be thoughtful about what experiences are most relevant to the opportunities you are applying for and which ones you are most proud of. Tailor your resume to the job position you are applying to. Remember your resume is a way to get your foot in the door, once you are invited for a phone screen or your first interview you can expand and elaborate on additional experiences not listed on your resume.
HEADER
Your Header should include your:
- Legal Name - This should be bolded and in a larger font to make sure it stands out and clearly defines who this resume belongs to. If you typically go by a nickname instead of your legal name, feel free to include that in parentheses after your first name
- Optional: Desired role - This section can be updated for each of the different positions you are applying to, in order to clearly define the role you are applying for (e.g., Product Manager, Software Engineer, Data Scientist). If it is difficult to delineate a clear story from your experiences, it might be helpful to clearly define the position you are applying for.
- Email - List a professional email that you regularly check such as your student email or a Gmail email and make sure it's the same one as you enter on the application. If you are a recently graduated student, update your university email to forward your emails to a personal account.
- Phone Number
- LinkedIn URL & Portfolio Links (GitHub, website) - Only list these items on your resume if they are updated with your current information. These are opportunities for you to expand your story beyond the one page resume! Make sure that these are clickable links
- Location (City, State) - Your current location is used by the recruiter to understand where you are presently located in comparison to the opportunity you are applying for in relocation (There is no need to write out your full address). If you are applying to a role that is far away from your current location, consider adding "open to relocation" to your this section of your resume
EDUCATION
Post-Secondary Education
There is no need to list universities where you did not complete a degree or transferred from.
For institutions you did graduated from, you should include the following items:
- University Name
- Diploma or Degree program
- Major/Minor
- Academic Recognition (Cum Laude, etc)
- Location (City, State)
Student Specific:
- Anticipated Graduation Date (Expected Graduation: Month, Year) - Make sure to include both the month and year for recruiters and employers to have a clear picture when you are completing your education and when they can expect you will be able to start work
- GPA - There is no obligation to list your GPA for most roles, however if it is above a 3.5, feel free to
Certifications
List out the full certification name only if you completed it. There is no such thing as an “In Progress” certification, either you have it or you don’t. Don’t include expired certifications.
WORK EXPERIENCE
For the work experience section, here are a few must haves:
- Company Name - The name it is most well-known by, not the legal name. (e.g., Tesla, not Tesla, Inc.)
- Title - Official job title
- Dates - The duration of time that you worked a specific role (Month, Year - Month, Year). Make sure to be consistent with either writing out the months full name or abbreviated name (e.g. December vs. Dec)
- Location - City, State. If you worked remote, write the city you were working from
- Optional: Role description - If you worked at a company that individuals might not know about top of mind, or your job title is ambiguous, you may want to include a brief one sentence summary about what the company does and your role. For example, one of Andrew’s previous titles was “Consultant”, but he elaborates that his role was Technical Lead with the company’s Cloud Engineering consulting practice.
Each of your listed work experiences should include 3-5 detailed and concise achievement statements that describe WHAT you did, WHY you did it, and what was the IMPACT. Here are a few things you should remember to include and focus on:
- Be Detailed - Instead of using generic statements, explain your achievements in detail (e.g. “"Input data into database" vs "Performed data entry of hard-copy financial statements into Salesforce Sales Cloud")
- Data - Use numbers and percentages to showcase the quantified impact that your task had (e.g Notice the difference between the statement “increased revenue” and “increased revenue by 15%”)
Focus on tailoring your resume to the specific position you are applying to instead of listing everything you have ever done.
If you are currently a student, don’t be discouraged if currently your work experiences are limited to only including part time jobs (e.g. customer service and retail). There are a number of great interpersonal skills that you can highlight in these experiences such as communication, time management, customer service, and teamwork. Leverage your personal projects, leadership, courses, and degree in your resume if this is the case.
SELF EMPLOYMENT
Self-employment through freelancing or pro-bono work should be listed under a single job experience. You can list each engagement as a bullet point and briefly describe the type of client and project.
Self-employment is verified by future employers via invoices and payments, so be sure to issue invoices and receipts with dates even if the total sum invoiced is $0.
Avoid using “CEO & Founder” as a title as it doesn’t describe your role well, use a title like “Analytics Consultant” or “Cloud Systems Integration Specialist” to provide more details.
Refer to “JJ Software Consulting” as an example in the resume template.
PROJECTS
As a student pursuing your education, you have the unique opportunity to work on some pretty incredible projects throughout your major related courses. Depending on how much relevant experience you have in relation to the position you are applying to, you can use this section to highlight either educational projects or personal projects you have completed.
While this section is optional, make sure to follow the same rules described above in the work experience section in relation to describing your achievements.
INDUSTRY INVOLVEMENT
The industry involvement section is an optional opportunity for you to showcase your engagement with the community or organizations you are passionate about. While this involvement may not directly relate to the position or field of work you are applying for, you may choose to include it in your resume to highlight other transferable skills (e.g. public speaking, coaching).
