how to write my experience in resume

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How to Write Work Experience on a Resume

Writing the work experience section

Writing the resume work experience section is one of the most influential and often trickiest resume sections to get right. Some employers will even cut right past the summary at the top of a resume and scan the employers, job titles and work dates to see if the resume is worth reading in detail. How much text you include for each section will also create a significant first impression. A lot can be understood during that mythical 6-second scan.

The work experience/job history on a resume is where past job descriptions and professional experiences give credibility to an application or interview. All the other information and sections on a resume, from hobbies to the personal statement , frame the list of relevant work experience over the last 10 - 15 years. So, how do I describe my work experience on a resume?

This guide will show you everything you need to know about including work experience on a resume, including:

• Why the work experience in cv matters
• What to include (and not include) in work experience on a resume
• The best format to follow for describing your work history
• Examples of work experience in cv across industries
• Practical tips for resume work experience
• How to list your current job and previous positions

The five-word rule. Think about five words that would be sum up your career. How would you describe your experience? Those five words should then come across incredibly strongly in the work experience on a resume. A hiring manager is not going to remember the sentences that you write, but if they stop reading with those five words (or more) in their minds, your resume will have done its job.

Why is work experience on your resume so important?

Before we jump in to the ins and outs of writing work experience on a resume, here is why it matters. A hiring manager or employer looks at a resume to answer one question:

Does this person’s work experience qualify them for this job?

The work experience section of your resume is the foundation that either qualifies you or disqualifies you for an interview or the next step in the hiring process. This resume section uses the last 10 - 15 years of relevant career history to tell a prospective employer whether you have the work experience in your cv that will fit the requirements of the role. The work experience section gives credibility to your application and should compliment every other aspect of your application materials (other sections in the resume, cover letter, portfolio, etc).

Be careful not to write your work experience section like a list of job responsibilities , though. The hiring manager knows what they want you to do. They are far more interested in evidence from your previous work experiences that you have what it takes to perform and take your next employer forward. Focus on offering compelling accomplishments, plenty of context and quantifiable results that your competition will not be able to match.

How do I add experience to my resume: What to include

In most cases, choosing which jobs to include on your resume should depend on your work history and the type of job you’re applying for. In general, work in a backward chronological order (in a resume format often known as reverse chronological format ) starting with your most recent position at the top of the page and include the last 10-15 years of employment history. The backward chronological order works best for most job seekers.

If you have a scattered work history, don’t stress. Job hopping is both more common and more widely accepted today, especially among the younger workforce. Including short part-time stints and side projects is good if those professional experiences directly relate to the job or feature skills that overlap with the position. Be prepared to answer questions about your career choices while considering work experience in cv, have a confident answer about your career path, and be forthcoming about the level of commitment you’re looking for. Once you’ve chosen the positions, let’s dive into the specific bullet points about work experience in a cv. Each one should include:

• Results-focused facts: The hiring manager already knows the basics. These bullet points should focus on how you specifically managed the position with innovation.
• Action Verbs: Strong action verbs hook in the reader. Negotiated! Pioneered! Transformed! This also keeps you away from falling down the adjective rabbit hole.
• Quantitative information: Numbers stand out to a hiring manager. They are specific and tangible. You grew a client’s reader base by 300% or managed 200 silent auction items. Let your accomplishments shine!
• On-Site Training: Weave skills and certifications gained on the job. This shows initiative and otherwise overlooked abilities.
• Awards and honors: If you were called out on the job for great work, go ahead and brag. Your work experience resume examples should be designed to impress.

Ideally, each position should include a mix of free-flowing text and achievement-led bullet points. The bullets will catch the eye, but you can only really tell a deeper story when you are not constrained by the width of the page.

How do I write a student CV? A student CV for a first job should contain full details on your education (as that will testify to your ability to focus and achieve) and ideally also contain details on any student jobs or volunteer work that you have done while you were studying. It doesn't matter how menial this work was, the most important thing is that you understand the responsibility of doing a paid day's work.

Volunteer work can be a wonderful way to feature a variety of valuable skills, Here's a list of how to add volunteer work to your resume.

Work experience on a resume: what to avoid

Always assume that your reader — in this case, the hiring manager — doesn’t need anything explained. You also have very little room to ramble on your resume. They will assume more about you than you think - especially if you have worked for a while in their industry.

Free up some space by not including:

• What the organization does: your resume is about you. The hiring manager doesn’t need to hear about the company.
• The basic requirements of your position: this is implied in your job title and will shine through your result-focused bullet points.
• Filler words: For the most part, save space by cutting out words like “I” and “the.”
• Anything irrelevant: If you have smaller responsibilities in a position that do not relate to the new job, leave them out. Every bullet point and every word takes up precious real estate on your resume - make them count.
• Chaired a project team through a change process, trimming 5% of our cost base.
• Outperformed sales team in quarterly new business attraction by 67%.
• Executed the software rollout to twelve departments within two months.
• Resolved a company-record 150 customer complaints a week.
• Rectified a list of outstanding issues that had been dormant for more than a year.

If you are a recent graduate with little or no work experience , you can consider adding your GPA or cum laude on your resume. As you acquire work experience over the years, you should replace your GPA or cum laude with relevant work experience. 

What is the most effective format for work experience on a resume?

On a basic level, the work experience layout typically includes:

• Job title, company name, location of employment
• Month and year started and left the position
• Between three and six bullet points briefly outlining your impact at the company

Work experience/job history on a resume should also include:

• Clear and concise bullet points that demonstrate the positive results of your work
• Powerful verbs
• Clear numbers and facts
• Growth between positions
• Specific keywords pulled from job description

Examples of work experience on a resume

Here are a few examples of work experience on a resume to see the differences between a first draft and the final draft. How do you describe your experience in the most succinct way possible?

Example #1: Work Experience in CV for a Teacher . Let’s say you’re applying to be a middle school science teacher at a popular independent school. The new job description emphasizes the importance of involvement outside the classroom. They specified that they’re looking for teachers looking to grow through professional development throughout their time there.

First Draft:

• I taught 5th-grade science classes
• I advised students outside of class
• I attended a conference on social-emotional learning

Final Draft:

• Developed and carried out a student-driven curriculum in three sections of Earth Science
• Annually advised 20 students to track growth and address individual challenges and strengths
• Invited to attend NAIS annual conference to develop modern social-emotional learning classroom tactics

Example #2: Work Experience in CV for Content Marketing Manager . Content Marketing Managers encompass a very wide range of responsibilities. The recruiter will have a general sense of your job experience — no need to start from scratch — but results-based, specific bullet points will thrive here.

• I manage a team of freelance copywriters at a major NYC marketing agency and ensure they got their work in on time
• I talked to clients and figured out what would be best for their brand
• Before everything was published, I proofread it all
• Oversaw a team of 25 freelance writers and streamlined content pipeline from ideation to publication
• Advised clients on both short- and long-term content strategy tactics while clarifying their personalized brand voice
• Edited and polished copy to maintain content consistency across multiple channels

When you have moved up the career ladder at a previous employer, you should be proud to showcase it on a resume. But how can you display multiple positions for the same company?

Example #3: Work Experience on a Resume for a Waiter . Food service moves quickly. Anything that cut a manager’s search time in half is more likely to land you the job. Be sure to look for keywords in the job posting such as “craft cocktail bartending experience” or “fine dining.” Sure, you can learn — and will learn — on the job, but restaurants have minimal time to train you on the basics. Be confident and clear about your background.

• I waited tables at a busy NYC Midtown restaurant
• Most of the time, I tended bar on nights and weekends
• Trained a few hosts
• Served lunch and dinner for four years in a Michelin-star-rated Midtown brasserie
• Acted as primary bartender during peak weekend and evening hours, specializing in craft cocktail creation
• Managed and streamlined training methods for new hosts and servers

Example #4: Work Experience Resume Example for an Executive Assistant . Personality plays such a large role in calmly managing a busy executive’s schedule and lifestyle. The tone of your resume should be both level-headed and confident in what is expected of an EA. Try to always be a step ahead of what your boss needs before you even begin the job.

• I made travel plans on behalf of executive team
• Budgeted for the office and managed expenses
• I trained other assistants and helped with hiring
• Managed complex domestic and international travel for five, C-level executives
• Decreased expense management costs by 35% and perfected expense tracking system for all office management accounts
• Hired, trained, and guided a team of five team assistants including a seasonal team of sales interns

Example #5: Work Experience Resume Sample for Sales Rep . Provable facts and figures are your largest asset as a sales representative. Did your last position measure your personal or team sales growth? Dig up these numbers to work them into your work experience section. Then, explain the methods you applied in the job itself to make it happen. This work experience resume example offers some ideas:

• Grew sales revenue every month
• I signed several new clients
• I changed the way we talked about our product
• Exponentially increased monthly sales revenue, surpassing 150% growth for the department after just 6 months
• Developed and signed 10 new key clients by researching previously undiscovered corners of our industry
• Redeveloped brand voice and sale representative script for efficient and personalized customer care

What skills do I put on a resume? when you are considering the work experience in a resume, you should aim to make the best possible use of space. There will always be a separate skills section where you can list one-word hard and soft skills , so make sure that this is related to the experience that you have mentioned with each employer, but it should add to the overall picture rather than simple repeat it. If you add an interesting skill that you have not mentioned in the work experience section, an employer is bound to ask about it at interview.

Grammar tips for listing job history on a resume

Do you write sentences? Phrases? Declarations? Writing resumes for first job? Here are some nitty-gritty grammar rules for writing your work experience bullet points.

• Write in phrases, often beginning with a strong verb. No need to write “I” to start off the sentence — that is implied and work experience in a CV is often conveyed in the third person as this is more professional.
• Tense : If you are still at your current position completing the work described, use present tense. For past positions or completed projects, choose past tense.
• Don’t be afraid to break out the thesaurus — especially for synonyms of “lead, managed and trained” — but stick to words you’d use yourself. No need to ace the SAT verbal section.

Filling your resume with exclusively truthful statements about your career is harder than you might think. Lying on a resume can take many forms. Don’t give in to temptation.

Tailoring job history on a resume for each application

Instead of mass applying to every job ad on the internet with the same resume, take the time to tailor it. The work experience section might require the least tailoring (as it will tick the boxes of most jobs if you are targeted in your approach), but there may be a few accomplishments that you may want to include for certain roles and exclude for others. View yourself as a meticulous editor cutting and pasting your career story to make it as attractive as possible.

Besides the fact that 36% of hiring managers throw out resumes that don’t seem personalized for a particular role, a tailored resume and application:

• Shows the hiring manager you took the time to apply and their job wasn’t one of 50 different places you sent your resume.
• Get past the automatic keyword filtering larger companies might use to automatically screen candidates in their Applicant Tracking System (ATS) . Your work experience samples need to be scanned by the machines first.
• Tweak diverse experiences to focus on the most relevant experience for a particular job. For example if you’ve ever had a job “wearing many hats” unless you’re applying for another “many hats” position, this strategy gives you a chance to focus your work experience on the hats that are most relevant for the new role.

Restarting this process every time you apply for a new job may seem excessive. Ideally, the more time you put into tailoring your resume, the less jobs you’ll need to apply to.

• Ignited a fire under the management team to deliver an extra $950k sales.
• Scrutinized the market and doubled market share by launching a new product.
• Implemented a new software solution that shrunk build time by 34%
• Initiated a recruitment drive that hired fifteen people within three months.
• Minimized surgery wait times by 15 mins, increasing patient satisfaction by 25%

How far back should your resume work experience go?

Your resume work experience should contain every piece of information that is relevant to you securing the role. This will dictate the amount of work experience in a CV that you might include. 

If you have a 30-year career, you might choose simply to list the employers for the first 10-15 years and use your precious resume space to describe the most recent resume experiences. However, if your career is 15 years or less, you should definitely include resume work experience about everything. 

In terms of the amount of work experience on your resume, try to give more information on the more recent roles. Make use of bullet points and solid text after your have listed the employer and date details - as you can see in our many resume samples .

Including a list of roles that were more than 15 years old might be possible, but only include the headlines. It is interesting for some business leaders to see where a senior manager spent their early career, so while you may not be asked about this much during an interview, it does add a certain depth to your application.

Should I put seminars on my CV? Typically, a one or two-day seminar would not be included on work experience in a CV. If the training or educational event has a certain prestige or lasts more than a week, then you might consider including it in the education section, but as anyone can attend a seminar, it will not give a huge indication as to your individual level of suitability for the role. You will certainly have more important information to share.

Your transition out of the military requires a resume that expresses your talents in a way that civilian employers will understand. The blog below offers tips for making the most of your service in your post-military resume.

Key takeaways

• Focus on results of your job history in the past. Only list work experience on a resume that is relevant to the job you’re applying to.
• Stand out with strong action verbs
• Get specific: use numbers, facts, and figures
• Speak in the past tense when the job is complete, present when you’re still doing the work.
• Cut out unnecessary filler words or adjectives.
• Align your job history bullet points to match the job description.
• Make sure that the work experience in CV goes back an appropriate amount of time

Work experience on a great resume helps employers know in 10 seconds or less if you are qualified for the job. It should sound a lot like the description in the job post. If the work experience in CV doesn’t sound like the job description or follow these rules, be prepared to pull out some creativity to get noticed. For example, use a resume builder to build a perfect resume in the exact format potential employers are looking for.

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Work Experience on a Resume: 20+ Examples of How to List It

Your work experience is the resume section hiring managers look at first. And if they’re busy, it’s often the only part they review. To get the interview, you need to pay extra attention to your resume work history section. In practice, this means you should spend roughly 80% of the total time spent on your resume on the work experience section. As with other resume sections, there are some simple rules to follow.  In this guide, we’ll unpack them for you and help you create a resume that stands out every single time.

Here’s what you’ll master today:

• How to describe your work experience on a resume (plus how to format it)
• Extra tips on how to make your work history super-memorable
• How to sell yourself on a resume in different situations
• How to draft your work experience section based on real examples for the most common scenarios and jobs

Let’s dive in!

How to List Your Experience on Your Resume

• Put it under a clear, legible heading
• Place it right after the resume summary or objective
• List your most recent experience first
• Include relevant experience
• Be clear, concise, and consistent with your formatting
• Use bullet points to describe your responsibilities and achievements

1. Put it under a clear, legible heading

Make sure your work experience section is clearly visible and has its own heading. You can name this section “Work Experience”, “Experience” or “Employment History”.

2. Place it right under the resume summary or objective

It’s best to place the experience section right under your resume summary or a resume objective. However, if you’re fresh out of college and have little or no work experience, you can fit the work history under your education section.

3. List your most recent experience first

You typically list your work experience in reverse chronological order — put your current or most recent gig at the top, followed by the previous one, then the one before that, and so on.

This is effective because it gives the hiring team the most relevant information instantly. If you’re a UX designer looking for a new opportunity, the hiring manager will want to know about your most recent accomplishments to see how you progressed, where your expertise lies, and how your latest experience can translate into success in your new role.

4. Include relevant experience

Do you need to put all your past experience on a resume? By no means. Professional resume writers and career coaches advise that you include up to 15 years of relevant work experience. Including every single job you’ve done (like that pizza delivery summer gig when you were 16) can actually work against you.

Remember, this is just a general rule that can be broken in certain situations.

For instance, if you’re looking for a job in tech, where skills, frameworks, and tech stacks change often, your experience from 13 years ago may not be truly relevant today.

Also, if you’ve had a major career change, e.g. switched from teaching to copywriting 10 years ago, you could omit your teaching roles. However, if working in that position gave you relevant skills and experience that you still consider useful and valuable (e.g. clear communication, time management, or presentations), you can definitely include it in your resume.

Read on if you’re changing careers, switching from the military, or are freshly graduated (we’ll cover those scenarios in a bit).

5. Be clear, concise, and consistent with your formatting

This is a big one. It’s crucial to format your entries properly so that the information is easy to spot and read. Also, consistency is hugely important. Maintain the same order of information in each entry for a polished, organized, and harmonious look.

Here’s how you can order the items in a single work experience entry:

• Your position (usually written in bigger font or in bold)
• Company name
• Dates worked
• Bullet points highlighting your responsibilities and achievements

6. Use bullet points to describe your responsibilities and achievements

Instead of writing a paragraph or description explaining your role in detail, make sure to use a bulleted list (it’s way clearer, better organized, and memorable).

Next, it’s always wise to focus on your most important accomplishments and achievements, rather than simply listing your everyday responsibilities. After all, the point of this section is to gently persuade the hiring team that you’re equipped to do the job and that you have an excellent track record.

In other words, this is where it pays to take a moment to think back to your biggest career wins and corroborate that with some data (more about this later).

Finally, make sure to limit the number of bullets as you go back in time. While it’s perfectly fine to have 5–8 points for your latest job, 3–4 will be enough for older entries.

Now let’s put theory into practice and look at two great examples of work history on a resume that follow the steps we discussed above.

Sample resume work experience section (senior candidate)

Vice President of Marketing Vue 03/2017 – Present

• Helmed website overhaul, resulting in increase of organic traffic by over 300%
• Spearheaded the team of 7 full-time employees and 12 contractors
• Tracked email, PPC and display marketing performance to optimize cost per lead
• Hit 541% and 137% return on marketing investment for organic and email, respectively

Sample resume work experience section (junior to mid-level candidate)

• Responded to up to 20 tickets a day, resulting in 97% first touch resolution score
• Maintained a >9.0 monthly average satisfaction rating each of last 12 months
• Resolved 7 escalations with the IT/SysDev teams in the last 3 months
• Wrote 24 knowledge base articles to reduce ticket resolution times by 1.3 minutes

How to Take Your Resume Work Experience Section from Standard to Job-Winning

Now let’s zoom in on your work experience section even closer and help you take those bullet points from average to outstanding. To sell yourself on your resume, just follow these simple tips.

1. Focus on achievements over day-to-day duties and quantify wherever possible

This is precisely where most candidates get stuck. A lot of you are probably thinking: yes, I’ve heard this piece of advice many times. But I don’t have any stellar achievements. I just do my job well .

Precisely. That’s enough to be sure you do have achievements. You might not even know it. And the best way to showcase those is by hard numbers.

Again, don’t freak out. You don’t have to be in the data and numbers game to be able to come up with quantifiable results and statistics. There are simple strategies to present tangible results to back up your accomplishments. And just so you realize how miserably bad people are at showcasing their accomplishments —

Here’s a real-life story that a resume-writing consultant friend told me.

He was hired to revamp a spacecraft engineer’s resume (btw, how cool is that!). When she walked him through her resume and explained what each item meant, one caught his attention — ” Optimized and automated the procurement and invoicing flow. ” Optimizing and automating? That always means something cool.

She eventually explained how she made a highly complex process fully automatic, and in doing so, saved around 18 work hours a month for 7 people each. These people were paid an average of $200/hr. That’s $1.3 million a year saved for the company. And that was not on her resume.

Why am I telling you this?

Because this is proof that you’re not alone in being horrible at framing duties as achievements. Apparently, even the most extraordinary candidates are. Bottom line: you will most definitely stand out if you know how to do it!

So here are a few tips on how to really stand out from the crowd:

Mention the scale , e.g. how many people you managed, or the size of the budgets you handled

• Provided consultations for 120 students a year over 7 consecutive years
• Managed a shift of 70 workers in a 250.000 square foot facility
• Standardized the Sales process in a 2000-employee company averaging 300M annual ARR
• Controlled an annual marketing budget of $30K

Mention the frequency , e.g. how many tasks you performed within a time frame

• Wrote 14 new SEO-optimized articles in the last quarter
• Onboarded 17 Fortune 2000 clients in 2021
• Performed 13 weekly technical website audits and resolved 25 issues
• Hosted 5 company webinars attracting a total of 790 B2B leads

Mention specific results , e.g. money and time saved

• Reduced the employee turnover rate by 5% in 2021
• Tripled the number of Instagram sales since 2019
• Reduced cost per sale from 3.8K to 2.7K in two years’ time
• Attracted 2.6 new LinkedIn followers in the last quarter

Pro tip: Record your accomplishments as they happen. This is how I do it. Every time something cool happens (e.g. 89% of email subscribers click on the CTA button in an email and read my article or 5 product demos were booked on a blog page that I wrote), I take a note in a Google document. Even if I’m not actively looking for a job. (Or not even thinking about it.) In time, you’ll have a killer list of accomplishments to add to your resume, cutting your writing time in half. Otherwise, you’ll either forget the details or spend hours digging through your old projects to find the right info.

2. Use action verbs at the beginning of your bullet points

If you take a closer look at all the examples we listed in this guide so far, you’ll notice a few common themes — none of the bullets start with “I” and they sound super descriptive although we used zero adjectives.

The secret lies in action verbs, the powerful verbs that are used at the beginning of each bullet to draw the reader in and show your impact.

Take a look at these examples again:

• Responded to an average of 20 tickets a day, resulting in 97% first touch resolution score
• Received 9.1 satisfaction rating in the last 365 days
• Resolved 7 escalations in the last 3 months with the IT/SysDev teams

Combined with numbers and specific results, these verbs show the recruiting team exactly how you accomplished things and attained goals at work.

There are extensive lists of power/action verbs you can find on the web, but here’s a short list of our favorite ones to get you started.

Top 50 action verbs to use in your resume work experience section:

• Coordinated
• Established
• Facilitated
• Implemented
• Standardized
• Streamlined
• Strengthened

Expert tip: Vary your power verbs to avoid repetition. Keep your bullet points as short as possible and avoid the use of pronouns, articles, and adjectives.

Here’s an example of a bland work experience section turned amazing and catchy by applying the 3 tips above.

• Responsible for all content marketing activities in the company
• I was in charge of the link-building project
• Proofreading of the copy before publishing.

Why we think it sucks:

Let’s dissect this Frankenstein.

• Consistency issues: Although the candidate uses the bulleted list to provide more information about their recent role, they are not consistent. The first bullet starts with an adjective, the second uses a pronoun (“I”) and looks like an actual sentence, while the third one starts with an -ing form. All in all, it’s a mess.
• No details or real info: The candidate uses overused phrases like “responsible” and “in charge of” combined with little other info. All in all, super bland and nonspecific.

Now let’s see how you can transform this meh work history section into an unforgettable one by using action verbs and quantifiers.

• Designed annual content marketing strategy, resulting in 247 SQLs (500+ employees)
• Oversaw a team of 10 writers, resulting in 60 do-follow links in the last 90 days
• Increased content downloads website-wide by 78%
• Conducted quality assurance for 100% of content

Why we love this version:

First, it’s super specific and it tells us exactly what this Content Marketing Manager did. Next, they listed the results of their efforts in a consistent and persuasive way. Finally, a nice mix of power verbs (designed, oversaw, increased, and conducted) leaves the reader with the impression that this person knows what they’re doing.

3. Customize your employment history section to the job description at hand

We’ve been saying this forever and we’ll say it again: don’t expect to have a single resume that can win you endless jobs. Heck. Don’t expect a generic, all-purpose resume to land you more than 1 interview out of 50 applications.

That’s not how the pros do it.

Instead, you’ll need multiple versions that you’ll then further customize by tailoring your work experience section to the exact position you’re targeting.

The easiest way to do this is to peruse the job description, identify which skills and requirements matter to the employer and then have your resume prove that you possess those very skills.

Here’s how it works in practice.

Let’s say a MarTech company is looking for someone to join the Billing Customer Support Team.

Here is a sample job ad and some of the requirements and duties listed in the description:

After carefully reading the job description details, this candidate found 5 points they have previously excelled in. Next, they’ll use them as guidelines to tailor their work experience resume section to match the requirements 100%.

Customer Support Engineer Omnis

• Solved a daily average of 20 Zendesk tickets over a 3-year period
• Maintained the internal knowledge base 100% clean and up to date
• Prioritized feature requests and worked with AppDev and PO until implementation
• Hit company-record ticket response times (11 hours Zendesk; 2 minutes live chat)
• Authored a total of 56 technical articles in the Help Center

Why we like this answer: The candidate relied on the information from the job ad to highlight their accomplishments in a clear and convincing way. They showed their familiarity with Zendesk, their dedication to keeping the internal company wiki updated, and proved that they are independent and proficient enough to write technical documentation. Finally, they illustrated most of their efforts with relevant metrics and KPIs and used power verbs to convey authority and skill.

