Resume Writing Tips

These resume writing tips will put you ahead of the competition. This is the second of our two-part resume writing instructions section.

Structure

• Start with your name and contact information.

• Provide a summary of the highlights of your resume.

• For a functional or combined resume, start with your skills and accomplishments. For a functional resume, continue with whatever experience highlights your skills. For a combined resume, list your experience with the most recent job first, working backwards.

• For a chronological resume, skip skills and accomplishments and go straight for your experience, starting with the most recent job and working backwards.

• For all types, put down your education next. If you feel that your education is more important than your skills or experience for this particular job, put education before experience.

• Finally, list whatever awards, languages and extras you have.

Visuals

• Use an attractive, easy-to-read font.

• Use bullets to highlight points and break up text. This will make your text easier to read.

• Size it minimum 10, maximum 12 (with the exception of your name, whose font should be larger than the rest of the text).

• Highlight beginnings of sections using bold, italics, underlines and small caps.

• Put space in between sections to divide them cleanly.

• Use borders and shading, but do so sparingly and in good taste.

•If you can keep it to one page, great. Don’t go over two pages. If you have two pages, make sure the text fills at least half the page.

• Take a look at it and make sure it appeals to you. Show it to a friend, but only one who would give you an honest opinion.

Word choice

• Use active verbs that demonstrate the power you have exerted in your professional experience, such as “managed,” “provided,” “directed,” “collaborated,” etc.

• When you discuss in your professional experience section what you’ve done, state why you did it. For example, turn “was manager of…” into “managed office in order to ensure efficiency.”

For more resume writing tips, see our resume writing format development page.