If you are a student or career-switcher, this can also highlight your invested interest in the company, role or industry that you’re applying to. For example, if you would like to pivot into marketing, you may want to join a professional marketing association or club. Highlighting this involvement helps to “make a case” for your candidacy.
SKILLS
While most resumes will have a seperate skills section, formatted in a list or table, each of your skills should be highlighted and showcased in detail throughout your work experience or projects sections instead of simply being listed. If you haven’t used them in work experience or personal projects, the skills might be lacking supporting credibility. Always be prepared to support and explain how you have utilized your skills.
For additional skills which are not included in your experiences, such as languages, feel free to include a short one to two line section at the bottom of your resume.
RESUMES
Student Resume
Jonathan (Johnny) Jones
Software Engineer Internship
(123) 456-7890 | j-jones@gmail.com | linkedin.com/in/j.jones | San Francisco, CA
Education
University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA Expected Graduation: May 2020
Bachelor of Science Candidate, Major: Computer Science, Minor: Philosophy
Courses: Data Structures; Algorithms; Databases; Software Design Patterns; Web & Mobile Applications; App Security
Professional Experience
University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA May 2019 - Present
CS Teaching Assistant
Supported students and professor as a TA for the course COMP25: Web & Mobile Applications
- Led a subset of students through a series of Node JS programming activities as part of a weekly 45-minute tutorial session, resulting in a 100% class pass rate for students in my tutorial
- Collaborated with the professor to create lecture presentation slides and customized study guides, which received a 85% approval rating from students at the end of the semester
- Evaluated student assignments and exams to ensure academic criteria was met and provided detailed feedback and suggestions resulting in the class average grade increasing by 10% by the end of the course
- Tutored students one-on-one during weekly office hours to ensure 100% of students who attended were able to fully complete assignments they required assistance on
Starbucks, San Francisco, CA November 2016 - May 2019
Barista
- Initiated and performed daily sanitization of all countertops and furniture to ensure a perfect (100% pass rate) health inspection track record
- Collaborated with teammates to ensure a consistent order-to-delivery time of under three minutes for standard beverages and under five minutes for customized beverages, including during peak hours
Projects
Cloud Job Tracker Application
- Set up an Amazon EC2 instance to host a Python application that monitored company career websites for entry-level engineer roles and stored new openings into a MySQL database
- Developed and scheduled a Python script to data-mine career websites for new engineering roles and compare with existing ones in the database, triggering outbound email notifications for new roles via a local SMTP server
Leadership & Activities
Society of Manufacturing Engineers, VP of External Affairs August 2016 - Present
- Successfully recruited 10 new engineering companies (Tesla, Apple, Light Up Software) into participating in our campus events throughout the year
FSAE, XYZ Racing Team, Chassis Engineering Lead January 2018 - Present
- Serve as the chassis engineering lead responsible for ensuring that the electric vehicle design and development meets competition compliance standards, and additionally follows industry sustainability best practices
Skills: Spanish (Fluent), Adobe Photoshop, Python, Java, SQL, C++, C#, MySQL, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Node.js
Professional Resume
Joanna Jackson
Software Engineer
(123) 456-7890 | j-jackson@gmail.com | linkedin.com/in/j.jackson | San Francisco, CA
Professional Experience
Acme Software, San Mateo, CA May 2019 - Present
Software Engineer
- Communicate with stakeholders and customers to understand gaps in the sales product and devise a new automation feature to accelerate lead conversation time by up to 800%
- Develop wireframes, user stories and effort estimates to provide leadership with a feature delivery timeline and receive approval to utilize human and capital resources valued at $10,000
- Led the agile development of the new feature through staging environments and facilitated integration with existing Java code through employing Git branching and merging best practices
- Engage with existing customers and demoed new automation features to upsell $100,000 in new revenue
JJ Software Consulting, San Francisco, CA Nov 2016 - May 2019
Software Development Consultant
Started and led an analytics consulting business to support cross-industry clients through market research, analytics analysis, and custom reporting
- $80M AUM Financial Services Client: Led discovery sessions to understand existing business systems and developed an integration API on Mulesoft (iPaas) to improve data latency by 500%
- Multinational Nonprofit Client: Created a Python script to automate the generation of tax receipts from CSV data and accelerate the issuance and delivery to donors by 1000%
Illuminate Software, Fremont, CA May 2015 - August 2015
Software Engineering Intern
Participated in a summer software engineering internship working on Illuminate Software’s Sales chatbot
- Developed an AWS Chatbot to interact with website visitors and collect/process input to determine products of interest and route the request to the appropriate account executives, accounting for 25% of leads
- Integrated the ChatBot application’s UI with the website’s native look and feel by customizing HTML, CSS, and JavaScript on Wordpress
Education & Certifications
University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA
Bachelor of Science Candidate, Major: Computer Science, Minor: Philosophy
AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional
Amazon Web Services
Industry Involvement
Bay Area Android Hackathon, San Jose, CA March 2019
Engineering Coach & Judge
- Attended a weekend-long hackathon designed to encourage university students from low-income households to learn how to code and acted as an engineering coach to assist teams in developing a mobile Android application
- Provided technical feedback to teams on programming best practices and voted for top 3 finalists
Skills: Linux, Python, Javascript, Node.js, SAP, Salesforce, AWS, Microsoft Azure, Android, Swift, bash scripting
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS (FAQ)
Q: Can I change my job titles from my past experiences in order to curate my resume for a new job role? For example, I work as an Analyst, but do multiple roles like Product Manager/Owner.