How to List Work Experience on a Resume for Different Scenarios

This may make perfect sense to someone who’s had 10+ years of experience and few job gaps. But what if you’re applying for a job outside your industry or aren’t sure whether to include your volunteer experience? Here are all your questions answered.

How to show a promotion on your resume?

If you’ve held multiple positions in the same company or if you’d like to highlight your growth and change in roles, you can approach this in two different ways.

1) List them as a single entry if similar and if the career path is clear. Start with the company name, dates worked, and then list your positions together with the from-to period when you held them. Like this:

Acme Technologies Inc. 03/2017 – Present

Content Marketing Manager (01/2021 – Present) (a bullet-pointed list of accomplishments)

Content Writer (03/2017 – 01/2021) (note the promotion, followed by a bulleted list of responsibilities and achievements)

2) List them as two separate entries if you made a bigger shift or changed departments (e.g. started in a call center, then switched to Business Development).

A note of caution: When using stacked entries (1), there’s a chance that the ATS software won’t recognize your promotion as such, and may list your skills and experience under the earlier position. To ensure your resume will be well-parsed by the ATS and look good, it’s safer to stick to the format shown in (2) and list your promotions as two separate entries.

How to put freelance work on a resume?

Absolutely include your freelance work in your employment history, as it shows your versatility, skill set, and soft skills like client management, negotiation, and independence. Here’s an example of how a writer and illustrator listed their freelancing experience.

Content Writing Consultant (alternatively, you can use Contractor ) Freelance

• Contributed original blog content to businesses (include most notable clients)
• Increased organic traffic by 250% with a 6-month blog project
• Helped generate 14 Fortune 2000 leads through Google AdWords over a 6-month period
• Illustrated for both web and printed media
• Provided 50+ illustrations for clients such as NewYorker Magazine, CondeNast, Monocle
• Won Best Book Cover Award (Illustration Category) in 2021
• Collaborated with 20+ teams with an average UpWork score of 4.8

Should I include volunteer work on my resume?

If you can supply at least 5 years of paid work experience, you can skip your volunteering experience altogether or add them to other resume sections.

If your employment history is short or if you’re just starting your job search after being a stay-at-home parent or a student, then definitely include the volunteering gigs in your main work history section. After all, recruiters love seeing this type of experience — it tells a lot about who you are as a person, what you’re passionate about, and that you’re not entirely motivated by money.

How to list part-time jobs on a resume?

When adding your part-time jobs to your resume work history, treat it like any other entry. However, make sure to add that you worked part-time. A simple note next to your position works just fine. Like this:

Online Marketing Specialist (part-time) Forwa

• Posted 5 blog posts weekly in WordPress over a 2-year period
• Set up an average of 10 email marketing campaigns/week
• Assisted 2 Lead Gen Specialists to clean 14 lists over a 2-year period

How to put internships on a resume?

You can include your internship just as you would with any other work experience, no matter if it was paid or not. Add your official role, the company name, and then provide a bulleted list of your responsibilities and accomplishments. Here’s how one candidate did it:

• Used javascript, HTML, and bootstrap to build UI pages
• Worked closely with frontend developers to solve more complex issues
• Collaborated with backend developers and UX/UI designer to assess requirements

How to explain employment gaps on a resume?

I’ll start with a general note here: people freak out about their employment gaps way more than they should. Yes, employment gaps on your resume can be considered red flags, but not by default.

As a matter of fact, a recent study published in the American Economic Review reveals that “long-term unemployment spells in the past do not matter for employers’ hiring decisions.” The study also found that all subsequent experiences canceled out the gaps in employment, as well as that employers didn’t treat short-term and long-term unemployment much differently.

So no reason to panic, okay?

You’d normally have the chance to explain the gaps in your employment in an interview. To get there, it’s wise to address them in your resume work experience section and provide a bit of information and context.

This is especially valid if the gaps are bigger and happened for a good reason like getting a degree, being a full-time parent or caregiver, or for medical reasons.

And here’s how you can integrate that smartly into your resume employment history.

• Took time off from professional career to provide care for a baby and a toddler and manage the household
• Used the gap years to complete 3 B2B Sales courses

(In case you need more inspo, here’s what else you can put on a resume .)

Resume Work Experience Examples for Different Careers

Here you’ll find some of the best resume experience examples for the most common professions.

Customer service and tech support

• Assisted customers and troubleshot technical issues on 30+ calls/day on average
• Resolved 90% of issues without transfers or escalations
• Decreased cancellations by 11% over a one year period
• Ran regular customer satisfaction surveys resulting in 9.6/10 satisfaction rating
• Built close relationships with CIOs and CTOs from prospective companies
• Provided software demonstrations to 52 companies in the last quarter
• Closed 36 new deals, hitting a 69% closing rate in the last quarter

Software engineering

• Worked with PO team to update and rearchitect 50+ page web app
• Built 5 additional features in the last 12 months
• Cooperated with a team of 8 agile developers to prioritize biggest impact features

Office administration

• Provided reliable administrative assistance to the Regional Manager
• Organized 2 conferences for 2000+ attendees
• Managed 7 workshops and 10 local events over a two-year period
• Interviewed 6 potential new candidates and trained 3 new team members

Digital marketing

• Posted daily on 5 company social media profiles
• Interacted with 10 LinkedIn HR influencers every day
• Grew the LinkedIn account by 525% over a six-month period
• Provided emergency health care to 20 patient per shift on average
• Participated in 300+ emergency procedures over a one-year period
• Exceeded standards of care to hit 9.7 patient satisfaction rating in an anonymous survey
• Prepared and delivered 100% of lessons to second year students (<20 students/class)
• Coordinated 30+ extra study sessions to prepare students for state exams
• Increased assignment completion by 40% via technology-based learning during Covid19

Business analysis & data science

• Reduced the cost of IT infrastructure by 24% via alternative software solutions
• Relocated budget from social to organic for 30% increase in ROI
• Restructured the Sales department, resulting in 45K of new revenue

Find out how to write a next-level resume work experience section for 100+ other professions in this free resume library .

Need a bit more guidance?

You can hop over to Big Interview’s Resume Builder, where you’ll get to enter your information section by section (basic info and contact details, summary, work experience, education, certifications, skills), choose the design and then have the tool create a resume for you. Here’s what you’ll find inside:

This is super useful because you can easily create many iterations (for different job ads) and save a bunch of time in the process.

Once that’s done, you can also use ResumeAI , a new feature that assesses your resume for various criteria hiring teams use in real life – how easy it is on the eye, how you used action words to convey experience and skills, and whether it’s ATS-friendly Basically, you’ll get a rating based on how effective you were in showcasing your skills and experience.

And if you need a bit more support, we created a short course on resume writing, designed and led by our own co-founder, Pamela Skillings (aka *the resume and job interview guru*). In this curriculum, you get 8 video lessons with Pam (with a transcript), after which you’ll be 100% sure to crush that resume.

Key Points Summarized

TL; DR? Here’s the essence of a killer resume work experience section that you can copy in no time.

• A well-written employment history section directly impacts your chances of being shortlisted. Take some extra time to do it right.
• Always present your work experience in a clearly separated section and place it under your resume summary.
• Begin with your current (or most recent) job and work backward from there.
• Include the following information, in this order: your position, company name, and dates worked.
• Back up this information with a bulleted list of up to 5 achievements and responsibilities. Forget false modesty and show your excellent track record. Quantify and provide tangible results wherever possible. Use power verbs to convey authority and entice the hiring team.
• When applying for multiple jobs in different companies, custom-tailor your work experience section to each job opening. Browse the job requirements and duties and match them with examples from past experience.
• Bonus tip: Keep the high standards in other resume sections too. Learn how to best showcase your skills on a resume.

How many years of work history should I describe on a resume?

List 10–15 years of experience, depending on your individual circumstances. The key thing here is to include only relevant work experience, so if you’ve been in the job market for 10 years, but only 6 are relevant to the job you’re applying for, focus on those 6 years. You can still list the previous experience, but there’s no need to go into great detail.

How many bullet points should I use per entry in the work history section?

A common guideline is to have 3–8 bullet points per entry. This way you can give plenty of relevant information about your achievements and responsibilities without overwhelming the reader with excessive detail. You can use 5–8 for your most recent and penultimate positions. As you work your way backwards, 3 bullet points is usually enough. Remember to aim for quality over quantity — if you can fit your best accomplishments into 3 bullet points, there’s no need to write 2 additional weak ones. Make sure to refer to your “strongest” qualities in the first 2 bullets.

What work experience should I not include in my resume?

Here are some examples of work experience that should not be included in your resume: irrelevant experience, experience from over 15 years ago, high school jobs, or volunteer work. However, this all depends on where you are in the career journey. For example, for first-time job seekers, school jobs, part-time jobs, and volunteer experience will matter.

What should I do if I have little to no work experience?

If you have no or little formal work experience, include other types of experience and focus on your qualifications and results. Some ideas to consider: internships, volunteer work, academic projects, freelance or contract work, leadership roles in student associations or sport clubs, and community work. Don’t worry about your title or if it was a formal experience. Instead, focus on the relevant skills and tangible results you accomplished in these roles.

Should I put volunteer experience in my work history section?

You can include it if you have little to no relevant professional experience. Otherwise, you can put it in a separate resume section or omit it if your resume is already full.

How to address gaps in employment in my work experience section?

If there’s a significant gap in your resume, address it proactively in the document and don’t wait for it to come up at the interview (imagine you miss out on one because of that gap!). This way, your potential employers will know you have nothing to hide. Briefly explain the reasons for the gap, keep your language positive, and mention if you did any coursework or upskilling during that time. If you took a sabbatical to travel, take care of a family, or get degrees to prepare for a career change, say it proudly.

When should I take a job off my resume?

A general rule is to remove a job from your resume if it’s no longer relevant to the position you’re applying for. For example, if you’re applying for a marketing role, already had 4 marketing roles, but had initially worked as a history teacher for 1 year, it’s safe to assume your history teacher experience can be taken off. The point is to not overwhelm the resume with unrelated experience. You can also remove some short-term jobs or jobs you had a long time ago, especially if your resume is already getting longer than 2 pages.

Should I include a job I was fired from on my resume?

That depends on several factors. If this was a recent position you held for a long time, you should include it. Otherwise, there would be a big employment gap that you’d still have to address (and it may come up anyway during a background check). If you can come up with a tactful, honest explanation behind the termination, and especially if you’ve gained new relevant skills in the meantime, don’t hesitate to include that position. On the other hand, if the job was a long time ago or if it’s unrelated to the position you’re currently applying for, feel free to omit it.

Pamela Skillings

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• Work Experience for a Resume:...

Work Experience for a Resume: How to Add it to Get Hired

14 min read · Updated on June 12, 2024

Present your work experience well and you'll blow other applicants out of the water!

For most professionals, the Work Experience section of their resme will be the most important part of their most important career document. This is the part that proves to a hiring manager that you have the knowledge, background, and experience to excel. But, given that it carries so much weight, how can you write and format it for maximum impact?

In this article, we'll examine how to lay out your resume work experience section, what to include, and how to word it. There are plenty of examples too, so that you can visualize how your resume could look. In short, we'll give you the crib sheet that teaches you how to produce a stellar resume that gets noticed for all the right reasons.

Where should I position my resume work experience?

While your work experience is likely to make up the bulk of your resume, that doesn't mean you should put it right at the top. Start with your contact details and headline , followed by a profile summary and your key skills .

Then, you have a decision to make. If you're a recent graduate , or you're aiming for your first job, your qualifications are probably more impressive than any work experience you have. Therefore, put your qualifications section directly under the key skills and position any work experience you have underneath that.

If you're established in your career, however, it's your professional experience that should take center stage. Relegate your qualifications to the bottom of the resume and promote your work experience to start just below your skills.

Pro tip: When you're writing a resume, put yourself in the mind of your reader. Make sure it's easy for them to find the most impressive and relevant information!

How to lay out your resume work experience

First things first – you need to create a basic layout for your resume work experience that you can then replicate for every role. You'll need the following elements:

Section heading

To ensure your resume is easy to navigate, begin with the section heading. You can choose from any of the following:

Work experience

Professional experience

Career history

Career summary

The heading should be in a larger font than the body of the text, so that a reader can immediately identify and jump to the section they're interested in.

Next up, you'll need a subheading for every role you've held over the last 10-15 years. Within that subheading, include:

Your job title. Ideally use your official job title, but if you're going for a similar role with a slightly different title, it's fine to tweak it, or to put the target job title in brackets. The key point is that the job title should accurately reflect what the job actually entails.

The name of your employer. Use their formal name, e.g. “Ford Motor Company” rather than just “Ford.”

The start and end dates of your employment. Just month and year will do – or even just year if you've held each role for a long time. Keep the format consistent, whether you chose “12/2023” or  “Dec 2023” or “December 2023.”

The location. Add the state or country you worked in, unless you've always worked, and will continue to work, locally - in which case location is less important.

When you've laid out this sub-heading, duplicate it for every role so that you have a uniform presentation that looks professional.

Role and responsibilities

Below the sub-heading for every role, you'll need to briefly explain your overall role and responsibilities. You don't need to go into much detail on this – 3 to 4 lines or bullet points should be plenty. The key here is to ensure that someone from outside the company, or someone unfamiliar with the role, can immediately understand what you were employed to do. Quantify whatever information you can, so that the reader can understand the scope of your duties, too.

Achievements

Now we come to the star attraction of your resume work experience section – your achievements! Aim to list a minimum of 3 achievements for every role you've held over the last 10-15 years. Remember, an achievement in this context doesn't mean something personal to you, such as learning to use new computer software. It means a benefit you've delivered to the company.

Start every achievement with a dynamic verb , such as reduced, exceeded, improved, increased, won… the options are endless. Again, quantify everything you can so that the hiring manager can appreciate the impact you've had on the business.

Which work experience is listed first on a resume?

Always write your resume work experience in reverse chronological order – that means your current (or latest) job first, working backwards in time as you go down the page. By doing that, your most recent, high-level, and impressive experience will be the first thing the reader sees.

Resume work experience example

Let's put all that together to see how it works:

Professional Experience

Head of IT                                                                                                                       May 2015 – date

Big Business Inc.

Led a team of 25 Software Engineers and controlled a $30million annual budget to provide IT services to 5,000 users across 15 locations. Directed transformation projects and contributed as a key member of the senior leadership team.

Key achievements

Enabled $5million of savings by overseeing a project to implement a time management system for 2,500 staff

Reduced average support resolution times by 20% by upskilling and expanding the team

Reduced printing costs by $30,000 per year by renegotiating contracts with suppliers

Senior Systems Engineer                                                                                      Jan 2013 – May 2015

Small Business Inc.

Held full accountability for all IT requirements in 3 UK offices, supported 50 users and managed a portfolio of IT projects.

Improved data retention and retrieval by 4 hours per request by transitioning from tape to cloud back-up

Won Manager of the Year for 2 consecutive years

As you can see, the focus of the resume work experience section here is on the value added to the business. By quantifying the scope of the role and the achievements, it's easy for the reader to understand this person's previous experience and how they can make a positive impact in the role.

How much work experience do I put on my resume?

As you'll have seen above, we recommend using this resume work experience format for all the roles you've held in the last 10-15 years. That doesn't mean any earlier work experience is useless and should be discarded! No, it just means that this level of detail isn't required.

Recruiters are usually most interested in your most recent experience. Earlier roles can simply be summarized in an Early Career section, giving just job title, employer name, and years of employment (you can omit the years, or even your earliest jobs, if you're concerned about age discrimination).

Similarly, if you've held many roles in the last 10-15 years, you may want to change the cut-off point to 8-10 years. A resume is flexible! Its job is to show your suitability for the role, so if you're repeating yourself or adding less relevant information, you can start summarizing sooner – it will benefit both you and your reader. As a general rule of thumb, 4-5 roles in detail is usually plenty.

How to write a resume with no work experience

Everyone has to start somewhere! If you haven't started your first job yet, that doesn't mean you can't write an impressive resume . Consider these options:

Include volunteering. If you've worked in a voluntary position , that's ideal – your resume work experience can relate to both paid and unpaid work. Present your volunteering experience the same way you'd present paid experience, as we outlined above.

Create a skills-based resume. If you have no work experience to add, you can create a skills-based resume. Add sub-headings for your relevant skills, with bullets underneath giving examples of when you've used each skill (preferably outcome-oriented).

Leverage school and college experience. Were you the Captain of a sports team? Secretary of a society? Mentor for other students? Pet-sitter? If you lack professional experience, you can draw from every other area of your life to demonstrate to a hiring manager that you have the experience and attitude to succeed in their vacant position.

If you're worried that the work experience section on your resume is a bit light at the moment, now's the perfect time to get out there and beef it up. Ask neighbors if they need a babysitter, volunteer to tutor younger students, help out the elderly lady across the street – get creative in finding ways to build up this part of your resume!

Resume example for students with no work experience

The work experience section of a resume for students with no work experience could look like this:

Work Experience

College  Ambassador at XYZ College (ad hoc)                                                    2022 - 2023

Represented the Computer Science course as a subject ambassador, speaking with prospective students and parents about the course and the college. Answered questions politely and shared relevant information, with the course being over-subscribed following every open evening.

Assistant Golf Coach at ABC Golf Club (part time)                                           2022 - 2023

Assisted with coaching junior players aged from 9-15. Drove golf carts safely and with consideration for other players. Enabled players to progress, improve their skills and enjoy a new sport, resulting in additional memberships at the club.

How to tailor your resume work experience

Now that you've written your resume work experience section, you're ready to start job-hunting. But wait! Don't just fire off your master resume to every vacant job! You may have spent time perfecting the layout and the wording, but there's one final step before you hit send.

With the job posting in front of you, you'll need to tailor your resume work experience to your target role. What does that mean? Well, go through the advert and highlight the key requirements for the role, then make sure they're reflected back, very clearly, within your resume. Aim to use the exact words you've highlighted, so that your resume pops up when recruiters carry out a keyword search.

For example, you may notice that the role requires someone who can code in C#, but your resume currently states “programming.” Changing that one word to “coding in C#” aligns your resume better with the role requirements. Do this with every point you've highlighted and watch your resume fly to the top of the pile!

Resume work experience FAQs

Pulling together your resume work experience can be tricky, so we've pulled the most common questions together to make it easier for you.

Do employment gaps on a resume matter?

Employment gaps are a perfectly normal part of life, so embrace the gap! If you've had a break longer than a few months, though, it may help to positively (but briefly) address the gap on your resume. Here are some suggestions on how you could do that:

2020 – 2023 – Planned career break to raise a family

2018 – 2019 – Career break due to redundancy: time spent pursuing an online course and completing home renovations

2023 – 2024 – Career break due to illness: now fully recovered and fit to return to full-time work 

Should I include work experience that's not relevant to my target job?

Sometimes, life can blow you in unexpected directions. If you've had a role that doesn't align with your current career aspirations, it need not be a problem. Consider these suggestions:

Eliminate the role. If taking the role off the resume won't leave a gaping and unexplained hole, you can simply remove it, no questions asked.

Minimize the role. If removing the role would raise unnecessary questions, include it – briefly. Keep the same sub-headings as usual, but don't dedicate more than a line or two to your responsibilities and achievements, just mention the job and move on.

Reframe the role. Rather than focusing on the irrelevant aspects of the role, just write about the transferable parts.

Can you include volunteer experience?

Absolutely! Volunteering is generally very positively viewed. We described above how a student with no work experience can include volunteering on their resume, but what if you have a solid career already? You have four options here:

Use it to cover a gap. Volunteering can be used to cover a gap in your resume if you include it as part of your work experience section. Treat it as you would a paid role.

Create a volunteering section. If your voluntary work uses relevant skills that aren't coming through elsewhere on your resume, create a separate volunteering section, laid out in the same way as the work experience section. While you won't want to go into such great detail, it gives you the opportunity to highlight information that would otherwise go unmentioned.

Add a brief one-liner. If your volunteering doesn't add any relevant skills or experience, but you still want to mention it, you can add a brief line in your Further Details section – that's where you can include any information to support your candidacy that doesn't fit neatly anywhere else – for example, foreign language proficiency.

Ignore it. There's no obligation to include volunteering on your resume, so if you don't think it adds any value, just leave it off!

Can I leave jobs off my resume?

There are certain situations where it's acceptable to leave jobs off your resume. We mentioned irrelevant jobs above, but you may want to leave them off for other reasons. If you held a job back in the eighties, for example, it probably has very little relevance to your career today. A resume is a sales brochure, not a life story, so there's no harm leaving off outdated experience.

What if you were fired, or left on bad terms? Well, ideally a resume wouldn't have an unexplained gap on it, so you can either include it and hope they aren't asked to provide a reference, or you can take it off and find another brief way to explain the gap. The shorter the time in the role, the easier this will be!

Should I put a short-term job on my resume?

It's not unusual to take a stop-gap job to retain an income between permanent roles. Whether you choose to include it on your resume depends on how relevant it is to your current career aspirations. If it's relevant, there's no harm in including it. You could emphasize that it was a “short term contract” or “maternity cover” to pre-empt questions. If it's not relevant, however, you can pick the most suitable option above where we discuss irrelevant work experience.

How can I show a promotion on a resume?

Congratulations on your promotion, it's definitely resume-worthy! A promotion shows that you've performed well and received recognition from your superiors, and that's definitely something a hiring manager will want to know. Make sure that you include the company name within the sub-heading of every role, as that way any reader will be able to trace your progress within the business. 

You may also want to add a line into your achievements section, if there was a particular reason for your promotion – for example, “Achieved selection into a more senior role having reduced customer complaints by 50% in just 6 months.”

How do I list an internship?

An internship can be included just like any other paid, permanent role. Include the same details and focus on the experience you gained and any value you added to the business.

A little effort now can get you far

The work experience part of your resume is arguably the hardest part to write, but it can have a great impact if it's done well. By following our guidelines on including resume work experience, you'll soon have a resume to be proud of that opens doors for you.

Want to check you're hitting the right notes? Why not submit your resume for a free resume review by our experts? They'll make sure you're hitting all the right notes before you apply for your dream job.

Recommended reading:

9 Soft Skills Employers Want

How to List Education on Your Resume (with Examples)

How to Write a Targeted Resume That Lands You an Interview

Related Articles:

Do Hiring Managers Actually Read Cover Letters?

How to Create a Resume With No Education

Why You Lose When You Lie on Your Resume: Learning From Mina Chang

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Resume Examples & Samples

How to write work experience in your resume [step-by-step guide].

Adi Gaskell

Create a Resume in Minutes & Get More Job Interviews

Table of Contents

The work experience must-know, how to format your work experience, how to write a killer work experience section.

• Irrelevant of Transferable Work Experience
• Listing Work Experience With No Experience

The work experience section is an essential part of your resume. It’s the one thing the recruiter really cares about and pays the most attention to.

Your previous experiences are seen as a good indicator of how you’ll handle the new job. This section, however, is not just a list of your previous responsibilities. It's meant to present you as a wholesome candidate by showcasing your relevant accomplishments and should be tailored specifically to the particular position you're applying to.

Education, skills and hobbies are all great but it's the work experience section that ultimately decides whether you get the job or not.

And no, more university degrees doesn’t mean better jobs - creating a killer resume work experience section does.

In this guide, We will teach you...

• How the work experience section “works”
• How to do basic formatting
• How to write a work experience section that will get you hired
• How & why to list different types of work experience.
• How to list experience when you have none

#the-work-experience-must-know

As we’ve mentioned before, the work experience section is the bulk of your resume and is a key part of all successful resume templates .Think of it as the sales pitch that’s going to land you the job.

You can mention anything you've put your time and labor in, including:

• Professional Experience - Your career goes here. Essentially any job you've ever worked that's in the relevant field & industry.
• “Unskilled” Experience - That part-time hostess job during college goes here.
• Internships - Unpaid or paid.
• Part-time Gigs - Did you collect unused stuff on Craigslist and sell it on E-Bay? Anything along those lines.
• Volunteering - NGOs, non-profits, etc.

Before we dive into the details, we’ll explain the most basic and important principles about this section.

Be Brief & Relevant

The work experience section should be the detailed summary of your latest 3 or 4 positions . The “3 or 4” part is important here - the recruiter wants to know how relevant you are for the job without having to read your entire life story.

For example, if you are a programmer with 20 years of experience, would you really mention your very first internship?

VelvetJobs Expert Tip

As a rule of thumb, listing your last 3 or 4 positions is the optimal amount.

On a similar note, you’d want your work experiences to be relevant to the job you’re applying for. Get into the recruiter's head for a minute - you’re reading 2 resumes for the position of financial analyst .

Which of these two statements looks more “relevant?”

Financial Analyst with 5+ years of experience

Marketing Expert with 10+ years of experience

The first one gets a callback. The second gets a confused glance and a trip to the paper shredder. That being said, there are some exceptions . Sometimes, you’d want to include your seemingly “irrelevant” experiences to show your skills.

Confused? Well, let’s say you have these two people applying for a job in sales .

Hard-working student, 2+ years of experience working as a server

Hard-working student

You’d go for the first one because of 2 reasons .

• General Experience - In most cases, the recruiter would prefer someone with some experience rather than none. It shows that they’ve worked before in their lives, and won’t just stand around looking confused on the first day of work.
• Transferable Skills - Every job teaches you skills, be it very basic ones. As a waiter, for example, you've probably learned how to interact with customers. When you apply for a sales associate position, you'll end up using these same skills.

Having previous work experience is super helpful. But what if you just graduated? Not to worry, we've got tips for recent grads as well.

#how-to-format-your-work-experience

While the content of your resume work experience section is important, it’s essential to get the formatting right . The two go hand in hand. How?

Most big companies these days use Applicant Tracking Systems - software that scans your resume and determines how relevant you are for the position.

So if the formatting is somehow messed up or too far from traditional norms, no one’s going to even look at your resume! This is why it’s essential to get the formatting right.

The first thing to do with the formatting is to create the e xperience section . The font size should be the same as any other section headings in your resume, and it can be in bold , CAPITALS, italics , etc. depending on your general theme.

Then, list the basic information about your work experience. Follow this example for each position:

Position + Dates

Company Name

Company Description (Optional)

• Responsibility or Achievement

The company description mentioned here is optional - you might want to mention it in case it's a company most people have never heard of. Otherwise, skip it and use this space for an additional bullet point.

As for responsibilities and achievements , the average number you want to hit is 6 : It’s optimal enough to describe your experiences with a company properly, while leaving room for your other experiences.

This, however, is not set in stone, and is up to you. Let's have a look at an example:

• Oversaw the daily operations of the marketing team
• Led a team of 4 marketing specialists and 2 designers
• Managed the company client-acquisition PPC strategy with a budget of $2,000+ monthly
• Coordinated efforts with the sales team, acquiring, warming & handing over 100+ leads monthly
• Led company re-branding efforts, creating a new website, brochures, Ad copies , etc.
• Took the company from an MRR of $20,000 to $50,000 over the course of 2 years

Now that you know how to format your resume work experience section, have a look at how to format it so that the recruiter sees you're the one right off the bat!

Fun fact - there are 3 completely different ways you can format your resume. In some, you don't even mention your work experience! Learn how the 3 different formats, chronological, functional and combo work with our guide!

#how-to-write-a-killer-work-experience-section

Technically, there is no right or wrong way to list your experiences. There’s no central resume authority deciding on what should or should not be on a resume.

There are, however, some best practices that’ll take you a long way. The most important of which is:

Selling Yourself the Right Way

I hard to say which of your responsibilities & achievements are best mentioned in a resume.

You did, after all, work in that company for months (or years, maybe decades?). You were in charge of so many things , you can barely even remember all of them! So, where do you start?

It's actually quite simple - mention only your greatest achievements. Don't get bogged down by describing your duties. If your resume says that you've worked as a retail manager for 5 years and you're applying for a position of a retail manager, the recruiter already knows what duties the position includes.

It makes sense that what’s really going to set you apart are your achievements :

• Did you manage to save the store from being over-flooded by customers on Black Friday?
• Did your management lead to much lower customer complaint reports than last year?
• Are you literally super-human and can endure 200 hour work-weeks ?

These are the type od things that’ll take you from “ a candidate ” to “ THE CANDIDATE .”

• Increased the regional Customer Satisfaction Index by 10%.
• Managed sales clerks

As for how you’d list your achievements, here's the best advice to keep in mind:

Quantification is King

Saying that you’re good is one thing. Proving that you’re good is what matters. The best way to impress is to demonstrate your achievements with numbers. After you've got your core experience inserted into a resume you're creating from scratch, or one of these resume templates , make sure to quantify appropriately, like this:

Managed a monthly company budget of $200,000 , while cutting $30,000 in unnecessary costs

Managed a monthly company budget, while cutting unnecessary costs

The first shows how good you are. The second gives a general idea , but it doesn’t really say anything.

Quantify your achievements. It will be useful when you make your case for a promotion or when you're looking for the next opportunity.

Now let’s see how all this would fare in a real-life scenario . The position applied for is that of a customer support manager at a retail company.

The ideal candidate will be put in charge of hiring, managing, and ensuring the productivity of 15+ cashiers.

Customer Support Manager, 2015 Sep - 2017 Feb

Boston, Massachusetts

MadeUpRetailCompany

• Hired & trained 25+ new employees over 2 years , reducing yearly regional turnover by 10%
• Increased the regional Customer Satisfaction Index by 4%
• Conducted training on using the POS terminals for all new hires, as well as company culture & behavior
• Awarded MadeUpPrizeForExcellence for the year 2016, out of 20 stores nationwide.
• Hired and trained employees.
• Charged with ensuring customer and employee satisfaction.
• Trained new employees with everything store-related
• Was called an “amazing employee” multiple times

There are, of course, professions and fields where you just can’t quantify your achievements, and that’s fine.

In such case, just list the job responsibilities as usual. But again, whenever you have the chance, use numbers to show the recruiter how good you are.

You can list your accomplishments in other sections of your resume too. Learn how to mention accomplishments with our complete guide!

ATS & Tailoring

We’ve talked about ATS or Application Tracking Systems before. But to refresh your memory, it’s the software that most big companies use filter thru resumes by “ keywords ” and to bring the most relevant candidates in for interviews.

Let’s take a sample job description and see how that would work with an ATS.

MadeUpCompanyInc is looking for an award-winning , money-making m arketing manager. The requirements are:

• 5+ years of marketing experience
• Leadership skills, experience leading teams of 5+
• Experience managing a monthly marketing budget of $20,000 +
• MarketingSoftware Certification

The hiring manager then picks several keywords that are important for the job. Here, for example, would be marketing, leadership, marketing software or any synonyms of those.

In order to be a perfect match, you’d want to mention each of these in your resume work experience section or the skills section.

Now, let’s turn that into an example resume section:

• Managed a team of 5+ marketers .
• Mastered MarketingSoftware , using it for cross-channel integrated marketing

The job title of your previous position mentions “ marketing. ” There’s experience with leadership mentioned ( i.e . managed), and finally, there’s MarketingSoftware mentioned.

Check, check, check.

There's more to resume tailoring than just looking good for the ATS. If you work hard enough, you could turn your resume into the best thing HR has ever seen. Learn how to tailor your resume to the company you're applying for, and become the recruiter's best friend!

IRRELEVANT OR TRANSFERABLE WORK EXPERIENCE

# irrelevant-or-transferable-work-experience.

If you’re switching industries , the resume work experience section can be a tough nut to crack. Which work experience should you mention? Do you start completely from scratch ?

In case you list all of your experience, chances are that you'd get ignored as not all of it would be relevant. In the second case, you’re going to look like you’ve been unemployed for too long.

The best-practice here is to mention the existing relevant experience.

How? Well, instead of listing your achievements and responsibilities as you typically would, you look at the whole thing from a different angle: What skills did your previous career give you that would be useful in the new field?

As a simple example, let’s say you’re a customer support representative with 5+ years of experience . You’re a killer on the phone - even the most disgruntled customer turns into your biggest fan after a 5-minute conversation.

Let's say you want to adapt the skills acquired in one industry to another, for example, going from customer support to sales. How do you do so? Let's have a look at this example:

Customer Support Representative, 2015 Sep - 2017 Feb

MadeUpTechSupportCompany

• Handled 100+ phone calls a day
• Maintained a 5-star customer-satisfaction rating over 2 years
• Achieved customer-experience rating 25% higher than average
• Charged with handling customer complaints
• Calmed down disgruntled customers
• Awarded employee of the month title

Now, the difference between the two examples is that the first specifically mentions all the right skills and experiences you’d need in phone sales.

Hundreds of calls a day? That’s a given.

5* customer-satisfaction rating? If you can talk to moody, unsatisfied customers, you can probably sell a new product.

25% higher customer experience rating? You’re not just any other support rep, you’re good at what you do, and are ready to progress.

LISTING WORK EXPERIENCE WITH NO EXPERIENCE

# listing-work-experience-with-no-experience.

If you’re a student, then this might seem really tricky . You don’t have any work experience, leaving your entire resume as a one giant blank space with your name & education on it.

Well, actually, “work experience” doesn’t necessarily mean professional work . It can be any of the following:

• Internship Experience
• Transferable Experiences
• Extracurricular Activities
• Projects & Portfolio

Each of these can be listed the same way as any other work experience, with exactly the same formatting:

Student resume formatting

Company Description

There’s more to creating a student resume than just listing your experiences. Learn how to perfect your student resume & get that job you’ve always dreamed off with our step-by-step guide!

The work experience section is the hardest part of creating a resume . And now you know everything you need to ace it!

Now it's time to focus on the other sections of your resume. Is your education section , for example, listed the right way?

Or, did you make sure that the formatting of your resume is just as it should be? Maybe you’d even want to brush up on your resume-making skills with our How to Make a Resume [The Visual Guide] ?

Whichever the case might be, we’ve got your back!

Now that you're a master at listing your work experience, how about you put the knowledge to practice! Head over to our resume builder & jump-start your career!

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Work Experience Section on the Resume

How to demonstrate your career trajectory

The experience section is the core of any resume and the most important metric for explaining your career path to employers.

Listing work experience on a resume can be a tricky task. You may have never worked in your life or have had so many past jobs that you don’t have enough space on a page.

So, which parts of your professional experience should you include? Which parts should you exclude?

This guide offers tips on exactly  what experience to put on a resume  and how to write a work experience section that will attract a potential employer’s attention.

How To Show Your Professional Experience On Your Resume

Most employers  deem the work experience section the most vital part of your resume , as your career path is often the clearest, most efficient way to outline the skills they are looking for .

This section lists the companies you’ve worked for , industries you are familiar with, skills you have acquired, and the contributions you’ve delivered along the way.

Not sure what title to give it? Here are some ideas:

• Work Experience
• Professional Experience
• Relevant Experience
• Work History

Choose a title that is most appropriate for your experience. For example, students may include internships or part-time positions, which qualify as “work” experience but which might not be related to their target roles.

What To Include In A Resume Experience Section

It’s best to collect all of your work histories first before starting to write your experience section.

For some job seekers, their work experience will be paid or contracted professional jobs/positions.

But for students or recent graduates, relevant work can also include:

• Micro internships
• Volunteer work
• Study abroad programs
• Leadership of clubs or community teams

Next, it is time to detail your experience.

Start with your most recent position and work backward (this is called the reverse chronological resume format ).

Each entry should include the following elements:

• Employer/company name
• Location (City, State, or “remote”)
• Dates of employment
• Details of your accomplishments or achievements and contributions

Some of these details are unnecessary in functional resume layouts . For example, in cases where you may have large gaps in your job history , a functional resume layout can help downplay the scattered timeline of your employment and highlight the skills you’ve learned and will bring to the next position.

Most importantly, each job post should include a bullet-point list of your achievements. Each position listed should prioritize the impact you made in that role . Do not simply list the “responsibilities” or “daily tasks” of the job.

Include quantifiable examples of your success, as  34% of recruiters won’t consider applications that are not specific to the role ,  according to CareerBuilder .

Keep your experience section as focused as possible, listing only s tatements relevant to your target jobs.   Forbes Magazine suggests  limiting yourself to five bullet points per position.

Action verbs can significantly increase the impact your resume content has on the reader, enticing them enough to reach out for an interview. Include a variety of action verbs in each of your bullet points.

Examples of effective action verbs to use in your resume:  

launched; implemented; spearheaded; coordinated; directed; increased; restructured; acquired; grew; saved; cut; identified.

How To Write The Work Experience Section On Your Resume

Now you know the key ingredients, let’s look at how to add experience to your resume.

One of the easiest ways to capture a hiring manager’s attention is to list your professional experience clearly, concisely, and visually interestingly.

Your work experience section should always follow a reverse chronological frame, regardless of the resume format you choose ( chronological ,  combined , or functional).

It’s essential to know exactly how to describe work experience on a resume. To start,  begin with the most recent position held  and work backward in time.

How you display this information is crucial. An inconsistent, out-of-order format will only confuse the reader and send your resume to the trash.

As with every section of your resume, highlight information that explains your past accomplishments , successes, and contributions in your job experience examples. Remember to include measurable data such as KPIs .

For example, these can be:

• Customer satisfaction percentage or score
• Total sales you made
• Clients attended to

Anything that you can show you were a success will look great.

The more your past triumphs can relate to the position at hand, the better.

Using our  online resume builder  can make life easier. It includes helpful examples and practical tips for adding the experience section to your resume.

What Is an Example of Work Experience?

You may be wondering how one of your former positions, duties, and accomplishments should look on a resume. It’s critical to not only get the right format but  not mention too much or too little info .

Here are some  work experience examples  you can use to boost your own resume:

Senior Project Manager, XYZ Corp, San Francisco, CA — June 2022-Present

• Led a cross-functional team of 15+ members to deliver 20+ high-value projects, each with budgets exceeding $1M, on time and within budget.
• Implemented Agile project management methodologies that improved team efficiency by 30% and cut project delivery timelines by 20%.
• Negotiated contracts with key vendors, reducing project costs by 15% and strengthening strategic partnerships.
• Introduced a risk management process that identified potential issues early, reducing project delays by 25%.

Project Manager, ABC Inc, San Francisco, CA — July 2020-June 2022

• Managed 10+ mid-scale projects with budgets up to $500K, consistently meeting key performance indicators.
• Coordinated with various teams including design, engineering, and marketing, ensuring seamless collaboration.
• Implemented a new project tracking system which increased overall project visibility and improved on-time delivery by 10%.
• Conducted regular project status meetings and provided updates to stakeholders, improving communication efficiency.

Junior Project Manager, DEF Co, San Francisco, CA — August 2019-June 2020

• Assisted in the management of 15+ projects, developing key skills in stakeholder communication, budget management, and team coordination.
• Created detailed project schedules and plans, contributing to an overall 15% increase in team efficiency.
• Developed and maintained project documentation, improving record-keeping and accountability.

If you want to know what work experience to put on your resume, this example section has it all!

It effectively uses action-oriented language and industry keywords to depict the individual’s responsibilities and achievements.  Each achievement is quantified  to make it tangible and impressive.

Additionally, the roles exhibit  a clear progression in skills , showing off the candidate’s career growth and capability to handle higher-level responsibilities.

Tips For Writing Your Previous Work Experience

We’ve amassed a list of easy-action tips for including your past positions on a resume to help you get started.

• Write in the present tense for your current work positions only  and the past tense for all prior experiences.
• Adapt your work entries for each job,  mentioning the most relevant and appropriate experience. This may include tailoring one or more versions of your resume if you are targeting different career sectors.
• Explain gaps in your work history briefly.  Most reviewers appreciate additional context explaining your gap in professional work. A quick sentence is all that is needed to detail full-time parenting, study leave, traveling, family complications, relocations, etc.
• Include internships and education/professional development courses  in your resume, either in your work history or education section .
• Include voluntary or part-time work  where appropriate, especially when you have little on-the-job experience or are changing careers .

These tips on how to complete a work experience section on a resume should help you get started.

You can also use our AI-powered suggestions in our resume builder and come up with more ideas to show off your past jobs and achievements in different ways. 

How Far Back Should Experience Go on a Resume?

If you had a  job from what feels like ages  ago, you may be wondering if it’s worth adding to your resume. While there is no strict rule, it’s generally recommended to focus on the  most recent 10–15 years  of your work history.

If you have any doubts about  omitting jobs from your resume , keep the following in mind:

• Relevance:  Prioritize recent experiences that are most relevant to the job you’re applying for. Focus on showcasing your current skills and qualifications.
• Career Progression:  Highlight positions that demonstrate career growth, increased responsibilities, or promotions.
• Industry Norms:  Research industry standards to gauge how far back professionals in your field typically go with their experience. Tailor your resume accordingly.
• Early Career Highlights:  If you have exceptional early experiences highly relevant to the position, include them, even if they fall outside the recommended timeframe.
• Resume Length:  Keep your resume concise and focused. Including an extensive work history can result in a longer resume that may remove the impact of recent experiences.

What Do You Put on a Resume With No Experience?

Are you a recent college grad looking for your first job ? Or are you changing your profession? In either case, building a resume with limited professional experience can be challenging.

However, all is not lost!

By taking advantage of any relevant experiences , high grades in related coursework, and transferable skills , you can create a compelling resume.

If you’re an entry-level candidate, you should remember to add:

• Internships
• Relevant coursework in your education section
• Transferable skills
• Experience with relevant duties

Internships and past jobs look great if you can find ways to relate them to the job you are applying to so don’t be scared to apply for a new position.

What you shouldn’t do is:

• Add irrelevant experiences
• Include generic statements
• Forget to mention relevant positions or courses

By adding the most relevant information and your transferable skills, you can give yourself a good chance of landing an interview and a job without any experience.

How To Format The Experience Section On a Resume

You may do everything in your power to write a work experience section that wows, but if it is not formatted correctly, your resume could end up in the “no” pile. Consistency throughout your resume is key for allowing readers to digest your information quickly.

Here are a few tips to  ensure this section is formatted properly .

• Format each work entry the same.  List the details: job title, company name, location, dates of employment, and list of responsibilities.
• Use the same font throughout the resume  and no more than two styles (i.e. one suitable font for job titles and another font for the contextual information.
• Align each section equally in a consistent manner (i.e. job titles and company name are left-aligned, and employment date ranges are right-aligned)
• Align each section header the same using one font and a consistent method for implementing bold, italics, and underline  effects. This will ensure the highest level of readability.

If you have any doubts about how to format work experience on a resume you can use  handy online templates . These tools can save you lots of formatting time, as these resources usually have a preset document structure already in place.

You can see a range of work experience samples in our professional resume guides , advice pages, and blog, too.

Struggling with Resume Writing?

Ease the process with our templates

How to List Work Experience on Your Resume – A Guide with Examples

In This Guide:

What is a resume work experience section, how do i add experience to my resume, where to list work experience on your resume, how to format your work experience (with template), how to describe work experience on a resume, how to choose the right resume format, how many years of work experience should be on a resume, what should i do if i have a gap in employment, tips on writing a powerful resume experience section, key takeaways.

R esume work experience almost always needs to be presented in reverse chronological order—starting with your most recent position and working backward.

Each entry needs to include the basics: company name and location; job title; start and end dates. It’s also essential to include bullet points describing your duties and responsibilities.

Finally, never underestimate the power of action verbs and quantifying your accomplishments.

Crafting the perfect resume experience section  can be challenging, especially when deciding how to describe work history  effectively. Almost everyone struggles with selecting the right work experience examples  that highlight their skills and accomplishments. The key is to showcase your professional past in a way that resonates with potential employers.

A we ll-structured resume work experience example s houldn’t only detail your previous roles but also emphasize the impact of your contributions. By accurately featuring yo ur work experience, yo u enhance your chances of catching a recruiter's eye and securing your next job opportunity.

We guarantee that by the end of this article, you’ll have a better understanding of this particular resume section and be able to do the following:

• Study and use a plethora of real work experience examples to help visualize your target.
• Easily produce an effective entry that conveys all the essential elements.
• Be able to recognize and correctly choose which format is best for the specific job you’re applying for.
• Understand what exactly needs to be included in your work listing.
• Tips on writing a more powerful and convincing experience section.
• How to properly describe and convey your achievements and responsibilities in an impactful way.

Let’s begin by looking at what exactly we are trying to craft.

Improve your resume experience section!

Drop your resume here or choose a file . PDF & DOCX only. Max 2MB file size.

The work experience section is arguably the most critical part of a resume, serving as the focal point for recruiters and hiring managers alike. This segment outlines your professional history and highlights your achievements in previous roles. It encompasses paid and unpaid roles, including full-time positions, part-time jobs, internships, volunteer work, and freelance projects, essentially any role where you've applied and honed your skills in a professional context.

What to put for experience on a resume involves carefully  tailoring your selection  of relevant positions that illustrate your qualifications and readiness for the new role you're applying for. This means not just listing your duties, but focusing on quantifiable achievements and how you've contributed to past organizations.

For instance, highlight the wins you had, like projects you nailed, teams you led, sales records you broke, or any process you made better—outcomes that provide concrete evidence of your capabilities.

Including different types of work experience is all about painting a picture of how you've grown and what you bring to the table. It's not just about what you've done, but how you've made a difference, underscoring why the experience section plays such a pivotal role in your resume.

But what exactly should you include?

Experience is not what happens to you; it's what you do with what happens to you.

Aldous Huxley

Your resume work experience section refers to your professional background in employment.

For all professional experience sections, you need to include your previous:

• Role and responsibilities
• Skills and accomplishments
• Company names
• Dates you’ve worked

If you’re worrying about what to write in a resume for work experience, let us just quickly calm those nerves. Just remember to stick to reverse chronological order, presenting your most recent job first  to emphasize your career progression.

Also, try starting each point with action verbs  to animate your roles and achievements vividly—recruiters love that!

The ideal location for your work experience section is immediately following your resume summary  or objective statement . This gives it a prominent position that ensures it’ll catch the eye of the hiring manager.

Deciding which work experience is listed first on a resume is easy—it’s the job you just left or perhaps are still working at  and then you work your way back.

For a standout resume experience format , begin your entry by listing the company name, your position/title, employment dates, and the location. Including a brief company description is optional but can provide context, especially if the company isn't widely known—whatever you choose, be sure to be consistent.

The bullet points under each role are crucial; this is a job description  where you should focus on quantifying your impact and showcasing your achievements using action verbs. Aim for 4-6 bullets per position, starting each with a dynamic action verb.

Ensure that you quantify as many of your achievements as possible (e.g., "Increased sales by 20%") to provide concrete evidence of your impact. This approach not only makes your contributions clear but also demonstrates the value you brought to the position.

Remember, how to format work experience on a resume is about making your contributions and achievements easily accessible, so use concise, impactful language and keep your bullet points focused and relevant.

The best way to demonstrate this is by showing you a couple of examples. You can find below an example of an experience entry that you would do well avoiding. Check it out:

• • Duties included cashiering, helping customers, stocking shelves.

As you can see this work history section needs a boost. It would be a good idea to swap "Duties included" for lively action verbs like "Managed" or "Assisted." Also, adding some numbers to show off their impact, like boosting checkout speed by 30%, would drastically improve this entry. Another thing that they should’ve done is to be more clear about how they helped customers or improved stocking methods.

A few tweaks could definitely make this resume shine! Let’s rewrite it in a manner that could actually help the candidate land the job.

Here’s the new and improved work experience listing:

• • Managed transactions for up to 200 customers daily, ensuring a smooth and efficient checkout process.
• • Assisted customers by providing detailed product information and resolving inquiries, enhancing customer satisfaction.
• • Coordinated shelf stocking and organized product displays, contributing to a 15% increase in-store efficiency.

We transformed the work experience section by swapping "Duties included" for dynamic verbs like "Managed" and "Coordinated," highlighting proactive roles and leadership. By quantifying achievements—like handling 200 transactions daily and boosting store efficiency by 15%—and adding specific details on enhancing customer satisfaction, we've crafted a vivid, impactful snapshot of skills and contributions.