A: You may change your title at the top of your resume, but not your work history titles. These will be verified by your employer during the background check.
Q: Cover Letters - What is currently the etiquette and best practices with cover letters?
A: Cover letters are a mixed bag. At larger companies, where positions receive 100-1000’s of applications, cover letters are rarely read. However, at smaller companies the recruiter might turn to the cover letter to learn more about the applicant and their story. Overall, cover letters will never hurt your application. If you have the time to curate a specific cover letter to the job application, do it, but if it’s a deciding factor between you applying to the job and not then make sure to still apply.
Q: When is it appropriate to still list high school achievements on your resume?
A: High school achievements should be slowly replaced by experiences and involvements you partake in college or personal projects. While there is no exact date you need to remove these experiences, typically by the end of your sophmore year employers would like to see more recent activities. Feel free to stop listing your high school on your resume during the same time.
ACTION VERB LIST
What are Action Verbs?
Action verbs are utilized at the beginning of each of your experience bullet points. They showcase your impact, demonstrate your work ethic, and introduce your accomplishments.
Here are some examples of action verbs you can use:
Management/Leadership Skills
Administered, Analyzed, Appointed, Approved, Assigned, Attained, Authorized, Considered, Consolidated, Contracted, Controlled, Converted, Coordinated, Decided, Delegated, Developed, Directed, Eliminated, Emphasized, Enforced, Enhanced, Established, Executed, Generated, Handled, Headed, Hired, Hosted, Improved, Incorporated, Increased, Initiated, Inspected, Instituted, Led, Managed, Merged, Motivated, Organized, Originated, Overhauled, Oversaw, Planned, Presided, Prioritized, Produced, Recommended. Reorganized, Replaced, Restored, Reviewed, Scheduled, Streamlined
Communication/People Skills
Addressed, Advertised, Arranged, Articulated, Authored, Clarified, Collaborated, Communicated, Composed, Condensed, Conferred, Consulted, Contacted, Conveyed, Convinced, Corresponded, Debated, Defined, Described, Developed, Directed, Discussed, Crafted, Edited, Elicited, Enlisted, Explained, Incorporated, Influenced, Interacted, Interpreted, Interviewed, Involved, Joined, Listened, Marketed, Mediated, Moderated, Negotiated, Observed, Outlined, Participated, Persuaded, Presented, Promoted, Proposed, Publicized, Reconciled, Recruited, Referred, Reported, Resolved, Specified
Research Skills
Analyzed, Clarified, Collected, Compared, Conducted, Critiqued, Detected, Determined, Diagnosed, Evaluated, Examined, Experimented, Explored, Extracted, Formulated, Gathered, Identified, Inspected, Interpreted, Interviewed, Invented, Investigated, Located, Measured, Organized, Researched, Searched, Solved, Summarized, Surveyed
Financial/Data Skills
Administered, Adjusted, Allocated, Analyzed, Assessed, Audited, Balanced, Calculated, Computed, Conserved, Corrected, Determined, Developed, Estimated, Forecasted, Managed, Marketed, Measured, Planned, Programmed, Projected, Reconciled, Reduced, Researched
Technical Skills
Adapted, Assembled, Built, Calculated, Computed, Conserved, Constructed, Converted, Debugged, Designed, Determined, Developed, Engineered, Fabricated, Fortified, Installed, Maintained, Operated, Printed, Programmed, Rectified, Regulated, Remodeled, Repaired, Replaced, Restored, Solved, Specialized, Standardized, Studied, Utilized
Creative Skills
Adapted, Combined, Conceptualized, Condensed, Created, Customized, Designed, Developed, Directed, Displayed, Established, Fashioned, Founded, Illustrated, Initiated, Instituted, Integrated, Introduced, Invented, Modeled, Modified, Performed, Planned, Revised, Revitalized
Helping Skills
Adapted, Advocated, Aided, Answered, Arranged, Assessed, Assisted, Clarified, Coached, Collaborated, Contributed, Cooperated, Counseled, Demonstrated, Educated, Encouraged, Ensured, Expedited, Facilitated, Furthered, Guided, Helped, Insured, Intervened, Motivated, Provided, Referred, Rehabilitated, Presented, Resolved, Simplified
Organization/Detail Skills
Approved, Arranged, Categorized, Compiled, Corresponded, Distributed, Executed, Generated, Implemented, Incorporated, Logged, Maintained, Obtained, Operated, Organized, Prepared, Provided, Recorded, Registered, Responded, Reviewed, Scheduled, Submitted, Updated, Verified