Here’s a template you can use to help guide you while listing your experience on your next resume:

Resume work experience section template:

[Job title]

[Company name in smaller font]

[Location - optional]

[Company description]

• [Bullet points detailing your accomplishments and job duties –– between 3 and 6 for each job you’ve held]

While writing your bullets, remember these four things:

Action verbs

• Use numbers and quantify
• Detail your achievements and responsibilities
• Be concise and impactful

Let’s continue with the topic of experience and achievements. Next, we’ll explore exactly how to format these sentences, use the right action words, and the best way to quantify your accomplishments.

When writing the work experience section of your resume, start each sentence with a strong action verb  to immediately capture the reader's attention. This approach showcases your role as an active contributor and leader in your previous positions. For example, instead of saying "Responsible for managing a team," you could say "Managed a team of 10, leading to a 20% increase in productivity." This not only demonstrates what you did (managed a team) but also quantifies your achievement (20% productivity increase).

Quantifying

Quantifying accomplishments provides concrete evidence of your impact and showcases your ability to deliver results. Try to include numbers, percentages, or other measurable outcomes whenever possible. For instance, "Increased sales by 15% through strategic marketing campaigns" gives a clear picture of your effectiveness and contribution.

For formatting sentences, aim for clarity and conciseness. Begin with the action verb, follow with the task you performed, and end with the result or impact of your action, quantifying the achievement. Keeping this structure consistent throughout your work experience entries will create a streamlined, easy-to-read section that clearly communicates your professional value.

Tailored content

When pondering how to write work experience in a resume, it's crucial to tailor your bullets to the job you're applying for, emphasizing the experiences and achievements most relevant to the position.

Prioritize work experience that aligns closely with the job you're applying for, highlighting roles where you've developed relevant skills or achieved significant accomplishments. This targeted approach  demonstrates your suitability and potential value to prospective employers.

How to decide what experience is relevant and what isn’t?

Determining if work experience is relevant  to your resume involves aligning your past roles and achievements with the requirements of the job you're applying for. Here are tips on how to tailor your resume effectively:

• Analyze the job description: Start by thoroughly reading the job listing. Note the skills, experiences, and qualifications that are emphasized. These are your clues to what the employer values most.
• Match your experience: Look at your own work history and identify which roles and accomplishments directly relate to the job description’s requirements. Focus on experiences where you've used the skills listed as necessary for the new position.
• Highlight transferable skills:  Some of your experiences may not be directly related but have transferable skills that are valuable for the job. For example, if you’re applying for a project management role and you’ve led a team or coordinated a project, even in a different industry, that experience is relevant.
• Use keywords from the job description: Incorporate language and keywords  from the job description into your resume. This not only shows that your experience aligns with the role but also helps your resume get past automated applicant tracking systems (ATS) that many companies use.
• Be selective:  You don’t need to list every job you’ve ever had. Focus on the roles that demonstrate you have the skills and experience to excel in the job you’re applying for.

Remember, a tailored resume is much more likely to catch the attention of hiring managers and show that you're a strong candidate for the position.

Deciding on the right resume format hinges on your career history, skills, and the type of job you're applying for. Among the main formats—reverse chronological, combination, and functional—each serves a distinct purpose, while all other formats are considered outdated in today's job market. Here's how to choose:

• Reverse chronological format :  This is the most traditional and widely accepted format. It lists your work history starting with your most recent job and working backward. It's ideal if you have a steady work history and want to emphasize your upward career trajectory. This format is especially beneficial when applying to roles that require extensive experience in a specific field.
• Combination or hybrid format :  This combines elements of both the chronological and functional resumes. It highlights your skills and achievements at the top, followed by your work history in reverse chronological order. This format is suitable if you're aiming to change careers, have gaps in your employment, or possess a diverse set of skills and experiences that are relevant to the job.
• Functional format :  This format focuses on your skills and experiences rather than your job history. It's organized by skill categories rather than employment history and is best suited for individuals with gaps in their employment, those changing careers, or if you're new to the workforce.

Your choice should strategically highlight your strengths and match the expectations of your target role, ensuring your resume stands out for the right reasons.

The work experience section of your resume should ideally go back 10 to 15 years . This timeframe allows you to showcase your most relevant and recent experience without overwhelming the reader with too much information. Older positions can be included if they are particularly relevant to the job you're applying for, but it's often unnecessary to detail every role beyond the last decade or so.

Also, choose how many jobs you list  wisely. Don’t include 15 different jobs—focus on positions that directly relate to the target role. Prioritize quality over quantity, ensuring each listed job adds value to your candidacy.

Handling employment gaps on your resume  can be tricky, but it's essential to approach them thoughtfully and strategically. Here's how to manage and communicate employment gaps:

• Don’t highlight gaps on your resume : Your resume is a marketing document meant to highlight your strengths. You don't need to explicitly point out employment gaps here. Focus on your experiences, skills, and achievements.
• Use a functional or combination resume format:  Instead of the traditional chronological resume, consider a functional or combination format. These emphasize skills and accomplishments up front, rather than the timeline of your employment history. This approach can help draw less attention to the gaps.
• Include other relevant experiences:  If you were doing something relevant during your gap period, such as volunteering , freelancing, studying, or undertaking any personal projects  related to your field, include these experiences on your resume. Present them similarly to how you would list a job, focusing on skills  gained and contributions made.
• Be prepared to discuss the gap in your cover letter and interviews: While you don't need to explain employment gaps on your resume, you can address them briefly in your cover letter  if it adds valuable context to your application. Be prepared to discuss the gap openly and positively in interviews, and focus on what you learned or how you grew during that time.
• Stay positive and focus on the future:  When discussing employment gaps, maintain a positive tone and focus on your eagerness and readiness to return to work. Emphasize that your experiences during the gap have prepared you for the next step in your career.
• Honesty is key:  If asked about an employment gap, be honest but succinct in your explanation. You don't need to go into personal details. A simple explanation like "I took time off for family reasons, but I'm excited to bring my skills and experiences to this role" is sufficient.

Employment gaps are more common than ever and are becoming less of a stigma, especially due to reasons like personal health, family obligations, or the recent global changes impacting employment. Most employers understand that career paths aren't always linear, so focus on demonstrating your value and readiness for the role you're applying for.

Here are some final resume tips  that could help you create that powerful, successful resume you’ve been hunting for:

Choose an organized template

Selecting a clear, professional template for your resume  can make a significant difference. It helps highlight your experience section effectively, ensuring that recruiters can easily scan through and understand your career progression and accomplishments. A well-structured template with distinct headings and a logical flow from one section to the next sets a strong first impression.

Address the needs of the employer

Tailor your experience section to meet the specific requirements and preferences of the employer. Closely read the job description and emphasize the parts of your work history that match with what they’re looking for. By mirroring the language of the job listing and focusing on relevant experiences, you demonstrate that you aren’t just qualified but also attentive and responsive to the employer’s needs.

Keep it brief

Aim to convey the essence of your roles and achievements without overwhelming the reader with too much information. For each position, include a few bullet points that highlight your key responsibilities and accomplishments, using quantifiable results whenever possible. This approach guarantees that your resume is digestible and impactful, making it easier for employers to see your value.

Check for grammatical and spelling errors

Before submitting your resume, thoroughly proofread it for any typos on your resume . Consider using tools like spell checkers or having someone else review your resume to catch errors you might have missed. A clean, error-free resume reflects your diligence and care, qualities that are highly valued in any role.

Now that we have thoroughly gone through all aspects of listing your resume work experience, you should be ready to start writing. Here are some takeaways from the article.

• Study real examples: Use real work experience examples to visualize and craft an effective experience section on your resume.
• Choose the right format:  Understand and choose the best resume format (reverse chronological, combination, or functional) for your specific situation, recognizing that all other formats are considered outdated.
• Highlight relevant experience:  Tailor your resume to address the needs of the employer by focusing on relevant work experience that showcases your qualifications for the job you're applying for.
• Use action verbs and quantify achievements:  Start bullet points with action verbs and quantify your accomplishments to clearly demonstrate your impact in previous roles.
• Organized template:  Choose a clear, professional template to make your work experience stand out effectively.
• Mind the details: Include essential information like company names, positions, dates, and locations, and aim for 4-6 bullet points per job that focus on your achievements and contributions.
• Address employment gaps thoughtfully:  Strategically manage and communicate any employment gaps, focusing on the positives and how experiences during these periods have prepared you for your next role.

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Hiring Manager’s Guide: How To List Work Experience on Your Resume

Whether you’re writing a resume for the first time or giving yours a much-needed update, here’s the complete guide to making your work experience stand out.

3 years ago   •   10 min read

Your work experience section forms the core of your resume. It takes up the most space, contains the bulk of your experience, and is the most relevant section to recruiters and potential employers. So, how do you go about creating this crucial section of your resume?

What you include in your work experience will depend on your history, the position you’re applying for, and what skills you want to highlight. But the golden rule is brevity, clarity, and relevance; Your work experience should be easy to read, short, and directly related to the position you’re applying for.

In this article, we’ll discuss how to craft a compelling resume work experience section that stands out from the crowd, how to showcase non-traditional and non-paid experience, how to handle gaps in your work experience, and how to update your work experience to be relevant in 2024.

How to list work experience on your resume

Let's start with the basics — here's how to structure a work experience section for your resume:

• List your job title: Write your title as it is officially recognized in your company. If you feel there's a mismatch between your job title and responsibilities, you can clear it up in your bullet points or with an introductory paragraph.
• List the name of the company you worked for: This can be before or after your job title. Listing your job title first is usually more compelling, as it emphasizes what you did more than who you worked for, unless you worked for a well-known company where the name carries significant weight.
• Include your dates of employment — month and year is fine. Always include dates, as leaving them off makes it hard for employers to tell how recent (and therefore how relevant) your experience is.
• Add your location (optional): This doesn’t have to be specific; just the city name is fine. If you worked remotely, list your location as “Remote (US-based).”
• List 3-6 accomplishments in bullet point format: Focus on quantifiable achievements rather than roles and responsibilities. Display your accomplishments as bullet points to make them easy to scan and read. Aim for up to 6 bullet points for recent roles and 1-2 for older positions.
• Use reverse chronological order: List your work experience in reverse chronological order, with your most recent job first.

Here's an example of what to write in a resume for work experience and what that might look like on your finished resume:

For more examples, check out our extensive resume sample database .

A quick way to find out if your resume satisfies these conditions is to upload it to the tool below — It’ll let you know if your bullet points are strong enough and give you detailed feedback and suggestions for improving other parts of your resume.

How much work experience to include on your resume

When deciding what to include in your resume experience section, focus on your most recent roles, ideally 3-5 positions. Positions older than 15 years can often be omitted, as they are likely less relevant to your current career path and skills. Additionally, attempt to keep your resume to one page to ensure that your most significant accomplishments stand out and you don’t overwhelm a recruiter with too much information.

How to make your resume work experience stand out

Now you've mastered the basics, here's how to make your resume work history stand out from the rest:

Target your resume

Your resume should highlight experiences and skills directly relevant to the role you're applying for. It's not necessary to list every job you've ever had . Exclude roles that aren’t relevant, especially short-term positions , and focus on roles that highlight your most competitive skills. Check the job description for the essential responsibilities and hard skills mentioned, and tailor your resume to include these keywords and skills.

For help identifying competitive keywords, use the skills search tool below to get a list of hard skills and keywords relevant to the job you’re applying for.

Quantify your experience

Quantifying your achievements provides a clear, tangible measure of your experience and helps potential employers understand the scope and relevance of your work. To quantify your experience , begin your bullet points with an action verbs , demonstrate a specific task you accomplished, and include metrics and statistics to show the positive result of your work.

For example: “Wrote Facebook posts ” is vague and unquantified; it describes what you did but not how well you did it. “Implemented new social media strategy that increased Facebook conversions by 30%” describes what you accomplished by adding hard data to the statement and sounds a lot more memorable and impressive.

Include the title of the job you’re applying for

Whenever possible, incorporate the exact title of the job you're applying for in your resume to help optimize it for Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) and resume screeners. Only do this if your position is reasonably similar to the target role — it’s more important to be honest than to look good, but even better if you can do both.

Highlight transferable skills

Transferable skills are valuable across various industries and can include both hard and soft skills. These skills are vital to highlight in your work experience section, as they help potential employers see how your previous experience is relevant to the new role. They are also significant for career changers, as they help bridge the gap between different fields of work.

Identify your transferable skills by comparing your old roles and responsibilities with those of the new position. Highlight and focus on the skills that overlap between your old and new industries, such as communication, leadership, problem-solving, project management, and technical hard skills. Show transferable soft skills through quantified accomplishments, list training courses under education or certificates, and list hard skills in your skills section.

Highlight promotions

If you’ve been promoted or taken on new responsibilities, make that clear on your resume. This is especially important if you’ve been at one company for a long time — you don’t want potential employers to think you’ve stagnated. Show career progression by listing a succession of titles or grouping similar roles under one employer. For different roles at the same company, list them separately with individual achievements.

If the roles were similar, you can group them together like this:

Don’t use resume buzzwords

Use clear, standardized job titles, especially if your original title uses company-specific jargon or vague buzzwords. Vague job titles like "Business Ninja" should be converted to standard equivalents like "Business Analyst" for clarity and professionalism.

Optimize your formatting for ATS

Once you've finished writing your work experience section, make sure your resume formatting is optimized for ATS by getting an ATS resume review to highlight any potential issues. Score My Resume evaluates your resume based on key criteria recruiters and hiring managers look for and gives you actionable steps to improve your resume.

How to update your work experience to be relevant in 2024

As the job market continues to evolve post-Covid, updating your resume to reflect the current trends and expectations is crucial. Here are key areas to focus on to ensure your work experience is relevant for 2024:

• Highlight remote work experience: Given the recent shift towards remote working, it's important to prominently feature any remote work experience on your resume. Showcase your ability to work independently, your proficiency in using remote work tools, and your skills in managing time and communication effectively in a virtual environment.
• Demonstrate digital tool proficiency: Proficiency in digital tools and platforms is more in demand than ever in 2024. Highlight your experience with digital technologies by listing specific tools in your skills section, whether it's software specific to your industry or more general tools like project management software and digital communication platforms.
• Include online courses and certifications: The accessibility of online learning has skyrocketed in recent years, as have employers' attitudes and acceptance of online education. Include any relevant online courses, webinars, or certifications you've completed to demonstrate your commitment to continuous learning and keeping your skills up-to-date with industry standards.
• Embrace the change: Post-Covid, career changes have become more common, and the idea of changing careers to find a better fit for your skills and professional goals is increasingly accepted. If you've switched industries or roles, emphasize the transferable skills you've acquired and how they apply to your new career path.

How to present non-traditional work experience on your resume

In today’s dynamic job market, non-traditional work experiences like volunteer work , internships, personal projects, and freelance experience can be just as valuable as paid work, especially for those with limited professional experience.

Here’s how to effectively incorporate these non-traditional experiences into your resume:

• Present non-paid work experience the same way you would a traditional role. Include your job title, organization name, dates, and location, and use the same formatting, bullet points, and action verbs as described above
• Focus on specific achievements and use quantifiable metrics, such as “Organized a community event with 100+ attendees” or “Contributed to a project that increased social media engagement by 30%.”
• Tailor your non-traditional experiences to align with the job requirements by identifying transferable skills that align with the job description.
• If necessary, explain the context of your work with a brief description of the organization or project to help the employer understand the scope and relevance of your experience.

For students and recent graduates

For students and recent graduates who lack traditional paid experience, emphasize internships and university projects that demonstrate skills related to your field in a real-world setting. Use these experiences to show development of skills like teamwork, communication, and problem-solving, and highlight any leadership roles or significant contributions you made.

Align your non-traditional experiences with your career goals. For instance, if you are aiming for a marketing role, focus on any relevant projects or internships where you employed marketing skills, even if they were unpaid.

For example:

For career changers

Use non-traditional roles to bridge the gap between your past career and your new field, and highlight how these experiences have prepared you for this change by listing hard skills and qualifications you’ve gained. Identify skills from these non-traditional roles that are valuable in your new field. For example, project management or client relations skills gained from volunteer work can be relevant in many professional settings.

How to handle gaps in your resume work history

Gaps in work history are more common than ever, especially in a post-Covid workforce. By directly addressing gaps in your employment history and focusing on the positive aspects of your journey, you can turn potential concerns into a positive example of your adaptability and continuous personal and professional development.

Here's how to effectively manage gaps on your resume:

• Be honest: It's crucial to be truthful about any gaps in your work history and avoid the temptation to alter dates to cover gaps.
• Focus on non-traditional experience: If you engaged in any volunteer work, freelance projects, internships, or personal projects during your employment gaps, include these in your resume. These experiences demonstrate continued professional development and can be highly relevant, especially if they align with the job you're applying for.
• Highlight transferable skills: Reflect on the skills you developed or honed during your gap period and how they apply to your desired role. Skills such as project management, communication, problem-solving, or technical abilities gained through non-traditional means can be extremely valuable to many positions.
• Explain the gap briefly: If the gap was due to reasons such as further education, personal development, health issues, or caring for family members, a short explanation can be helpful. This can be addressed in a cover letter or a brief note in the resume.
• Emphasize professional growth: Use your cover letter or resume summary to highlight how the experiences and skills you gained during the gap contribute to your professional growth and how they make you a stronger candidate for the role.

How to tailor your work experience to different industries

In the ever-changing job market, it's important to adapt your resume for each specific job application. You need to tell a recruiter why your past experiences make you a suitable candidate for the role, even if your experience is in a different field.

Here's how to tailor your work experience to suit various industries:

• Research the industry you're applying to, to understand what skills and experiences are most valued. For example, in tech industries, emphasize your technical skills and projects, whereas in customer service roles, highlight your interpersonal and problem-solving skills.
• Focus on experiences and skills that are directly relevant. This might mean prioritizing certain roles over others or emphasizing different aspects of the same job.
• Use industry-specific language and keywords that resonate with the job description.
• Tailor your job descriptions and achievements to align with your new industry. This might include emphasizing leadership and team management in managerial roles or creative problem-solving in design-oriented jobs.

Original phrase: Led a team of 10 in developing and implementing a large-scale project, resulting in improved operational efficiency.

Tailored for the Tech industry: Led a cross-functional team of 10 in the agile development and deployment of a software project, achieving a 25% improvement in system efficiency.

Tailored for a Non-Profit: Directed a team of 10 in launching a community-focused project, enhancing operational efficiency by 20% and expanding service outreach to an additional 1,000 beneficiaries within six months.

How to handle sensitive or confidential information in your resume work history

When listing your previous work experience, it's important to be conscious of sensitive or confidential information. This is especially important for positions that involve handling data, client confidentiality, or sensitive company information.

Confidential information can include client data, company strategies, or any information under a non-disclosure agreement (NDA). Instead of detailing this information, focus on your role and the skills you employed. For example, instead of mentioning specific client data, you could say, "Managed sensitive client data and ensured compliance with confidentiality standards."

Use your experience with sensitive information to showcase your trustworthiness and ability to handle responsibility. If you're uncertain about what constitutes confidential information, seek advice from your employer or legal counsel, particularly if you were bound by an NDA or similar legal agreement.

• Career Changers

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How to Describe Your Work Experience on a Resume? [+Examples]

Your work history section is the most important part of your resume. It's also the most difficult part of your CV to address. Keep reading to find out how to properly describe your work experience on your resume. 

Because while a well-written work experience section can land you a job, a badly written one can easily sabotage your chances of getting an interview. You must know how to write it and what to include in it. 

And that's what this guide is for! It will show you:

What is a work experience section?

• Why bother writing it?
• Where to put the work experience section on your resume?
• …if you’re a student or a fresh graduate?
• …as an experienced professional?
• …if you’re an artist or creative?
• …if you’re changing careers?
• How to overcome an employment gap?
• How to address maternity leave?
• Plus some final tips and tricks

Too long, don't wanna read? Watch this 60sec video guide

The work experience section or employment history is a detailed summary of your past work experience . In other words, a comprehensible report of all jobs you’ve held in the past.

Depending on your background, you can include full-time positions, part-time jobs, temporary roles, internships, or even volunteer work.

In the work history section, you should list key information such as: 

• names of companies
• positions held
• dates of employment
• responsibilities you've held

But more importantly , it should highlight your main achievements and provide specific examples.

Side note: The experience section often goes under other names. Some people call it Employment history . Others refer to it as Work experience or Work history. All of these terms are interchangeable and all of them are correct. So you don't have to worry about picking the right one. 

Oh, and if you have a LinkedIn profile filled with all the important details, including your work experience, academic background, skills, and qualifications, you can easily  turn it into a polished resume with just one click.

Why should you include the work experience section?

We hate to use the word “important” , but…

… work experience is super important, if not a key section of your resume. 

When you think “resume ”, the work experience section is probably the first thing that comes to your mind. And you’re not alone. Based on this section employers determine whether or not you have what it takes for the job.

It provides an overview of your experience. A well-written work experience section is a crucial element because it shows that you have the necessary qualifications.

Where to put your work experience on a resume?

In most cases, your work experience section should come right after your contact info and professional summary.

But this isn't always the case. In some situations, you want to put your key skills, key achievements, or education section first.

For example, place your education first if you’re a student, fresh graduate, professional who recently went back to school, Ph.D. researcher , doctor, or another profession where the educational background is very important. Or if you’re writing an academic CV.

Generally speaking, the role and importance of your employment history section depend on where you're in your career and the type of resume you choose to write.

You can choose to write either a chronological, functional, or combination resume:

A chronological resume  

The most common resume type . 

It’s built around the employment history section. This makes it great for seasoned professionals with several years of work experience. It presents information in reverse-chronological order, with the most recent events being placed first.

Order of sections in chronological resume usually looks like this: Contact Information > Professional Summary > Work Experience > Education > Skills > Others .

A functional resume

This resume type draws attention to and puts forward your skills , accomplishments, job traits, and personal characteristics. 

It works best for fresh graduates, students, people returning to work after parental leave, and people who are changing careers — in other words — for those who might already have the skills but lack experience (or have an employment gap in their resume).

Order of sections in functional resume usually is the following: Contact Information > Professional Summary / Resume Objective > Skills / Projects > Work History / Education > Others .

A combination resume  

A combination resume contains elements of both the chronological and functional format. It does so by including your relevant skills and accomplishments first and then detailing your employment history and education. 

It's great for students, fresh graduates, or career changers who don’t really fit elsewhere. 

A combination resume also gives you a chance to order sections in a way that works best for your unique career path. You can, for instance, place the key achievement section first if there's a success that you truly want to highlight. 

How to write a work experience section?

In summary, you should begin with listing your current (or most recent job) and then continue with the previous ones. Your first job should close the section. 

The description of your most recent job position should include the following information:

• name of the company
• responsibilities and achievements

The more recent the job, the more detailed information about it you want to offer. On the other hand, you don’t really want to waste space on jobs that took place years ago. So, don’t go into too much detail. 

Sounds simple enough, doesn’t it? Despite that, the employment history section is probably the most difficult to write. Why though?

The answer is quick — the main challenge of describing your work experience on your resume is the sheer amount of information you have to include in this section. You have to choose wisely what to include so you won’t overwhelm the recruiter. 

Another problem arises once you stop writing it. You look back to your finished work history section and you may wonder:

Is your work experience section too short? Is it too long? Does it look somewhat chaotic? 

There’s no reason to worry though. We’ve got you. Here are some tips on how to make your job history section more orderly and appealing: 

• Use action verbs. As opposed to buzzwords, there are some powerful words you DO want to use. These include expressions such as “achieved,” “advised,” “negotiated” and others. See the pattern there? Instead of adjectives, use verbs you can support with evidence.
• Tailor it to a specific opening. Your accomplishments should match the employer’s needs and priorities. This is one of the quickest ways to get noticed and invited to an interview. Do your research and re-arrange your bullet points to show exactly the type of experience they want.
• Keywords. Reread the advertised job description and carefully pick the most important keywords. These are the words that best describe the position you’re applying for. Pack your resume with these keywords. Not only will it help you get past applicant tracking systems (ATS), but it will also leave a lasting impression on the hiring manager.
• Show your problem-solving skills . In the end, hiring managers want to know how effective are you when it comes to solving real problems. There’s no better way to prove your problem-solving ability than to briefly describe how you solved difficult problems in the past. Follow the PAR scheme: What was the Problem? What Action did you take? What was the Result?
• Quantify your past results. Managers love measurable results. A single number is often worth a thousand words. Don’t say you “increased the company’s revenue by, like, a lot”. Instead, don’t be afraid to brag about “increasing the company’s revenue by 20%.”
• Use bullet points. Bullet points help you structure your sub-sections. It also takes next to no effort on your part. Use them in combination with short paragraphs. First, describe the scope of your responsibilities, then use bullet points to list your top contributions for each job. Add 2-4 bullet points for each job.

Then, there are also common work experience section mistakes that you should avoid: 

• Don’t include the job description. Wait, what? Isn’t that the whole point? Well, no, employers usually know what the job should entail. Instead of listing what you were supposed to do, tell your potential employers what positive results you were able to bring about.
• Avoid buzzwords. Some phrases have been used so much in resumes that they became meaningless. Avoid words such as “thinking outside the box,” “creative,” or “problem solver.” These words always sound insincere. You want to inspire confidence. If you're using too many buzzwords, try to rephrase your content to make it more results-focused and skill-based.

Christy's word of advice

When it comes to the Work Experience sections, many resources say you should only highlight achievements and omit duties. What's your take on this?

“ I usually say have both. I recommend putting a few most important duties first because that's adding the context, and then the achievements. You can maybe get away just with the achievements if you're in an achievement-focused role, for instance, sales. But in general, I'd recommend having a mix — context plus impact. ” — Christy Morgan , Kickresume's Resident HR Expert

How to list work experience if you’re a student or a fresh graduate?

Naturally, you don’t have tons of experience if you’ve just finished school. Yet, being young is no obstacle. It comes down to how you present the experience you already have.

As a student or fresh graduate, you should place your work experience after the education section. Then list key skills, volunteer experience, and other voluntary sections.

Why list education first? Because your education and educational results are your strongest weapons right now.

Also, try to think of any job-relevant experience that you could put on your resume. Do you have any related experience at all when you worked as an intern? Have you done some volunteer work for a local charity? Or attended a conference? 

All of these things belong on your resume. Treat your internships and extracurricular activities as regular jobs.

These activities can showcase your motivation and skills. They also help recruiters gauge your professional aptitude. Each one of them should come with a few points that detail your responsibilities and accomplishments.

Here’s what you can include in your employment history section:

• Part-time jobs. If you’re fresh out of school (or still studying), part-time jobs are probably your primary type of experience. Even if the job isn’t super-relevant to the job you’re applying for now, there are valuable transferrable skills you’ve acquired in that job. Highlight them.
• Internships. Paid and unpaid college internships are one of the best weapons against the “experience required” line in a job posting.
• Volunteering . Most recruiters look at volunteer experience similar to paid work experience. Just because you didn’t get paid doesn’t mean you didn’t do a good job. Go ahead and list your volunteer roles as you would a full-time job. Detail the length of time you volunteered, relevant tasks you undertook, and the skills you gained through the experience.
• Extracurricular activities. If you’re applying for copywriting job, for example, recruiters will be more impressed to hear that you wrote a handful of articles for your student newspaper than that you had a summer job in a local fast-food restaurant.
• Leadership roles: Any leadership roles, even from clubs or sports teams, can demonstrate leadership skills and teamwork — both of which are highly valued by employers. 

How does this look in practice? Take a look at this fresh graduate sample below! 

How to list work experience if you’re an experienced professional?

Even if you’re an experienced professional, the hiring manager is going to put your work experience section under scrutiny. Because of that, you want to make sure your work experience section is tight.

To help employers navigate this section, list your work history in reverse chronological order. Put the most recent — and therefore the most relevant — items first.

Side tip: If you’re working a full-time job and freelancing at the same time, it’s only up to you to decide where you want to draw attention first.

Most importantly, don’t just state where you worked and what was your job title. Rather, also use 2–4 bullet points for each job to describe your duties and specific achievements. 

Here’s an example of how to do it:

Work Experience Section Example

Automotive Technician, Icahn Automotive, Rotorua, New Zealand (03/2017 – 09/2019)

• Repaired various cars and trucks. Troubleshot and diagnosed vehicles. Repaired or replaced defective parts. Ensured that everything was in compliance with the company’s high standards and clients’ needs.
• Awarded Employee of the Month for increasing customer satisfaction with provided services from 87% to 95% within one year.

Mind the length

Executives can use more than one page of their resume to present their extensive work experience. But that doesn’t mean that you should let your resume become a 700-page-long autobiography.

You may be wondering how to filter the information then. Especially if you have years of substantial experience. 

Well, as we already said earlier, if something’s recent, it also means it’s more relevant. That’s why you should describe more recent jobs in greater detail . Older ones will do with a brief description, allowing you to save some valuable space for more important details to put on your resume.

Finally, remember that you should never ever make your resume longer than two or three pages. Recruiters are busy and they can easily get overwhelmed by an overly long document. It would be sad if only this killed your chances of getting called for an interview . 

How far back should your employment history go?

Generally, it’s okay to include up to 15 years of experience, but try to avoid going further back in time than that. An exception would be a truly unique experience – such as being the one who started a successful company. 

Or, if a job requires 20 years of experience, then you should also definitely include more than 10–15 years of experience on your resume. 

However, most industries change a lot in 15 years, rendering any experience older than that obsolete.

If you have been working for less than 8-10 years, go back to the beginning of your work history and try to tailor your resume to be relevant to the job you’re applying for now.

Avoid writing about every single job you’ve ever held. This can easily overwhelm an employer and make them lose interest. Instead, only use previous work experience at least a bit related to the opportunity you want.

If you’ve worked more than 10 years as an executive, consider starting your work history at the point you became a manager. Most hiring managers don’t care what your first job was. They want to see how you progressed since you started as a manager.

How to write a work experience section if you’re an artist?

If you’re an artist, you know that your life and your job are a little different from the rest of the people. Because of that, it probably comes as no surprise that your work experience section should be different, too.

In short, as an artist, you should say goodbye to wordy descriptions and focus almost entirely on your portfolio . 

Consequently, your artist resume can be quite short and mostly focus on listing your training or education, courses you've taught, or artist residencies that you've been accepted to. 

See the sample below for what a good artist's resume should look like. Also, notice the fun creative resume template ! 

Finally, don't forget to polish up your social media profiles , as this is one of the most convenient ways of finding new clients today. Create your own website, and make sure to upload your portfolio to sites like Behance or Dribble. 

How to list experience if you’re changing careers?

If you’re pursuing a career change, your resume shouldn’t revolve entirely around your employment history. After all, that’s all in the past now. 

Instead , you should highlight your transferrable skills. You need to show how you can use the skills from your previous career in the new one.

Because of that, the hybrid resume format is the way to go.

How to do this? 

• In the employment history section, briefly outline your work history. Only mention those positions where you acquired skills that are relevant to the new position. You can also mention any relevant volunteer work.
• Try to find any keywords that relate to your experience. Look closely at the qualifications in the job description and tailor the bullet points in your work history to highlight that applicable experience.
• Focus less on the duties and more on your transferrable skills . These are any skills that you can transfer from one career to another. For example, if you have a background in journalism and want to apply for a copywriting position, the obviously shared keyword here is writing . Even though you don’t have any copywriting or marketing experience, you do have expert-level writing skills that you can use in the new field. That's a transferable skill. Try including these in your work experience section.

How to overcome an employment gap in your work history?

While many see a gap in their resume as an issue that's hard to overcome, that isn't necessarily the case. You just have to know which gaps should be addressed and which can be ignored.

If the resume gap is worth addressing, you can also learn how to give your resume gap a little “glow up.” 

Generally speaking, there are two basic criteria you need to consider when thinking about the seriousness of an employment gap on your resume: its duration and how recent it is.

• Short gaps don’t matter. Work gaps don’t generally become red flags unless they lasted for more than six months.
• Old gaps don’t matter either. Recruiters are interested in recent history and won’t investigate things that no longer have an impact on the present.

If your resume employment gaps are recent and quite long, what can you do?

• Change the way you write dates. Simply exclude months and the gap might disappear. So, instead of writing (October 2017 – August 2019), (September 2014 – January 2017) , you write (2017 – 2019), (2014 – 2017). Obviously, this technique works best for employment gaps that took place within a single calendar year.
• Consider changing the format of your resume. You should use the functional resume format. It shifts attention to your strengths and job-relevant skills rather than your work history.
• Make the most of your employment gap. Starting a business, freelancing, studying, volunteering, taking a purposeful sabbatical — all of these count as valuable experience. List these experiences along with other positions you held in the work experience section. Describe how you expanded your skillset.
• Boost your credibility with references . Ask your former employers, ex-colleagues, and other industry professionals if they’re willing to vouch for you. Include their names and contact information directly in your resume or attach an additional page to your resume.

How to address a maternity leave on your resume?

A very specific type of employment gap is maternity/parental leave. 

If you find yourself in the situation when you're trying to enter the work world after you took some time off to give birth or take care of your offspring, you may be a little worried about how to address it in your resume. 

The best thing to do is to use the functional or combination resume format , rather than chronologically list your previous work experience. 

Both formats allow you to attract the employer’s attention with your skills before addressing the elephant in the room.

Once you’ve done that, briefly mention that your career gap was due to the maternity leave. You can do it like this:

Example: How to address maternity leave in the work experience section

Maternity leave (January 2019–present)

That's it. You don't have to go into great detail. After all, you're not the first person in the world who has ever taken a parenting leave.

You just have to make sure to emphasize the work you did before you took some time off. Write about it as if it were yesterday and you still remember the details of the projects you worked on. Recall your accomplishments and the projects you're proud of from that period of your life. Time doesn’t devalue those experiences and skills that you've learned in the past.

Alternatively, if you've volunteered or completed a course during your leave, don't forget to mention it! Make sure to write about any relevant community service or voluntary work that you engaged in during your time away. Any freelancing projects or short-term gigs work as great resume enhancers.

See the example below: 

Example: How to update the work experience section after maternity leave 

During my maternity leave, I focused on maintaining and enhancing my skill set. That involved enrolling in an online course, continuing my education, and participating in a sales conference to ensure that I remained up-to-date with industry happenings.

Sales Success Summit, Boston (June 2019)

• Joining fellow sales leaders, trainers, and enablement professionals to learn expert secrets about sales and marketing.

The Art of Sales: Mastering the Selling Process (Northwestern University) – Online course (March 2019 – June 2019)

• Coursework focused on standing out in the crowd, attracting customers, and building support for initiatives within one’s company.

If you'd like more tips on how to do this, go and read our article on how to tackle maternity leave on your resume.

Final resume tips

• Don’t be afraid to use bold whenever you want to highlight important bits of information within the section.
• Include key achievements subsection. Pick the biggest achievement from each job and highlight it in a subsection. You can also write it in bold. This will catch the attention of the hiring manager in an instant.
• Keep it simple and easy to read. Don’t overdo it. Pick 1-2 colors maximum, 1-2 fonts, and 1-2 heading sizes.
• Remember it’s not only about you . It’s also about your future employer. Look at the job description again and determine what are his needs. Address these in your work experience section.

FAQ: How to describe your work experience on a resume

1. Is it ever ok to change the title of my past jobs a little bit?

While we always advise against lying on your resume, slightly altering the name of your past position shouldn't hurt you. Especially, if the name of the position didn't fit your responsibilities (which happens more often than you'd think). 

Additionally, if your boss thought they were being original but you ended up with a stupid-sounding work position name, you've also got the green light to change it in your resume.

2. What should I not include in the work history section of my resume?

• A wall of text. Always opt for bullet points.
• Too much information. Keep it brief. 
• Personal information. Your age, relationship status, or sexual orientation are all private information (and should stay that way during the recruitment).

3.   Should I include a job that I was fired from in my resume? 

Yes, if it's relevant to the prospective job position, there's no reason not to mention it. Even if you were fired (for various reasons), you've managed to get the job in the first place and you've learned some valuable skills. 

This article was recently updated. The original article was written by Nikoleta Žišková in 2021 .

Is it ever ok to change the title of my past jobs a little bit?

While we always advise against lying on your resume, slightly altering the name of your past position shouldn't hurt you. Especially, if the name of the position didn't fit your responsibilities (which happens more often than you'd think). 

What should I not include in the work history section of my resume?

• Too much information. Keep it brief. 

Should I include a job that I was fired from in my resume?

Yes, if it's relevant to the prospective job position, there's no reason not to mention it. Even if you were fired (for various reasons), you've managed to get the job in the first place and you've learned some valuable skills. 

Should I include my GPA on my resume?

As a rule of thumb, you should include your GPA if it's 3.0 or above and you're a recent graduate. If you're further along in your career, recruiters typically care more about your work experience than your academic performance.

I've already graduated. Should I still list my high school under the education section?

Usually, once you have a college degree or higher, you don't need to include your high school education in your resume.

Kaja Jurčišinová

Kaja Jurcisinova is a fresh graduate and a junior copywriter at Kickresume. Kaja completed her undergraduate degree in Art History at the University of St Andrews in 2018 and graduated with a Master’s in Arts and Culture from the University of Groningen in 2021. She was an intern at multiple cultural institutions across Europe, including the Dutch Museum Association in Amsterdam, the Matter of Art Biennale in Prague, and the European Cultural Centre in Venice. At the moment, she resides in Visby on the Swedish island of Gotland.

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What do you think is one of the first sections a hiring manager looks at when receiving a resume? If you said work experience, you are right on target. Having a well-written work experience section will make job seekers' resumes stand out. If some of the most important skills for the career path are in place, the manager will move on to other sections.

Based on this, when it comes to moving forward in your career path, the work experience on a resume needs to be perfect. You don’t want to risk being skimmed and put to the side. Instead, you want to get eyes glued on your resume and offer information that keeps them there. That’s how you get an email asking you to schedule an interview.

Something you may or may not know is that managers often spend only a portion of a minute looking at the average minute. In the six seconds that your resume gets a glance, it needs to stand out and gain attention. Since work experience is one of the most important sections, that means doing everything perfectly.

But don’t worry that there’s no way you can do that. Once you understand what an employer wants to see, it’s easy to give that to them. Then you’ll be far more likely to get into the interview room and potentially a whole new career role. Take the tips and examples below to ensure your resume is as perfect as can be.

Why is the work experience section of a resume important?

There are tons of reasons to include relevant experience on a resume. The first is that many employers consider it the most important section. It trumps everything from your education and skills to the resume objective and references. The work experience section is often read first, which makes it essential for moving forward in the process of obtaining new employment.

When prospective employers look at the job experience in a resume, they use it to decide whether you have the skills and experience to succeed in whatever role you have applied for. In addition, you’ll go into detail about your accomplishments, which is a great way to stand out from other applicants and get your foot in the door.

What to – and not to – include in your resume work experience section

When it comes to the work history in a resume, there are many things to include but just as many to avoid inserting. Information about the job you are applying for and what your employment history looks like will determine what to add.

TIP: Keep in mind that you should work with a reverse-chronological order. That means you start with the most recent position and move back to the previous position, and so on.

If your work experience is scattered, don’t worry. It’s becoming more and more common (and accepted) as time goes on. Adding side projects and part-time gigs is useful if any skills are related to the position you’re applying for now.

When it comes down to it, you need to be ready to answer questions about your work choices, be able to explain your career path, and be honest about how much commitment you’re interested in. After you decide which positions to list, there are several things you should add as you insert them into the resume. Each should have -

• Action verbs – Action verbs are considered strong and work well in a resume format. Use words like “transformed” and “pioneered” to make yourself sound good. This also helps you avoid tons of adjectives.
• Awards and honors – If you receive recognition at your job for great work, that’s something you want to include. All of the work experience that you add to your resume should be as impressive as possible.
• On-site training – If you gained certifications and skills on the job, those are great things to include. It can be a good way to showcase skills and prove you take initiative at work.
• Quantitative info – When a hiring manager looks at your resume, numbers always stand out. They’re tangible and specific. Whether you managed 20 clients each week or grew a reader base by 150%, make sure you include those details.
• Results-based facts – The person reading the resume has the basics, so each of your job descriptions needs to be further. Focus on the ways you managed your positions in innovative manners.

Now that you know what to include on your resume, we want to delve into the things you should avoid. Some things do not need to be explained to the hiring manager. In addition, resumes have limited space, so you want to include only the most important bits.

You can do that by avoiding the things below -

• Basic job requirements – The job title gives the basic information, so there’s no reason to go into more detail. Instead, they’ll better understand your role by reading the bullet points.
• Filler text – Some words can be cut in a resume to save space. Think of words like the and I for a couple of examples.
• Irrelevant information – Small responsibilities that have no bearing on the new position can be left out. Every word and bullet point should be focused on selling you.
• What the company does – When you make a resume, you’re showing yourself. It’s not about another company. Hiring managers don’t need to know those details.

How to write work experience on a resume: 5 steps to be noticed

You want to know how to write a job description on a resume. The good news is that it’s not as challenging as you might think. Once you learn what to write in a resume for work experience and use it for a past entry, the others will be easier to compose. So take a breath and dig into the steps below in terms of how to write a job description for a resume.

Step #1: Create an eye-catching heading

The first step in creating a job history on a resume is making a heading that catches the eye. This can make you an appealing candidate from the very start. You’ll want to include a title such as “work history” or “past employment” before you dig into the previous work experience and dates of employment.

One thing to take into consideration here is that the title looks better if it’s a bit larger than the actual description. Use all capital letters or write in bold for extra visibility.

Step #2: Make sure experience is in the right place

After you look at a job posting and think about the job positions you want, make sure you create the resume in the right area of the resume.

If you’re not sure where that is, don’t worry. There are two typical options based on your work history. For those who have a reasonable amount of professional experience, add the section under your resume objective. Those who have less experience can put it under the education section.

Step #3: Use reverse-chronological order

Regardless of your key skills and any leadership positions, job candidates need to consider every aspect of how a resume is laid out. In most cases, employment history should be done in reverse-chronological order.

Not sure what that means? Don’t worry; it’s simple to understand. First, put your current or most recent position at the top of the section. Then move down and add the next most recent. Follow that format as you continue.

This is the most classic method for showing work history on a resume. However, there are other styles. Most are best served with this format but feel free to explore other options to make sure it’s ideal for your needs.

Step #4: Keep things clean and easy to read

At the top of all your job listings, make sure to add the company name and location, what your title was, and which dates you were with the organization. You’ll see several examples below to give you better insight into what this might look like for you.

It’s fine to start with the company name or your position; nobody cares much about which you choose. However, work toward consistency. If you do it one way on the first job, keep that up with all the rest.

The same applies to dates of employment. Make sure they’re in the same area with identical alignment.

Step #5: Add relevant bullets under each position

Every job that you list should have bullets after it to explain what you did there. Most bullets should be reserved for your current position. Add plenty of detail for this one. As you move backward, it’s fine to limit the number of bullets as you do so.

For every point, you want to focus on your achievements. Don’t stick to simple job responsibilities and duties. There’s no need to add every single task you ever did. Instead, add the ones that are relevant and that you can include quantifiable information about.

TIP:  As you write, use power words and action verbs so you create a persuasive message. You should also be sure that all your entries support the skills you say you have. Look at the job description and add keywords whenever you can.

3 Successful resume work experience examples

Now that you know what an employer expects, we want to share a few resume experience examples. Using professional experience examples for a resume lets you get a visual idea of how your document should look. This is a great way to see if you are on the right track or not. Below are three job experience examples for applicants of all kinds. Use the most relevant professional experience resume example as a guide for your resume.

This first resume work experience example is for an applicant who is searching for a job in an electrical engineering position. You can see how her previous work experience is laid out and incorporates many of the tips we just provided to you.

What makes this a good example

This work experience example contains two past jobs. Each of them has a well-made heading that includes all the needed information about the job role, company name and location, and dates of employment.

When you get into the bullets, you find action verbs and plenty of numbers to go with the achievement.

Next up, you get a glimpse at what a hiring manager might see when a potential pharmacist sends in their resume. It offers two work positions from the past, along with limited bullet points under each of them.

Previous employers will appreciate the way the work experience is laid out here. It’s simple to see where one job ends and the next begins. The person who created the work experience section made sure to quantify their achievements and use keywords from the job description to tie everything together.

Finally, we have an example employment history for someone who wants to work as a tutor. You can see the last two jobs they had in various tutoring positions. Everything is laid out professionally with the appropriate information, including dates of employment.

Future employers want to see your previous work experience and how well you did in past positions. This applicant makes that clear by describing how they helped students improve their grades and do well on various standardized tests. You can also get an idea of where their skills are the best.

What is the right resume experience format for a resume

When you’re listing resume job experience, you want to be sure you show off your job responsibilities in the correct resume format. Each bit of relevant work experience should look the same, or it can be confusing to read. Being consistent shows you have an eye for detail and know how to follow the rules.

A few tips that will help you create the best work experience section include -

Format all entries the same with details like the company name and location, job title, dates of employment, and list of responsibilities.

TIP:  Use the same font throughout and only use two styles, such as standard text for most of the resume and bold for job titles.

Make sure all sections are aligned in the same way, such as having right-aligned dates throughout.

Use the same font and method for all the headers to make sure this section of the resume is a breeze to read.

How to describe work experience on a resume: key takeaways

Now that you know what potential employers want to see in the work experience on a resume, all you have to do is spend a few minutes creating it. Make use of our resume builder to get it done fast. When you use the tips and examples above, you’re sure to have a work experience section to be proud of.

Whether you have only a bit of experience or decades to add, the work experience section is one of the most important for your resume. Get it right, and you could be moving forward in the process. Good luck!

How many years of work experience should you put on your resume?

When it comes to how much work history is on a resume, it can vary. It depends on how you ask. If you are asking us how many years of work experience is on a resume, we’d say to keep it to around a decade.

If it takes a bit more to fill the page, that’s okay. The same applies if you need to use less for the section. Ten years is just a good average.

What to put on your resume if you don’t have any work experience

Even if you don’t have experience, you can create a great resume. Rather than focusing on the work experience section, put your effort into showing off relevant skills. Add in projects, hard and soft skills, hobbies and interests, and more. Achievements and certifications can also be added to show what you are capable of.

How to write work experience on a resume with employment gaps?

Many people have employment gaps for various reasons. There’s no real need to draw attention to them on the resume itself. Simply write it with what experience you do have. If you get an interview and are asked about it, explain why you weren’t working and describe a skill or ability you gained in that time.

How to list work experience for a career change?

There are several things you can do on a resume for a career change. Tie old experience to the skills needed in a new position. Focus on achievements using data and numbers. Tailor the descriptions for each job using relevant keywords to show you have the needed skills.

Should you include all work experience on your resume?

Full-time jobs, part-time jobs, volunteer experience, and internships can all be included in your work experience. However, that doesn’t mean every role needs to be added. Those who have lots of experience can focus on the most relevant positions to create a better document.

Should you put unrelated work experience on a resume?

In most cases, it’s better to stick with relevant work experience on a resume. However, it also depends on the type of job and how much other experience you have. If your past employment is limited, go ahead and add in other positions. But you want to try to tie the experience in, so highlight skills that apply to the new role.

Can you lie about work experience on your resume?

In theory, it’s possible to do so, but it is very much not recommended. While an application and resume aren’t legal documents, you can still get yourself in hot water. If the employer finds out you lied, you’re likely to lose your job if you’ve been hired on. Instead, focus on key achievements in the position you have had.

How do you put international work experience on a resume?

So you’ve had additional experience, but it was in another country? You can still add it to your work experience section when building your resume. Format it like other experiences, and be sure to include the location. International experience is a great way to stand out!

How do you list remote work experience on a resume?

Having consistent employment experience for a resume is a good way to stand out. That includes both in-person and remote experience. If you want to showcase that you worked on a remote basis, simply add (remote) after the job title. However, you do not have to do this. It can look just like other positions if you prefer.

Is volunteer work experience on a resume?

Volunteer experience can be used as work experience on a resume. Just because you were doing good for free doesn’t mean it can’t be included. You’d insert it into a resume just like any other job you held. As long as the experience is relevant and shows off your skills, put it on the resume and let it shine.

How do you put stay-at-home mom on a resume without work experience?

Being a stay-at-home mom doesn’t need to be a detriment as you embark on your career journey. It can be used in the work experience on a resume, just like other jobs. List it with a title like “caregiver” or “home manager,” including dates, and put down some of the accomplishments you have.

How to write “currently working” in a resume?

If you’re still employed somewhere, you should list it on your resume with the rest of your work experience. All you need to do is list the basics (name of company, position, and location) as well as the date. Since you still work there, simply put “present” or “currently working” as the end date.

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How to Make a Resume in 2024 | Beginner's Guide

For most job-seekers, a good resume is what stands between a dream job and Choice D. Get your resume right, and you’ll be getting replies from every other company you apply to.

If your resume game is weak, though, you’ll end up sitting around for weeks, maybe even months, before you even get a single response.

So you’re probably wondering how you can write a resume that gets you an interview straight up.

Well, you’ve come to the right place!

In this guide, we’re going to teach you everything you need to know about how to make a resume, including:

• The 8 Essential Steps to Writing a Resume
• 11+ Exclusive Resume Tips to Up Your Resume Game
• 27+ Real-Life Resume Examples for Different Professions

….and more!

So, let’s dive right in.

How to Make a Resume (The Right Way!)

Before we go into detail about how you should make a resume, here’s a summary of the most important steps and tips to keep in mind:

• Choose a resume format carefully. In 99% of cases, we recommend the reverse-chronological format .
• Add the right contact details. Leave your headshot out and make sure to include your job title , a professional email address, and any relevant links. (E.g.: your LinkedIn profile , online portfolio, personal website, etc.).
• Write an impactful resume summary. Unless you’re an entry-level professional, always go for a resume summary. If you do it right, it’s your chance to get the hiring manager to go through the rest of your resume in detail.
• Pay attention to your work experience section. Take your work experience section from OK-ish to exceptional by tailoring it to the job ad, making your achievements quantifiable, and using action verbs and power words.
• Add the right skills for the job. Keep this section relevant by only including the hard and soft skills that are required for the position.
• Keep your education short and to the point. Your most recent and highest degree is more than enough for a strong education section. You only need to add more details here if you’re a recent graduate with barely any work experience.
• Leverage optional resume sections. Optional sections like languages, hobbies, certifications, independent projects, and others can set you apart from other candidates with similar skills and experience.
• Include a cover letter. That’s right, cover letters matter in 2024, and the best way to supplement your resume is by adding an equally well-crafted cover letter to your job application. To make the most of it, check out our detailed guide on how to write a cover letter .

To get the most out of our tips, you can head over to the resume builder and start building your resume on the go as you read this guide.

New to resume-making? Give our ‘7 Resume Tips’ video a watch before diving into the article!

#1. Pick the Right Resume Format

Before you start filling in the contents of your resume, you have to make sure it’s going to look good. 

After all, the first thing hiring managers notice is what your resume looks like, and then they start reading it. So, this is your best chance to make a great first impression.

Start by choosing the right resume format.

There are three types of resume formats out there:

• Reverse-chronological. This is by far the most popular resume format worldwide and, as such, it’s the best format for most job-seekers.
• Functional. This resume format focuses more on skills than work experience. It’s a good choice if you’re just getting started with your career and have little to no experience in the field.
• Combination. The combination resume format is a great choice for experienced job-seekers with a very diverse skill set. It’s useful if you’re applying for a role that requires expertise in several different fields and you want to show all that in your resume.

So, which one should you go for?

In 99% of cases, you want to stick to the reverse-chronological resume format . It’s the most popular format and what hiring managers expect to see. So, in the rest of this guide, we’re going to focus on teaching you how to make a reverse-chronological resume.

Fix Your Resume’s Layout

With formatting out of the way, let’s talk about your resume’s layout , which determines the overall look of your resume. 

Does it look organized or cluttered? Is it too short or too long? Is it boring and easy to ignore, or is it reader-friendly and attention-grabbing?

Here are some of the best practices you should apply:

• Stick to one page. You should only go for a two-page resume if you have decades of experience and you’re sure the extra space will add significant value. Hiring managers in big companies get hundreds of applications per job opening. They’re not going to spend their valuable time reading your life story!
• Add clear section headings. Pick a heading and use it for all the section headers so the hiring manager can easily navigate through your resume.
• Adjust the margins. Without the right amount of white space, your resume will end up looking overcrowded with information. Set your margins to one inch on all sides so your text fits just right on the page.
• Choose a professional font. We’d recommend sticking to a font that’s professional but not overused. For example, Ubuntu, Roboto, or Overpass. Avoid Times New Roman, and never use Comic Sans.
• Set the correct font size. As a rule of thumb, go for 11-12 pt for normal text and 14-16 pt for section titles.
• Use a PDF file. Always save your resume as a PDF file, unless the employer specifically requests otherwise. Word files are popular, but there’s a good chance they’ll mess up your resume’s formatting.

Another thing you need to consider in terms of your resume’s layout is whether you’re going for a traditional-looking resume template or something a bit more modern :

If you’re pursuing a career in a more traditional industry, like law , banking , or finance , you might want to stick to the first.

But if you’re applying to a tech company where imagination and innovation are valued, you can pick a more creative resume template .

Want to Save Time? Use a (Free) Resume Template

Anyone who’s ever tried creating a resume from scratch knows how boring the formatting can be.

Before you can even start filling in the contents, you need to tweak the margins, adjust font sizes, and make sure everything fits into one page while still looking good.

What if you could skip past all that and still create a compelling resume?

Try one of our free resume templates . They’re pre-formatted, so all you have to do is fill in the contents.

They’re also created in collaboration with recruiters from around the globe, ensuring that the templates are visually appealing and ATS-friendly!

See for yourself how one of our templates compares to a resume created in a standard text editor:

#2. Add Your Contact Information

Now that we’ve got all the formatting out of the way, let’s get into what your resume is all about— the information you put on it .

The first thing you want to do when filling out the contents of your resume is to add your contact information .

This section is pretty straightforward but crucial. Your contact details belong at the top of your resume in a designated resume header , so the hiring manager can easily find them.

Even if everything else about your resume is perfect, that all flops if you misspell your email address or have a typo in your phone number. If the hiring manager can’t contact you, it’s a missed opportunity.

So, double-check, and even triple-check your contact information section and make sure everything is factually correct and up-to-date.

Must-Have Information

• Full name. Your first and last name should stand out at the top of your resume.
• Email address. Stick to an address that’s professional and easy to spell, like a combination of your first and last name. (E.g.: [email protected])
• Phone number. Add a reliable number where the hiring manager can easily reach you.
• Location. Add your city and state/country. If you plan to relocate for the job or want a remote position, specify it on your resume.

Optional Information

• Job title. Add your professional title underneath. Write it down word for word, whether it’s “Digital Marketing Specialist” or “Junior Data Scientist.” Just don’t make up job titles like “Marketing Wizzard” or “Data Manipulator.” They’re not quirky; they’re just unprofessional. 
• LinkedIn profile . We recommend that you include a link to your updated LinkedIn profile since over 77% of hiring managers use the platform when evaluating a candidate. 
• Relevant links. Include links to personal websites or any social media profiles that are relevant to your field. For example, a developer could include a Github profile, while a graphic designer could link their Behance or Driblle account, and so on.
• Date of birth. Unless this is specifically required in the job ad, the hiring manager doesn’t need to know how old you are. It’s not important for their decision-making, and at worst, it might lead to age-based discrimination.
• Unprofessional email address. Your quirky, old high school email address doesn’t belong on your resume. Instead of [email protected] , go for a [email protected] type of address.
• Headshot. (USA, UK or Ireland) Depending on the country where you’re applying, it might even be illegal to include a picture of yourself on your resume . While it’s the norm to include a picture in most of Europe and Asia, always check the regulations for each specific country or industry you’re applying to.

All clear? Good! Now, let’s look at what a great example of a resume's contact information section looks like:

#3. Write a Resume Headline (Summary or Objective)

It's no secret that recruiters spend an average of less than seven seconds on a resume .

When you receive hundreds, if not thousands, of applications daily, it's physically impossible to spend too much time on each.

So, what the hiring managers do to go through resumes more effectively is to skim through each resume and read it in depth only if it piques their interest.

This is where the resume headline comes in.

Placed right next to (or underneath) your contact information, this brief paragraph is the first thing the hiring manager is going to read on your resume.

Now, depending on how far along in your career you are, your resume headline can be either a resume summary or a resume objective.

So, how do you choose between a resume summary and a resume objective? Here’s all you need to know:

Resume Summary

A resume summary, as the name suggests, is a two to three-sentence summary of your career so far. If done right, it shows that you’re a qualified candidate at a glance and gets the hiring manager to give you a chance.

Here’s what your resume summary should include:

• Your job title and years of experience.
• A couple of your greatest professional achievements or core responsibilities.
• Your most relevant skills for the job.

Here’s an example of a well-written resume summary: 

Experienced Java Developer with 5 years of experience in building scalable and efficient applications. Contributed to a major project that enhanced application performance by 25%. Strong background in Spring Framework and microservices. Aiming to apply robust coding skills to develop innovative software solutions at XYZ Tech Solutions.

Unless you’re a recent graduate or amid a career change, we recommend you stick to a resume summary. Otherwise, a resume objective might be a better option for you.

Resume Objective

A resume objective is supposed to express your professional goals and aspirations, academic background, and any relevant skills you may have for the job.

It communicates your motivation for getting into a new field, so it’s the go-to headline for recent graduates and those going through a career change. As with a resume summary, a resume objective should be brief—around two to four sentences long.

So, here’s what it would look like if you’re a student:

Hard-working recent graduate with a B.A. in Graphic Design from New York State University seeking new opportunities. 3+ years of practical experience working with Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, creating illustrations and UX/UI design projects. Looking to grow as a designer and perfect my art at XYZ Design Studio.

Or, on the other hand, if you’re going through a career change, it might look more like this:

IT project manager with 5+ years of experience in software development. Managed a team of developers to create products for several industries, such as FinTech and HR tech. Looking to leverage my experience in managing outsourced products as a Product Owner at Company XYZ.

#4. Prioritize Your Work Experience

The most important part of your resume is your work experience.

This is where you get to sell yourself and show off your previous accomplishments and responsibilities.

If you manage to master this section, you’ll know most of what’s there to know about how to make a resume.

There are plenty of good practices for writing your work experience . But before we dive into all the nits and grits, let's start with the basics.

The standard format for each work experience entry is as follows:

• Job title/position. Your job title goes on top of each work experience entry. When the hiring manager looks at your resume, you want them to know, at a glance, that you have relevant work experience for the job.
• Company name/location/description. Mention the name of the employer and the general location, such as the city and state/country where you worked. In some cases, you may also want to briefly describe the company, like when the organization isn’t particularly well-known.
• Dates employed. Add the approximate timeframe of your employment at each company. You don’t need to give exact dates since the standard format for this is mm/yyyy.
• Achievements and responsibilities. This is the core of each work experience entry. Depending on your field, you want to list either your achievements or responsibilities. List them in bullet points instead of paragraphs, so they’ll be easier to read.

Here’s a real-life example:

Your work experience entries should always be listed in reverse chronological order , starting with your most recent job and working your way back into the past.

Now that you know how to list your experience, we’re going to show you how to write about it in a way that makes you stand out from the competition, starting with: 

Are you a student with no work experience? We’ve got you covered. Check out our guide to writing a resume with no experience here.

Focus on Achievements Whenever Possible

One of the most common resume mistakes is only listing responsibilities in your work experience section.

Here’s the thing—in most cases, the hiring manager knows exactly what your job responsibilities are.

For example, if you’re a sales manager, your responsibilities would be:

• Reach out to potential clients over the phone or email.
• Maintain relationships with existing company clients and upsell relevant products.
• Tracking and reporting on leads in CRM.

Coincidentally, this is also the same list of responsibilities for every sales manager out there. So, 90% of all other resumes probably mention the same thing.

To stand out from the competition, you want to focus on writing achievements in your resume instead. These can be how you helped your previous company grow, reach quarterly quotas, and so on.

Let’s compare how responsibilities hold up next to achievements for the same job:

• Exceeded sales team KPIs by 30%+ for 3 months straight.
• Generated over $24,000 in sales in 1 month.
• Generated leads through cold-calling
• Managed existing company clients

Keep in mind, though, that in some fields, there just aren’t that many achievements you can mention. Let’s say you’re a warehouse worker .

Your day-to-day responsibilities probably include:

• Loading, unloading, and setting up equipment daily.
• Packaging finished products and getting them ready for shipping.
• Assisting in opening and closing the warehouse.

In fields like this, it’s pretty hard to distinguish yourself through achievements, so it’s okay to stick to responsibilities instead. You can still make them shine by following the rest of our advice about listing your work experience.

Keep in mind, though, that in some fields, there aren’t that many achievements you can mention. Let’s say you work in a warehouse. Your day-to-day responsibilities probably involve:

• Loading, unloading and setting up equipment on a daily basis.
• Package finished product and get it ready for shipping.
• Assist in opening and closing the warehouse.

In such fields, it’s pretty hard to distinguish yourself, so it’s totally OK to stick to responsibilities instead.

Tailor Your Resume to the Job

Tailoring is what sets an amazing resume apart from an okay one.

Hiring managers don’t need to know about every single job you’ve ever worked at or every single skill that you have.

They only want to know about your jobs, experiences, or skills that are relevant to the role you’re applying for.

For example, if you’re applying for a job doing Google Ads, you don’t need to talk about your SEO internship from eight years ago.

By focusing your resume on whatever is important for the specific role, you’re a lot more likely to stand out and catch the hiring manager’s attention.

Let’s take a look at an example of a job ad:

As you can see, we’ve highlighted the most important requirements.

To tailor your resume accordingly, you just need to mention how you meet each of these requirements in your resume.

You can highlight your relevant achievements and qualifications in different parts of your resume, such as:

• In your resume summary, where you should recap your years of experience.
• Throughout your work experience section, where you should list achievements and responsibilities that reflect your social media marketing experience.
• In your education section, where you can let the hiring manager know you have the degree that they’re looking for.

Include the Right Amount of Work Experience

If you’ve got over a decade’s worth of work experience, you’re probably wondering whether all of it belongs on your resume. In most cases, you’d end up writing a novel if you listed everything you’ve ever done, and that’s not how long a resume should be .

If you’re new to the job market, on the other hand, you probably don’t have any experience, and you’re wondering what you could even add to this section.

So, here’s how much information your resume should include, depending on your level of experience:

• No experience. If you’re looking for your first job , you won’t have any work experience to fill this section with. So, you can either keep it empty and focus on all the other sections or fill it up with any experience gained in student organizations, extracurricular activities, volunteering, and other projects.
• Entry-level. List all your work experience so far. While some of it won’t be relevant, it can still show the hiring manager that you do have some actual work experience.
• Mid-level. Only mention relevant work experience to the position you’re applying for. There’s no need to waste space on jobs that aren’t related to what you’re after.
• Senior-level. List up to 15 years of relevant work experience, tops. If your most recent experience is as a marketing executive , the hiring manager doesn’t care how you started your career as a junior marketing specialist 23 years ago.

Consider Applicant Tracking System (ATS) Software

Did you know that over 70% of resumes don’t even make it to the hiring manager ?

Most companies these days use ATS to evaluate hundreds of resumes instantaneously and automatically filter out the ones that don’t meet their criteria.

For example, if a resume doesn’t mention a specific skill or isn’t formatted correctly, the ATS will automatically reject it.

Fortunately, there are some easy ways to make an ATS-friendly resume .

Here are a couple of tips to help you get past those pesky robots:

• Stick to one page. Sometimes employers set a limit on how long a resume should be. This means that if your resume is longer than one page, it might get automatically disqualified.
• Incorporate keywords. Tailoring your resume to the job helps a ton with beating the ATS. Just carefully read the job description to find hints for what the ATS will be looking for. Then, whenever you find keywords related to your responsibilities and achievements, make sure to include them in your work experience section.
• Use an active voice. Passive voice is too vague and unclear, so make sure to use active voice as much as possible when describing your previous jobs. (E.g.: “Managed a team of ten people,” instead of “ A team of ten people was managed by me.” )
• Leverage powerful action words. Instead of starting each of your sentences with “was responsible for," make your work experience impactful by using words that can grab attention. Saying that you “spearheaded” or “facilitated” something sounds a lot more impressive than “helped.”

Want to make sure your resume formatting passes the ATS test? Choose one of our tried and tested ATS-friendly resume templates , and you’ll be good to go! 

#5. List Your Education

The next section on your resume is dedicated to your academic qualifications. Let’s start with the basics!

Here’s how you should format the education section on your resume :

• Program Name. Your major and degree type should be listed. (E.g.: “B.A. in Business Administration” )
• University Name. Add the name of the institution. (E.g.: “New York State University” )
• Dates Attended. Use a mm/yyyy format for the dates you attended. (E.g.: “08/2008 - 06/2012” )
• Location. If your university is less well-known, you can also add the location. (E.g.: “Stockholm, Sweden” )
• GPA. Use the appropriate grading system for the country you’re applying to work in. (E.g.: In the USA, it would be “3.9 GPA” )
• Honors. Add any honors and distinctions you’ve been given. (E.g.: Cum Laude, Magna Cum Laude, Summa Cum Laude )
• Achievements. You can mention interesting papers you’ve written, projects you’ve done, or relevant coursework you’ve excelled in.
• Minor. “Minor in Psychology”

Pretty simple, right? Now let’s see what an education section looks like in practice:

This example includes all the necessary information, plus an eye-catching award and relevant classes this candidate has taken.

Resume Education Tips

Now that you know how to list your education on your resume, let’s take this section to the next level.

Just follow these expert tips:

• If you’re making a resume as a student and don’t have any work experience yet, you can list your education section at the beginning of the page instead of work experience.
• You can add your expected graduation date if you’re still pursuing your degree.
• If you already have relevant work experience, just keep this section short and sweet. Recent graduates can expand on their education more and add optional information like projects, classes, academic achievements, etc.
• Always list your degrees in reverse chronological order, starting with your highest degree on top. Your highest and most recent degree is usually enough, so if you have a Master’s degree that’s relevant to the job, there’s no need to mention your earlier degrees.
• Don’t add your high school degree to your resume if you already have a university degree. It doesn’t have as much weight, and you can use the space for something else.
• Only mention your GPA if you had an impressive academic career. Anything below a 3.5 GPA doesn’t need to be on your resume.

Are you in the process of applying for college? Check out our guide to writing a college application resume to wow that admissions officer!

#6. Emphasize Your Know-How in the Skills Section

After your work experience, your skills are the first thing the hiring manager is going to look for. In fact, together, work experience and skills make up 90% of the hiring decision .

So, this is the place where you want to mention all the know-how that makes you the perfect candidate for the job.

There are two types of skills you can include when writing your resume:

• Hard Skills. These are measurable abilities. What you can list here can be anything from coding in Python to knowing how to cook Thai cuisine.
• Soft Skills. Also known as personal skills, these are a mix of communication skills , personal traits, career attributes, and more. They can include leadership, critical thinking, and time management , just to name a few.

Your resume should always cover both hard skills and soft skills . Here’s an example in action:

Now, let’s discuss how you should list your most important skills on your resume.

There are a few essential steps you need to follow:

Always List Hard and Soft Skills Separately

Your resume should be easy and neat to navigate. The hiring manager shouldn’t have to waste time looking for a specific skill because you didn’t separate it into the appropriate subsection.

So, just create separate categories for your hard and soft skills.

Depending on your field, you could customize the name of your “hard skills” subsection to something like “technical skills," “marketing skills," or something else related to your field.

Let’s look at an example of what skills look like on a project manager’s resume :

Methodologies & Tools

• Agile Methodology
• SCRUM Framework
• Waterfall Project Management
• Microsoft Project
• Critical Path Method (CPM)
• Earned Value Management (EVM)
• Risk Management

Soft Skills

• Team Management
• Conflict Resolution
• Negotiation

Tailor Your Skills to the Job

You might have some awesome skills, but the hiring manager only needs to know about the ones that are relevant to the job.

For example, if you’re applying for a job as an accountant, your gourmet chef skills shouldn’t be on your resume.

Look at the job ad and list at least two to three essential skills you have that are required for the role. Remember—there’s no need to list every skill you have here; just keep it relevant.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree or higher in Graphic Design or a related field.
• Tech-savvy, with some background in CMS systems such as WordPress.
• Thrives in a stressful environment and juggles multiple tasks and deadlines.
• Strong organizational and time management skills.
• Excellent communication skills.
• Self-reliant, with the ability to manage their own work.
• A can-do attitude and an outside-the-box thinker.
• Proficient in Adobe Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, Keynote, and Pages.
• Basic understanding of Office software such as Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook.

So, the must-have hard skills here are Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, Keynote, and Pages. Other good computer skills to have are WordPress or similar CMS systems.

While you can also mention Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook, it’s pretty much assumed that you know how to use them since they’re required for most office jobs.

List Hard Skills with Experience Levels

For each hard skill you list on your resume, you should also mention your proficiency level. This tells employers what they can expect from you and how much training you might need.

• Beginner. You have some experience with the skill, whether it’s from some entry-level practice or classroom education.
• Intermediate. You’ve used the skill in a work environment with good understanding.
• Advanced. You’re the go-to person for this skill in your office. You can coach other employees, and you understand the skill at a high level.
• Expert. You’ve applied this skill to more than a handful of different projects and organizations. You’re the go-to person for advice about the skill, not just in your office but even amongst some of the best professionals in your field.

Just make sure to never lie about your actual skill level. Even if you get the job, once you need those skills you exaggerated, it will be pretty awkward for both you and your employer.

Include Transferable Skills

These are the types of skills that are useful for almost any job out there.

Transferable skills can be both soft skills (e.g.: teamwork, creativity, problem-solving skills, and others) and hard skills (MS Office Suite, HTML, writing, etc.)

Whatever job you’re applying to, chances are you have transferable skills from your experience that can come in handy one way or another. So, feel free to include them, even if they’re not specifically required for the position.

Not sure which skills to mention on your resume for your specific field? Check out our list of 101+ essential skills for inspiration!

#7. Leverage Optional Resume Sections

The sections we’ve covered so far are must-haves for any resume. They’re the bread-and-butter for any job application, and if you get them right, you’ll land any job you apply to.

But if you have some leftover space, there are a few optional sections you can choose from to give your resume a boost!

Are you bi-lingual? Or even better  – multi-lingual? You should always mention that on your resume!

Even if the position doesn’t require you to know a specific language, it can still come in handy at some point. At the end of the day, it’s always better to know more languages than less.

To list languages in your resume , just write them down and assign them the appropriate level:

• Intermediate

You can also use the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFRL) or the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) proficiency scales.

As a given, you should never lie about your language skills. You never know—your interviewer might turn out to be fluent in the language or even be a native speaker!

Hobbies and Interests

If you want to spice up your resume, hobbies and interests could be just what you need.

While this section isn’t a game-changer, it can help the hiring manager see who you are as an individual.

For example, if you listed “teamwork” as one of your skills, hobbies like team sports can back up your claim.

And who knows? Maybe you and your interviewer have some hobbies or interests in common!

Volunteering Experience

If you’re the type of person who devotes their free time to helping others while expecting nothing in return, chances are that you’re the type of employee who’s in it for more than just the money. 

Seeing volunteer experience on your resume tells hiring managers that you’re a loyal employee who’s after something meaningful.

Several studies show that listing your volunteer experience can boost your chances of getting hired, especially if you have little to no work experience.

Certifications

Hiring managers love candidates who invest in themselves, and that’s exactly what they see when you list certifications on your resume .

If you value continuous learning and strive to expand your skill set, that’s always a plus.

Certifications can also show employers how much expertise you have.

For example, if you’re a Microsoft Cloud Engineer and you specialize in Microsoft Technologies, you should definitely include all essential certifications on your resume, such as the Azure Solutions Architect Expert one.

Awards and Recognitions

There’s no harm in showing off a little on your resume. After all, you want to be a candidate that shines above the rest.

So, if you’ve received any awards or recognitions that make you stand out in your field, make sure to add them.

For example, if you’ve been recognized for your contributions to data science or received a hard-to-come-by scholarship , mention it in your resume. Just keep your entries here relevant to the field you’re applying to.

Publications

Whether you’re a freelance writer or a distinguished academic, publications are always impressive.

If you have any published works (online or in an academic journal), you can add them to your resume. Just make sure to include a link so the hiring manager knows where to check your work!

Are you looking for a career in academia? Check out our guide to writing the perfect academic CV to get started!

Working on side projects can show off your passion for your field. Whether they’re university class projects or part-time entrepreneurial endeavors, they’re relevant.

For example, if you worked on a mock software product as part of a university competition, it shows you went through every step of product creation, from ideation to creating a marketing strategy.

This project also shows off your organizational skills , and if you mention it in your resume, you stand a better chance of landing the job you had your sights set on.

But projects can also be personal, not academic. For example, you might manage an Etsy store where you sell hand-made arts and crafts to customers online. This is a great opportunity to highlight your creativity, management, and customer service skills .

Overall, hiring managers love employees who do cool work in their free time, so projects are always a great section to add to your resume.

Looking to kickstart your career? Check out our guide on how to get an internship for useful tips and real-life examples!

Extracurricular Activities

Every college freshman knows that extracurricular experience can make a difference in their application.

Especially if you don’t have a lot of experience outside of school, extracurricular activities are a great way to show potential employers your skills and give them insight into you as a person. Different clubs and after-school projects can help you gain real-life skills and considerably increase your chances of landing your first job after college.

For example, joining a student government organization can hone your leadership skills and teach you how to work as part of a team.

For example, if you’re part of a student government or public speaking club, these activities can help you hone your leadership and presentation skills.

11+ Expert Resume Tips

You’ve got the gist of how to make a resume. Now, it’s time to make it really stand out from the crowd!

Follow these exclusive resume tips to take your resume game to the next level:

• Match the professional title underneath your name to the job title of the position you’re applying for. Hiring managers often hire for several roles at once, so giving them this cue about what role you’re after helps things go smoother.
• Mention any promotions from your previous jobs. Use the work experience entries for them to focus on the achievements that helped you earn them.
• Describe your achievements using Laszlo Bock’s formula : accomplished X as measured by Y by doing Z . This way, your work experience can go the extra mile and show the hiring manager what you can bring to the table.
• Always list your achievements and responsibilities in concise bullet points. This makes your resume more reader-friendly, and it’s more likely that the hiring manager will see your impressive achievements at a glance.
• Don’t use personal pronouns like “I” or “me,” and don’t refer to yourself by name. Stick to a slightly altered third person, like “managed data integrity at XYZ Inc.” instead of “he managed data integrity at XYZ Inc.”
• Name your resume sections correctly, or it might get rejected by the ATS. Swapping out quirky names like “career history” or “expertise” for “work experience” and "skills" makes it easier for the hiring manager to find what they’re looking for, too.
• Prioritize important keywords instead of adding all of them. Make sure the relevant skills, qualifications, and experiences you add all make sense in context, too. Your goal is to get past the ATS and impress the hiring manager.
• Focus on transferable skills if you don’t have a lot of relevant work experience. Any extracurricular activities or personal projects can help you stand out here.
• Add a strategic pop of color to headings, bullet points, or key elements you want to highlight. It can help your resume stand out, but don’t overdo it—you want the information to be more impressive than the color palette.
• Don’t include the line “references available upon request.” Hiring managers already know they can request a list of references from you, so there’s no need to waste valuable space on it.
• Make sure your resume is optimized for mobile viewing. Most hiring managers use their mobile phones as often as desktop computers, so save your resume to a PDF file and make sure your formatting stays intact across any device.
• Rename the resume file you plan to send so it includes your name and the name of the position you’re applying for. It’s a small detail that can turn into a crucial mistake if you forget it.
• Read your resume out loud when you’re done. This is a great way to catch awkward phrases or spelling mistakes you might have missed otherwise.
• Use a tool like DocSend to track your resume. You’ll get a notification any time someone opens your resume, and you can see how long they spend reading it.

FREE Resume Checklist

Are you already done with your resume? Let’s see how it holds up!

Go through our checklist for perfecting your resume and see where you stand!

If you missed some points, just go through your resume one more time and perfect it.

And if you ☑’d everything—congrats! You’ve learned all there is to know about writing a resume, and you’re good to go with your job search.

Need to write a CV instead of a resume? Check out our step-by-step guide on how to write a CV with dozens of examples!

9 Resume Templates for Different Industries

Looking to create an effective resume without dealing with the formatting hassle? Just choose one of the templates below.

#1. Traditional Resume Template

Good for traditional industries like finance, banking, law, and manufacturing.

#2. Modern Resume Template

Good for both contemporary and forward-looking industries, including entrepreneurship, medical technology, and engineering.

#3. Creative Resume Template

Good for creative industries, including entertainment, design, and architecture. 

#4. Minimalistic Resume Template

Good for experienced professionals in basically any industry who want to let their achievements do the talking. 

#5. IT Resume Template

Good for any IT-related profession like software development, cyber security, and DevOps engineering.

#6. Tech Resume Template

Good for the tech industry and everything it encompasses.

#7. College Resume Template

Good for college students and recent graduates alike.

#8. General Resume Template

Good for multiple industries, including HR, education, and customer service.

#9. Executive Resume Template

Good for senior professionals across different industries, including hospitality, marketing, and logistics.

17+ Resumes for Different Jobs

Knowing how to write a resume is one thing, but making a resume that stands out is something entirely different. Without inspiration, even top career experts might stumble on a roadblock or two.

Check out the following effective resume examples for specific jobs to get a better sense of what a good resume looks like:

#1. Nurse Practitioner Resume Example

Check out our full guide to writing a nurse resume here.

#2. Data Scientist Resume Example

Check out our full guide to writing a data scientist resume here.

#3. Business Analyst Resume Example

Check out our full guide to writing a business analyst resume here.

#4. Digital Marketing Resume Example

Check out our full guide to writing a digital marketing resume here.

#5. Software Engineer Resume Example

Check out our full guide to writing a software engineer resume here.

#6. Construction Project Manager Resume Example

Check out our full guide to writing a construction project manager resume here.

#7. Customer Service Resume Example

Check out our full guide to writing a customer service resume here.

#8. High School Resume Example

Check out our full guide to writing a high school resume here.

#9. Student Resume Example

Check out our full guide to writing a student resume here.

#10. Server Resume Example

Check out our full guide to writing a server resume here.

#11. Actor Resume Example

Check out our full guide to writing an actor resume here.

#12. Web Developer Resume Example

Check out our full guide to writing a web developer resume here.

#13. Engineering Resume Example

Check out our full guide to writing an engineering resume here.

#14. Computer Science Resume Example

Check out our full guide to writing a computer science resume here.

#15. Architect Resume Example 

Check out our full guide to writing a data analyst resume here.

#17. Remote Job Resume Example

Check out our full guide to writing a remote job resume here.

#18. Sales Associate Resume Example

Check out our full guide to writing a sales associate resume here.

#19. Receptionist Resume Example

Check out our full guide to writing a receptionist resume here.

Want to see more examples? Check out our compilation of 80+ resume examples for different fields .

• Administrative Assistant Resume
• Bartender Resume
• DevOps Engineer Resume
• Executive Assistant Resume
• Flight Attendant Resume
• Graphic Designer Resume
• Paralegal Resume
• Pharmacist Resume
• Recruiter Resume
• Supervisor Resume

Next Steps After Your Resume

Now that we’ve covered everything you need to know about how to make a resume, it’s time to talk about the rest of your job application.

After all, your resume is only the first step in your job search. To land the job you deserve, you also need to write a captivating cover letter and ace that upcoming interview. Here’s how:

#1. How to Write a Convincing Cover Letter

The companion piece to every resume is the cover letter.

Most job-seekers flinch when they hear that they have to write a cover letter. What do you even mention in a cover letter, anyway? If you were good at writing cover letters, you’d be applying for a job as a writer !

In reality, though, writing a cover letter is very simple once you know its purpose.

Think of your cover letter as a direct message to the hiring manager. It’s your chance to briefly explain why you’re such an awesome fit for the position. And with a few cover letter tips to point you in the right direction, you’ll write the perfect cover letter for your job application.

Just follow this structure:

• Add the contact details. Include the same contact information as on your resume, plus additional contact details for the hiring manager, including their name, job title, the company’s name, and location.
• Introduce yourself. Start your cover letter by mentioning who you are, what your work experience is, and why you’re interested in the position. Mention a standout achievement or two, relevant skills, and what you’d like to do for the company you’re applying for.
• Explain why you’d excel at the job. Find the requirements in the job ad that you meet, and elaborate on how you fulfill the most important ones. Research the company so you know what you like about it, and mention it in your cover letter. Make sure to convey your enthusiasm for the job and confidence that you’ll be a great fit for their team.
• Wrap it up politely. Conclude your cover letter by recapping your key selling points and thanking the hiring manager for their time. Then add a call to action, such as “Please don’t hesitate to reach out to me at the provided phone number so that we can discuss my application in greater detail.” Then, add a closing line and follow it with your full name.

Sounds easy, right? Here’s a real-life example to drive the point home:

Do you need more help perfecting your cover letter? Learn what the most common cover letter mistakes are and check out cover letter examples for all professions here.

#2. How to Ace Your Next Interview

Once you’ve perfected both your resume and cover letter, there’s only one thing left.

It’s time for the final step—the dreaded job interview.

Whether you’re an extrovert or an introvert, you probably hate the interviewing process. No matter how experienced you are, it can be nerve-wracking. Sitting there while someone’s prodding into your past experiences and judging you isn’t fun.

But did you know that most interviewers ask the same questions?

That’s right—all you have to do is learn how to answer some of the most common interview questions, and you’ll be an interview away from landing your dream job!

Just check out our complete guide to the 35+ Job Interview Questions and Answers and learn how to ace your next interview.

FAQs on How to Make a Resume

Do you still have some questions about making a resume? Check out the answers to the most frequently asked questions below!

#1. What does a good resume look like in 2024?

For your resume to look good in 2024, make sure it’s organized and clean and isn’t longer than one page.

Be sure to include information that adds value to your application—leave out the focus on your relevant work experience and skills that you can back up, and list as many achievements as possible. 

If you’re using a resume template, choose one based on your industry. Conservative industries like law, banking, and business require more traditional resume templates. But if you’re going for an industry like design, architecture, or marketing, you can go for a creative resume template . 

Remote work is also big in 2024, so if that’s what you’re after, tailor your resume to match the job you want.

#2. How do you make a resume in Word?

The best way to create a resume in Word is to use a pre-designed Microsoft Word template. To access them, you should: 

• Open MS Word
• Click “file” from the menu bar 
• Select “new”
• Type “resume templates” in the search bar 

That said, Word resume templates are generic, hard to personalize, and overall not very stylish.

Want a resume that looks good and is extremely easy to make? Check out resume templates to get started!

#3. How do I write a resume for my first job?

If you’re writing your first-ever resume for an entry-level position, the hiring manager won’t expect you to have any work experience.

However, you can make up for your lack of experience with your skills and academic achievements.

For example, you can take advantage of extracurricular activities, internships, volunteering experiences, and other non-professional experiences. You can use them to highlight the skills you’ve gained and what you’ve achieved so far.

So, your first job resume should have a resume objective, emphasize your education, and replace your work experience with any internships, volunteering, independent projects, or other experiences.

#4. How to make a resume on Google Docs?

You can make a resume on Google Docs by choosing one of their templates and filling it in on the go.

All you have to do is go to your Google Drive’s template gallery, choose your preferred template, fill in your information, and your Google Docs resume is ready to go! 

That said, Google Docs templates aren’t the most user-friendly choice. You don’t have much flexibility with the layout and formatting isn’t that easy. For example, you tweak a section to the slightest, and the whole resume becomes a mess.

If you want an easier option, check out our resume builder !

#5. What kind of resume do employers prefer?

Typically, employers prefer one-page-long resumes that follow the reverse chronological format. 

Hiring managers receive hundreds of resumes every day, so they don't have the time to read three-page resumes. Try one of our one-page resume templates so you don’t go over the recommended resume length.

Meanwhile, the reverse-chronological format is the most popular because it draws attention to your most recent jobs and professional achievements, which is the #1 most important thing hiring managers look at when evaluating a resume.

#6. How many jobs should you put on your resume? 

You should only include relevant job positions on your resume.

This means that your work experience section should be tailored to the job you are applying for. If you’ve worked five different jobs and they can all add value to your current application, then you should include all five. 

If, on the other hand, you’re applying for, say, a customer service position and some of your past jobs don’t have anything to do with customer service, you should skip them.

#7. Should I put my address on my resume? 

You can put your location (city, state, or country) on your resume, but you don’t need to put your entire physical address.

Putting a physical address on a resume was the norm back when companies would contact you via mail. In today’s world, everyone communicates via email, which is why adding a correct and professional email address to your contact information section is far more important than putting your physical address. 

So, just include your location or-–if you’re a remote worker—specify you prefer to work remotely by writing “working remotely from [location].”

#8. What information should I leave out of my resume?

As a general rule, you shouldn’t include your birthday or your headshot on your resume. This norm varies from country to country but it applies to the USA, Canada, and UK.

If you have plenty of achievements to list under your work experience, then you can leave your basic work responsibilities out of your resume. 

In your education section, you should only include your highest and most recent degree. So, if you hold a Ph.D., you can list that and your Master’s degree and leave your Bachelor’s degree and high school diploma out.

Finally, leave out any skills that aren’t relevant to the job you’re applying for.

#9. Is a resume a CV?

Depending on where you are, a CV (Curriculum Vitae) and a resume might be completely different things.

In most of the world, though, including Europe and Asia, they are used interchangeably for the same document. Both CVs and resumes are one to two pages long, and list skills and experiences relevant to the position you’re applying for.

Sometimes more detailed resumes that go over one page are referred to as CVs. These are typically only used by senior professionals, executives, CEOs, etc.

In the USA, however, a CV is a completely different document. Typically, CVs are detailed and comprehensive documents that highlight your entire academic and professional history. They’re often used for academic, scientific, or research positions, which is why this type of CV can also be referred to as an academic CV.

You can create your CV using one of our CV templates !

#10. Should I write my own resume?

Yes, you should always write your own resume.

Your resume is your opportunity to show the hiring manager your communication, writing, and presentation skills . Employers also evaluate you based on how effectively you can convey information about yourself, and there’s no one that can represent you better than yourself.

Writing your own resume lets you introduce yourself authentically. You have the best understanding of your skills and experiences, and you can personalize them to make your resume stand out.

And, as a bonus, the experience of writing your resume yourself can be reflective and insightful, so it might help you understand your professional journey and career goals better.

#11. Can a resume be two pages?

Generally, we strongly recommend that your resume stick to one page.

Hiring managers go through hundreds of resumes every day, and keeping your resume to one page increases the odds that they’ll see your qualifications faster.

In some cases, like when you have a lot of relevant experience, your resume can go over two pages. But this exception is reserved for senior professionals with over a decade of relevant experience and tons of skills and achievements that simply can’t fit on one page.

#12. Is a simple resume okay?

Absolutely, a simple resume is often more than okay—it's preferable.

Before your resume even gets to the hiring manager, a complicated layout could get it rejected by the applicant tracking system (ATS). A simple resume template can help get your application straight to the hiring manager.

A clean layout can also make sure that your resume is easily readable and looks professional. This can focus the hiring manager's attention on your work experience and skills without excessive clutter or flashy colors to distract them.

Key Takeaways

And that’s a wrap!

If you’ve followed all of our advice until now, congrats! You’re probably an expert on how to make a resume.

To recap, let’s go through some of the most important lessons we’ve learned so far...

• Use the right resume builder to make the process as smooth as possible. You don’t want to mess around with formatting for hours before even starting to work on your resume!
• Focus on your achievements over responsibilities. This can help you stand out from all the other applicants, especially if you back your claims up with data.
• Include all the must-have sections, like the resume summary, work experience, education, and skills. Then leverage optional sections if you have leftover space.
• Tailor your resume for the job you’re applying for. Everything listed on your resume should be relevant to the specific job you’re applying for, and you should write a new resume for every new job application.
• Take the time to perfect your cover letter. It’s just as important as your resume, so make sure you pay as much attention to it!

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Your Step-by-Step Guide to Making the Perfect Resume (With Examples!)

Your resume is arguably the most valuable piece of paper for your career. But this document can be daunting for many. Maybe you’re not sure how to fit in all your information onto one page. Maybe you’re not sure about the right way to format and write your resume. Maybe you don’t even know what the heck a resume is!

Whatever your concern, we’ll break down everything you need to know about making the perfect resume, from scratch.

What Is a Resume?

What are employers looking for in a resume.

• Pick Your Format
• Start With Your Basic Information
• Add in Your Work Experience
• Consider Including Volunteer Work or Other Experience
• Don’t Forget Your Education
• Top It Off With Some Skills and Interests
• Write a Resume Summary Statement (if Relevant)
• Tailor It to the Job (and the ATS)
• Edit and Refine It

What Are Some Examples of a Good Resume?

A resume is a summary of your career, whether yours is just getting started or has been going on for years. Coming in at around one page in length (two only under specific circumstances), it showcases the jobs you’ve held and currently hold, the responsibilities you’ve taken on, the skills you’ve developed, and the qualities you bring to the table as an employee. Together, those things make it super easy for any hiring manager to see your qualifications and fit for a role.

For all the work you may put into writing one, hiring managers actually spend very little time—mere seconds in many cases—looking at your resume. But despite this sad fact, it’s safe to say that creating a great resume (rather than hastily throwing one together) still matters.

“If you miss the mark, your resume may never be read. Even worse, you might be removed from the applicant pool by a computer before a human even knows you exist,” says Muse career coach Heather Yurovsky , founder of Shatter & Shine. So you want to get it right because, as she explains, isn’t the goal to “spend less time looking for a job and more time in a role you love?”

You might be wondering if you can lean on your LinkedIn profile instead of writing a resume. The answer, sadly, is no. Most hiring managers still expect you to submit a resume, even if they also look at your LinkedIn. Even if you don’t need a resume for a job you’re applying for now, you’re going to need one at some point in your career—they’re not anywhere close to going out of style. So it’s best to always have one at the ready should an opportunity pop up.

And although LinkedIn has plenty of benefits, a resume has one clear advantage: While your LinkedIn is usually a broader picture of your career trajectory, your resume gives you the opportunity to tailor your career story to a specific role or company (more on that later).

Oh, and you’ve probably heard of something called a CV? It’s slightly different from a resume , and usually more common with academics and job seekers outside the U.S.

Hiring managers look for three things on your resume, “What did you do? Why did you do it? And what was the result?” says Muse career coach Martin McGovern , owner of Career Therapy. “If you can answer all three of these questions in...your resume bullet points, you’re going to be on the right track.”

Clear, easy-to-understand language is key. “The truth is that most resumes make no sense. They are stuffed with jargon, they are too technical, and they are filled with redundancies. Try to read a resume that isn’t yours and you will quickly realize that it feels like an alien wrote it,” McGovern adds. Put yourself in the shoes of a recruiter who has no idea how your role works—how can you make your resume accessible to them?

The hiring manager also cares about more than just you and you alone—they care about you in relation to them. “Hiring managers want to see if a candidate matches the requirements” of the role they’re hiring for, Yurovsky explains. “Your resume should paint this picture so the hiring manager not only knows what day-to-day responsibilities you can handle, but why you, above other[s], bring value to their organization.”

How Do You Write a Resume?

Whether you’re someone who’s never written a resume in your life, or you need a nice, thorough refresher on the process of creating one, follow these steps to go from a blank page to a complete—and dare I say beautiful—document.

Related: This Free Worksheet Makes It Easy to Create (or Update) Your Resume

1. Pick Your Format

Before you start typing one single thing, you have to decide what you want the overall resume to look like.

Resume builders can be helpful for this step—they’ll take all your basic information and organize it for you, eliminating some of the legwork. You can also use a pre-made outline, such as one of these free Google Docs templates .

But it’s often safest to start with a clean slate all on your own and eventually upgrade to a more advanced layout. (If you'd still like a place to write all the relevant information before you get started, check out our resume outline .) This allows you to course correct, edit and re-edit, and choose a resume format that best fits your particular situation (after all, not everyone has a career trajectory that’s easy to compartmentalize).

In general, you’re most likely to cover and/or include sections on the following:

• Your work experience
• Your non-work experience, including professional organizations, community involvement, or side projects
• Your education and certifications
• Your skills (specifically hard skills) and interests

So how do you format and organize all of that information?

By far the most common (and safest, if you’re not sure which route to take) option is reverse chronological order . This means you organize your experiences from most recent to least recent. So your work experiences would go above your education, and your current role would go above previous roles you’ve held. This of course has its exceptions—maybe you went back to grad school between jobs, or your most recent role is irrelevant to the job you’re applying for. So the whole page may not be exactly in reverse chronological order depending on your situation. It’s just a guideline.

There’s also something called a functional or skills-based resume . This is used pretty rarely, mainly with career changers and those with limited or complicated work histories. It gets its name because it’s primarily about listing your skills rather than experiences, and showcases them above your work history and education.

You can also opt for a combination resume , which is a mix between a reverse chronological resume and skills-based resume. It highlights your skills at the top, but allows just as much room below to cover your job and school experience.

Use caution when choosing these two formats: “Combo and skills-based [resumes] can be hard to follow, because [they force] the reader to hunt for connections between your skills and experience, and [don’t] provide the full context of your work,” says Muse Career Coach Angela Smith , founder of Loft Consulting. “I’ve also heard a lot of recruiters say that they automatically discount skill-based resumes because they feel the candidate is trying to hide something. I don’t necessarily believe that, but I think it’s important for job-seekers to know that perception is out there.”

2. Start With Your Basic Information

Your contact information should always go at the top of your resume. In this header you’ll want to include anything that could be helpful for a recruiter to get in touch with you. Usually, this means adding in:

• Your full name (preferably the name you use across the web)
• Your phone number
• Your personal email address

You might also choose to include other basic information, such as your LinkedIn or personal website URL, your GitHub (for technical roles), your social media profiles (if relevant to the job), or your address. If you’re looking to move for a job, you may choose to leave out your address or write “open to relocating” to better your chances of getting an interview.

The key is to make this part as clear as possible. If a hiring manager can’t reach you, there’s no point in perfecting the rest of your resume.

3. Add in Your Work Experience

This section will most likely be the bulk of your resume. Even if you’re changing careers, employers still want to see where you’ve worked, what you’ve done, and the impact of that work to get a sense of your background and expertise.

Your “Work Experience” might be one entire category, or you might choose to break it up into “Relevant Experience” and “Additional Experience” to highlight the jobs that are most important for hiring managers to focus on. Either way, you’ll almost always want to have your most recent experience at the top and your older experience down below.

Within your work experience, you’ll want to include each official job title, the company (and possibly its location), and the years you worked there. Below that, you’ll add in two to four bullet points explaining what you did in that job, the skills you built and exercised, the tools you used, and the results of what you did. If you accomplished a lot during your time there, focus on the responsibilities that made the most impact or you’re the most proud of, as well as the ones that best align you with the job you’re applying for (more on that in the following sections). It’s key here to list, if relevant, quantitative as well as qualitative accomplishments.

For example, you might write:

Associate Accountant, Finances and Co., Ann Arbor, MI September 2017 – Present

• Manage billing and invoicing for more than 50 clients, ensuring the deadlines and needs of our enterprise partners, including Big Company and Super Star Org, are met
• Collaborate closely with sales, account management, and project management teams on project setup, maintenance, and invoice management
• Assist in the streamlining of invoicing guidelines and procedures through documentation and the implementation of new software, resulting in an average two-week decrease in total time spent per client

Your resume bullets should be in past tense if you’re referring to past jobs and present tense if you’re talking about your current roles. In addition, your bullets should always start with a strong action verb that best describes what you did. And if you have examples of your work, consider hyperlinking them here as well.

If you have a ton of experience and this category is starting to run long (read: over one page), consider kicking out your oldest jobs unless they’re super relevant to the job you’re applying for, or extra impressive for your field.

Not sure where to start? “It’s helpful to do a brain dump and create a document that has everything and anything you consider as experience or an achievement,” says Yurovsky. From there, she explains, you can start to whittle down what is and isn’t important. And you can refer to this document later if you ever decide to update your resume for a specific role.

Need more specific advice on listing your work experience on your resume? Check out these additional resources:

• When you’ve held multiple jobs at the same company: 2 Jobs, 1 Company: How to Show Multiple Positions on Your Resume
• When you’re not sure what your accomplishments are or how to explain them: Resume Revamp: How to Turn Your Duties Into Accomplishments
• When you want to spruce up a boring or insignificant job: How to Make Your Most Boring Jobs Sound More Interesting on Your Resume
• When you’re considering fudging a job title: The Answer to “Can I Change My Job Title on My Resume to Make It More Accurate?”
• When you’ve had a bunch of short-term gigs: How to List Temporary Jobs on Your Resume

4. Consider Including Volunteer Work or Other Experience

Anything you’ve done that’s not work experience—your side gig, volunteer work, special projects—can be hosted under clearly-labeled sections (“Volunteer Experience” or “Activities,” for example). Depending on how robust your work experience is, these things may be worth including, particularly if they’ve helped you level up your skill set or better align you with your dream job. Plus, they make you look that much more well-rounded, passionate, and hardworking.

If you’re a recent grad, you might also build out a section for on-campus activities, such as clubs, organizations, or leadership experience. This can be a great supplement if you’re lacking in the jobs department. You can frame these just as you would professional jobs—including your title, the organization’s name, and bullets describing what your role was and what you accomplished.

Read More: This Is Exactly How to List Volunteer Work on Your Resume

5. Don’t Forget Your Education

If you’re still in school or just graduated, your education can go at the top of your resume, but for pretty much everyone else, this goes near the bottom. Most people include their school, graduation year (for folks less up to about a decade out of school), major, and degree. Brand-new grads might also write in their GPA, honors and awards, study abroad, thesis, or other notable achievements. But keep this section super simple, as you don’t want it to take up too much space over your work experience.

It’s possible you have unique education experience, such as taking an online course or certification. If you did this specifically as a way to boost yourself within your industry, definitely include it. Again, list everything more or less reverse chronologically—so a grad school degree would go above an undergrad degree, and a more recent relevant online course would go above that.

Learn more about the ins and outs of listing your education on your resume:

• How to (and How Not to) List Education on Your Resume
• How to List Online Courses on Your Resume the Right Way (Because Yes, There Is a Wrong Way)

6. Top It Off With Some Skills and Interests

The skills section of a resume gets a bad rap, but it’s just as important as the rest of the stuff you include. It’s a quick list a recruiter can scan to see if your skill set aligns with what they’re hiring for. And it’s super ATS-friendly (ATS stands for “applicant tracking system,” the robot that in some cases reads your resume before a human does) because it allows you to add in keywords the machine is scanning for.

Usually this section goes at the bottom of your resume, but in special cases—such as a skills-based resume or when someone’s switching fields—you may place it further up.

What exactly do you throw in here? You’ll want to list any hard skills and applications you’re familiar with (Photoshop, SEO, JavaScript, to name a few examples), and, if relevant, your level of expertise. Avoid including soft skills here, like time management or public speaking—save those for your bullet points instead.

Be strategic when filling in your skills. Don’t list things you actually couldn’t do at a high competence level (I’m looking at those of you who say you’re “great” at Excel), and maybe nix skills that are completely irrelevant to the job you want. For example, you may not even need to include Excel if you’re applying for say, a design position, unless it’s listed as a job requirement.

Maybe you’re thinking, I’m a really good volleyball player, but that’s not a “skill,” right? No, it’s not, but it is a hobby. Adding in a hobby section at the bottom of your resume is underrated, and frequently a smart choice. It can be a great conversation starter with a hiring manager, and it can show that you’re a good culture fit—or a culture add—for the company. Also, it’s just a nice way to add in some of your personality. So tack on a bullet point listing out some of your interests, such as hiking, rowing, or crafting (no more than five to seven work-appropriate verbs), and you’re all set here.

7. Write a Resume Summary Statement (if Relevant)

You may have heard of a resume summary statement . They’re not super common, but they can be useful to include near the top of your resume if you’re looking to add clarity or context to your resume. If you’re a career changer, you might find a summary statement helpful in explaining your leap and tying your experience to your new path. Or if you’re a more experienced professional, you can use a summary statement to highlight a theme that brings your career trajectory together.

Overall, you probably won’t need a summary statement if your career is pretty linear and your bullet points do a great job of emphasizing what you have to offer in terms of skills and experience. But if you think it makes sense to include one, “Take the time to think about what the person reading your summary wants to know before you write it,” says McGovern. “Good summaries explain why you do what you do and how it can help. For instance: Merging a background in ABC, I help companies improve XYZ through 123. Summaries shouldn’t be any more complicated than that.”

So, taking McGovern’s example, you might say:

Merging a background in social media marketing and PR with seven years in the consumer tech space, I help companies improve their internal and external communication and brand awareness through data-driven, quality content and strategies that align with the modern trends of the space.

Yurovsky adds that “you don’t want your summary statement to be a dense paragraph with too much information. You want it to be easy to read, concise, and memorable. Almost like a tagline.”

Read More: 3 Resume Summary Examples That’ll Make Writing Your Own Easier

8. Tailor It to the Job (and the ATS)

Once you have your resume written out—you’ve broken down your work experience, tagged on some activities and additional experiences, and listed out your skills—it’s important to go back to the job description (or multiple job descriptions, if you’re applying to several similar jobs) and make sure that what your resume says matches up with the kind of candidate the employers are looking for. In other words, tailor it .

Let’s explain further. You’ll want to begin by tackling the ATS . This means combing the job description to see if individual words and phrases line up. What skills are they asking for, and have you listed them (so long as you actually have them)? What words are they using to describe their ideal hire, and do you use similar language in your resume?

Next, take a bird’s-eye view. If you were the hiring manager for the role, where on your resume would your eyes be drawn to? And what would you be looking for? Whatever you think will be most important for the recruiter, make sure it’s near the top of your resume, or otherwise emphasized.

Finally, dig into the role and responsibilities of the job. Does your resume reflect similar experience? If not, is there a way you can spin it so that it’s clear you’re capable of doing the job (and doing it well)?

These articles can help you if the word “tailoring” makes you start to sweat:

• What It Really Means to “Tailor Your Resume”
• Your Guide to Making Unrelated Experience Look Relevant on Your Resume
• A Cool Trick: How to Spin 1 Resume Bullet 5 Different Ways

9. Edit and Refine It

Please, please don’t just write your resume and shoot it out without giving it a second glance. Hiring managers may not spend hours browsing it, but if there’s one thing that sticks out more than anything else it’s a glaring typo.

The best approach? Write a rough draft, then leave and come back to it later with fresh eyes to give it an edit.

Cover the basics: Is your contact information correct and updated? Are you using the right verb tenses? Does everything look consistent and accurate in terms of spelling and grammar?

Then do some cutting if your resume’s quite long. It’s no longer a hard-and-fast rule that all resumes must be only one page—but consider it a smart guideline for most applicants, especially if you've got less than 10 years work experience. The exception is if you’re very senior or very established in your career; in this scenario, a two-page resume isn’t completely out of the question. Everyone else, read this article for advice on how to cut your resume down.

Formatting-wise, it’s key to consider a couple things. First, what font are you using , and is it legible (for a human and a robot)? When in doubt, go with one of these simple, but sleek, options: Arial, Arial Narrow, Calibri, Cambria, Garamond, or Helvetica.

Second, are you going to save it as a Word document or PDF ? Neither option is wrong, although a PDF helps ensure that your formatting is maintained, no matter what type of computer the hiring manager uses to open the document.

Third, is your resume formatted in a way that it’s skimmable? If it’s feeling crowded or overrun with words, read this: 12 Tiny Changes That Make Your Resume Easy for Recruiters to Skim .

Once you’ve given it a few good looks, it may be worth sending it to a friend or colleague (or even a career coach ) to get a second opinion. Don’t just have them edit it for spelling and grammar—they should dig into your bullets and offer feedback on whether or not your resume is showing you in the best possible light (it’s smart to also send them the job description for something to compare it to).

Here’s the thing: Your resume won’t ever look exactly like someone else’s, nor should it. How you choose to format it, organize your information, and talk about specific experiences depends not just on your career path, but on your field, the job you’re applying for, the company that job is at, and more.

So there isn’t a universal way to do a resume. But there are common themes. To give you some context as to how yours might turn out, here are three examples of different kinds of resumes.

The Most Popular: A Reverse Chronological Resume

As previously mentioned, a reverse chronological resume is preferred by many coaches and HR experts, mainly because it’s super readable. When everything’s in a clear order, it’s easy to skim and even easier to draw lines between experiences.

Who it’s good for: Just about everyone—from students applying to internships all the way up to senior-level executives (with an optional resume summary statement)

Download an Example Chronological Resume for a Software Engineer

The Unorthodox Route: A Functional or Skills-Based Resume

Rather than listing out your experience in reverse chronological order, a functional or skills-based resume has bullet points that reflect how each of your skills is demonstrated by the work you’ve done over the course of your career. At the bottom, you’ll include everything else, such as your education, job history, professional achievements, community involvement, and other technical skills. This is a good option if you have a somewhat all-over-the-place work history and want to tie everything together neatly.

Who it’s good for: Career changers whose work experiences may not appear to be relevant and people with an abundance of temporary jobs or gaps in their work histories.

Download an Example Functional Resume for a Project Manager

The Creative Angle: An Infographic Resume or Resume Website

This resume type is characterized by how it’s formatted visually. You may choose a reverse chronological order or skills-based style to organize your information, but also use graphics, colors, unique fonts, and even multimedia elements to help that information pop. Keep in mind that any creative resume is still likely subject to an ATS—and certain elements may be unreadable by a robot. So consider going this route only if you know a human will be reading your resume (and that said human might enjoy it).

Who it’s good for: People applying to creative roles (designers, editors, writers, marketers, video producers, for example), startups, or fun companies, or to jobs where a creative resume is encouraged, if not required.

Download an Example Infographic Resume for a Designer

Not a designer but want your resume to look just as pretty as this example? Check out these articles:

• 5 Sites to Create an Awesome Infographic Resume (Even if You’re the Least Creative Person Ever)
• How to Build a Resume Website That Will Impress Every Hiring Manager Who Sees It
• 5 Digital Tools That Will Make Your Resume Infinitely More Beautiful

Your resume is a living, breathing document. So while you won’t go through this whole process every time you apply for a job, you should be thinking about all these things as you go to update your resume for your next career step. You might decide later on to switch up the order, or remove or add things, or even get creative and try out a whole new format. If you’re not getting the calls back you expect, you may decide to scrap it and start over —and that’s totally OK.

Regardless of where this piece of paper goes and how it grows, when you give it the care and attention it deserves, you set yourself up for success. And you’ll make it that much more likely that you’ll land an interview and get the chance to prove to the hiring manager—over the phone or in person—what you’ve got to offer.

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Department of Economics

• Undergraduate

18 Résumé Writing Tips to Help You Stand Out

By  Allison Pohle

Updated May 11, 2021 2:15 pm ET

• A résumé isn’t just a list of every job you’ve ever had. It should demonstrate your accomplishments.
• Mirror language used in the job posting so your résumé isn’t discarded by an applicant tracking system.
• Use a clean and simple format. 

Companies increasingly  rely on software  to sort through applicants, which is why it is essential to tailor your résumé to ensure it makes the cut. Applicant tracking systems sort, scan and rank applicants by looking for keywords in applications. Although these programs can save time and money for employers, about 60% said such tools cause them to miss some qualified candidates, according to a 2016 survey of 1,200 job seekers and managers by CareerArc, a human-resources technology company, and Future Workplace, a research firm. Here’s how to make your résumé stand out to robots and humans alike. 

1. Highlight your achievements in your résumé. 

A common mistake job seekers make is believing a résumé is a recap of your career, when in reality, it should convey what you have accomplished, says Christy Noel, a career expert and author of “Your Personal Career Coach.” 

“I always say, spend less of your real estate describing your job, and more time describing your results,” says Ms. Noel.  

2. Customize your résumé.

Read over the job posting, and think about the work experience you have had that is most directly relevant to the position you are pursuing. You can leave out some past jobs and internships if the experience you had wasn’t related. Whatever you do: Don’t submit a generic résumé to dozens of postings. “Even if you have the best experience, if your résumé isn’t speaking directly to the position in which you are applying, there is a strong chance you’ll never even get an interview,” says Demisha Jennings, a certified professional résumé writer and founder and owner of She Assists LLC.  

The same applies to your cover letter. It is your chance to provide more detail on how your experience will help you succeed in the job.  Read our cover letter guide  for how to write one that makes you stand out.

3. Decide how to format your résumé.

Most of the time, a chronological résumé will work well for communicating your past experience. But, in some cases, a functional or hybrid résumé might be more appropriate.  Read more about résumé formats here.

4. Make your contact information easy to find.

Include your name, phone number, email address, city and state. It may also be appropriate to include the URL to your LinkedIn profile. You want it to be easy for hiring managers to reach out.

In addition to making it easy to connect with you, it is important to your job search that you grow your network.  Read our networking guide  for tips on how to do so.

5. Consider adding a summary. 

Many résumé templates leave space for an objective statement, outlining career goals, but that approach is outdated, says Ms. Jennings. Instead, consider a carefully worded summary. The summary is often the first place a hiring manager will look, and gives you an opportunity to introduce your skills high up on the page. You can also work in relevant keywords from the job description. “Recruiters are looking for what you can bring to the table and what you’ve done, rather than you saying, ‘I’m seeking a position,’” Ms. Jennings says. 

6. Great résumés should stand out to skim readers.

Most recruiters spend just a few seconds skimming through a résumé—with an average in one study of  7.4 seconds.  

To have the best chance of making an impression, ensure your job titles, company names and dates of employment are easy to read. The sections of your résumé should be adequately spaced, too, says Dana Leavy-Detrick, founder and director of Brooklyn Resume Studio. 

For additional ways to make a good impression on recruiters and headhunters, read  our guide on how to work with headhunters .

7. Make your résumé robot-friendly. 

Structure your résumé to meet the requirements of an applicant tracking system to give yourself the best chance of having it reach an actual human. Ms. Leavy-Detrick suggests the following:

• Optimize keywords.  Use the same words and language that are in the job description. For example, three different companies might describe the same role as “programmer,” “developer” or “software engineer.” 
• Use a straightforward format.  Avoid tables and text-based graphics, which might not get picked up by a scan of the résumé. Sans-serif fonts such as Arial or Helvetica are also best to ensure readability.
• Think about order.  When formatting each line item of work experience, list the company name first, followed by the job location (city, state), your job title, and your start and end dates. Some résumés can get lost if the dates are listed before the job title. 

8. Prioritize relevant keywords. 

Tailoring your skills to include language from the job posting is an important way to let both the applicant tracking system and, eventually, a hiring manager, see how your prior qualifications tie into the job requirements. But just because you have a résumé full of keywords doesn’t mean you’ll automatically get an interview. “The ATS isn’t there to help the job seeker, it is there to help the employer review your skills against their most important qualifications,” says Ashley Watkins, a career coach and résumé writer with Write Step Résumés LLC. 

9. Craft compelling and concise bullet points.

The goal of a résumé is to list your accomplishments, rather than every duty you performed in the role. Résumé-writing experts recommend including no more than five bullet points per prior job listed. 

• Don’t focus on tasks.  Many job seekers describe what they did every day, such as answering phones or creating marketing materials, Ms. Watkins says. “Simply copying and pasting the job description doesn’t account for the things you did great, that you did above and beyond your peers,” she says.
• Instead, explain what those tasks achieved.  Emphasize your results. Ms. Watkins suggests asking yourself “Did I save [the employer] money? Did I save time? Did I improve a process? Did I build a relationship?” These will help you format your bullet points.
• Use metrics.  Say what you achieved, then contextualize it—with figures if possible. You might not be able to put a monetary value on every accomplishment, but you can frame it by sharing details like the time it took or how many people were involved. “If you raised sales 50% in two months, that means a whole lot more than ‘I’m in charge of sales,’” Ms. Watkins says. 
• Don’t omit accomplishments that aren’t quantifiable.  Not every achievement will have metrics to show success. If there are figures, you might not always have access to them. But that shouldn’t stop you from including them, says Ms. Leavy-Detrick. Perhaps you had a positive impact on the culture of an organization, or improved a struggling relationship with a client. These efforts could help to demonstrate your  soft skills.

10. Focus on transferable skills if you lack experience.

If you are applying for a job in a new field or you are an entry-level applicant and don’t have much direct experience, don’t worry. Highlight transferable skills you have developed in the past that will serve you well in the position, says Ms. Leavy-Detrick. For example, you could play up leadership skills you developed participating in an extracurricular activity or time-management skills you learned in a prior job.

11. Go beyond your work history, and include all relevant experience.

If you are new to the workforce, or are job-hunting after being laid off, you could also include related experience that was outside of a traditional full-time job, says Ms. Watkins. For example, you can highlight volunteer work, consulting projects or educational training, all as part of making the case for your unique value, she says.

12. Don’t worry too much about gaps in your résumé.

The Covid-19 pandemic economy resulted in many people being laid off or furloughed. Ms. Watkins says the 2020 job market reminds her of 2008, when she worked as a recruiter. The expectation at that time, she says, was that candidates would have  gaps  on their résumés or list more short-term positions. While it isn’t necessary to directly address the gaps in your résumé, you should be  prepared to talk about them in an interview . “The focus should not be centered on the fact that you were furloughed or laid off, it should be focused on you and your skills and what you do that impacts the company’s bottom line in a positive way,” Ms. Watkins says.

While it is common to list the months and years you started and ended positions in the job history section, you could just use years. This will draw less attention to a six- or eight-month gap, says Ms. Leavy-Detrick. 

13. Highlight relevant skills.

It is common to  add a skills section to your résumé , outlining expertise relevant to the position. You can include languages you speak, technical skills or courses you have done. If you lack experience, you can also complete some trainings, which you can find on LinkedIn and elsewhere, related to the job you are applying for and add the courses in this section, says Ms. Jennings.

14. Prioritize work experience over education.

The professional experience you have had is often more relevant to the position than your education history, which is why the work experience should be listed first. In the “Education” section, you should list where you attended college, if applicable, or the highest level of education you have attained. If you graduated with honors, you can flag that, but it isn’t necessary to list your GPA.

15. If you are early on in your career, a key résumé tip is to limit it to one page. 

If you are early on in your career, you should limit your résumé to one page. It is OK to start spilling onto a second page after you have eight to 10 years of experience, says Ms. Leavy-Detrick. 

16. Add some color for a stylish résumé that sets you apart. 

Your résumé should look clean and professional and you should keep applicant tracking systems in mind when formatting the document. But, if it is appropriate, you can add subtle accents of color in the section headings or in bars that separate sections as a way to differentiate your résumé. Ms. Leavy-Detrick doesn’t overstress the need for good design with her clients. “But it can definitely help,” she says. “When I say design, I don’t mean crazy graphic design. I mean having a polished application,” she says. “Think of it the same way you would coming dressed to an interview, it is part of your presentation, and so many people overlook this on the résumé.”

It may be appropriate to incorporate a more creative and graphic-based layout depending on the field in which you work and where you are applying. If you are applying for a position in a creative field, and you are emailing your résumé directly to a hiring manager, then it can be appropriate to use more designs, says Ms. Jennings. But if you are applying to a large company that uses an applicant tracking system or job portal, she says it is best to avoid using graphics unless you are working with a résumé writer who can help you get your resume through the system.

17. Proofread and double-check the formatting.

You may be eager to send your résumé or submit your application, but you should take the time to first check for typos and grammatical errors. You could also have a friend or family member look over it. When you are checking for errors, be sure to double-check the formatting. Sometimes the spacing can get thrown off when you save the file, so check how it looks as a saved document and, if you can, save it as a PDF before sending. 

18. Make sure the saved file name includes your name. 

Make less work for the hiring manager by including your full name in the file name of the résumé document.

What to read next

• How to Prepare for a Job Interview
• What Questions to Ask During a Job Interview
• Common Job Interview Questions and How to Answer Them
• How to Dress for a Job Interview
• How to Write a Thank-You Email After a Job Interview  
• How to Negotiate and Counter a Job Offer
• How to Negotiate Salary for a New Job: The Do’s and Don’ts
• Severance Pay: What It Is and Why You Should Negotiate a Package Before Accepting a Job

Corrections & Amplifications Ashley Watkins is a résumé writer with Write Step Résumés LLC. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said Write Steps LLC. (Corrected on Nov. 20)

Copyright ©2024 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Appeared in the November 23, 2020, print edition as '11 Résumé Tips to Help You Get Noticed

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Veterans and military personnel alike have endured unique experiences that set them apart from the average civilian job applicant. The thought of transitioning back to civilian life can seem daunting enough without taking into account job searching and securing a civilian job.

Alternatively, maybe you are part-time in the military and seeking employment on the civilian side. Whether active duty, reserve, or National Guard, you raised your right hand and signed up to be the <1% to serve your country. That sacrifice comes with endless knowledge and experience that cannot be gained anywhere else. So let’s take about five ways you can highlight your military experience on a resume that will allow you to stand out as a candidate in the civilian job market.

What is a Resume, and Why Does it Matter?

A resume is a document that compiles your education and experience and serves as a first glance at you as an applicant. A resume should emphasize your skills and accomplishments and effectively market your experience to a hiring manager. A strong resume is more likely to get you an interview and is the first step in the process of securing your desired job.

Highlighting Military Experience

1. list your certifications and technical skills.

Many military occupations come with several weeks to months of job-specific training following boot camp. Often, this job-specific training comes with certifications or skills that translate to the civilian side. Maybe you were a medic and got certified as an EMT, or you had a job in transportation and received a CDL. Alternatively, maybe your specialty was in human resources or intelligence, and you gained expertise with certain technologies or software. Be sure to highlight any certifications and skills you gained during your time in the military that may translate into the civilian world.

2. Emphasize Soft Skills

As someone who has served the military, I know you have likely endured countless long days, sacrificed time with family, and put a lot of energy into accomplishing specific tasks. Both during boot camp and in the years following, you quickly learned to maintain discipline and accountability.

Whether as a lower enlisted soldier, squad leader, sergeant, or officer, you have likely gained strong communication skills. You learned how to work and thrive in a team environment, and played a key role in the success of the unit. Highlighting these soft skills in a skills section or experience section is a great way to help you stand out.

3. Add Military Service as an Experience

Regardless of the position you held within the organization, you should list it on your resume. Military experience is unique in that it does not have to be relevant to your desired career to be included. If it does not directly relate to your job prospects, I would recommend making an “Military Experience” section and including it there. Be sure to highlight both those technical and soft skills mentioned earlier and try to quantify your duties and accomplishments where applicable (e.g. Lead a class on X topic for 30 soldiers in the company). 

4. List Your Honors and Awards

Everyone who has served in the military has received an award, and most likely multiple awards. Whether it’s a medal, ribbon, or other distinguishing merit, listing these on the resume highlights your dedication and accomplishments during your time in the military. Maybe you served on an important task force, deployed domestically or overseas, or showed excellent character during a training exercise.

I recommend including the most notable one or two and not all of them. Be sure to briefly describe what each award was for to emphasize your accomplishments.

5. Translate Military Language

Most civilian employers do not call their employees “troops” or “joes”, use a million and one acronyms, or communicate with the phonetic alphabet. Using any military jargon on a resume can confuse a hiring manager, preventing you from effectively marketing yourself.

Try to break down your duties and accomplishments into commonly used words or phrases that could be easily understood by anyone. If you are unsure how to translate words used in the military, have a civilian family member or friend help or refer to this guide .

Military service equips you with unique experiences and knowledge that undoubtedly sets you apart. By properly highlighting your military service on a resume, you can effectively market your unique experiences and skillset to a civilian employer. Be sure to list acquired technical skills, certifications, awards, and emphasize soft skills. Incorporate military service as you would any other position, and translate language into an easy-to-read format without any military jargon.

For more veteran and military resources in career development, visit our website at https://career.uml.edu/channels/veterans/ .