A resume is read in ninety seconds by someone with forty more to read. It has seven sections, and the order is the order of the reader's attention: name and contact, a summary, experience, skills, education, and then the two that are there if you have them, certifications and projects. Write the experience first, because it is the hardest and the rest is cut from it. Then the summary last, because it is the experience in three sentences.
Key points
- Seven sections, in the reader's order. Name, summary, experience, skills, education, certifications, projects.
- Write the experience section first and the summary last.
- Every bullet has a verb, a scope and a result. One number per bullet where there is one.
- One page under ten years of experience, two pages over. Nobody reads page three.
- Check it parses, check the dates, check it out loud.
Before you write: the master and the cut
Two documents. The master resume holds everything: every role, every bullet, two or three pages, and nobody sees it. The resume you send is a cut from it, for one posting, one page or two. This guide writes the master. The guide on tailoring makes the cut.
Writing the master once saves the hour you would spend rewriting the resume for every application, under pressure, at night.
The seven sections
| Section | What it holds | Length |
|---|---|---|
| Name and contact | Name, title line, email, phone, city, one or two links | Three lines |
| Summary | What you do, what you are known for, what you want next | Three sentences |
| Experience | Roles, newest first, with bullets | Most of the page |
| Skills | Tools and methods, grouped, the posting's words | Three to eight lines |
| Education | Degree, school, year if recent | One line each |
| Certifications | Name, body, year | One line each, if any |
| Projects | For juniors and career changers, as roles | Three bullets each, if any |
Name and contact
Your name, large. Under it a title line that says what you are, in the words a posting would use: "Senior product designer", not "Creative problem solver". Then email, phone, city and country, and one or two links that matter, a portfolio or a code profile. No street address. No photo in the US, UK or Canada.
Summary
Three sentences, written last. The first says what you do and for how long. The second says the one thing you are known for, with a number. The third says what you want to do next, which is the posting. The guide on summary examples has six by level.
Experience
Newest role first. For each: title, company, city or remote, dates in months and years. Then three to five bullets for the recent roles and one or two for the old ones.
Each bullet is a verb, a scope and a result. "Led the redesign of the dispatch console for a team of forty drivers, cutting route assignment from four minutes to forty seconds." The guide on bullet points has the formula and the before-and-afters. The result is the part most people leave out, and it is the part the reader is looking for.
Gaps and short stints get the guide on employment gaps. Promotions within one company go under one company heading with the titles stacked.
Skills
The tools and methods you can be interviewed on, grouped under three or four labels: design, research, engineering, languages. Use the words a posting uses. The guide on skills has how a parser reads this section, and why one line beats three columns for some roles.
Education
Degree, school, and the year if it is within ten years. For a recent graduate this section moves up, under the summary, and the guide on a graduate resume has that layout.
Certifications and projects
Certifications as one line each: name, issuing body, year. Projects as roles: a title, where it lives, dates, and three bullets with a user count or a result. Projects matter most for a first job and a career change, and the guides on those say when to put them above experience.
A worked example
The header and summary for a senior product designer, as the builder on this site lays them out:
Alex Rivera Senior Product Designer alex.rivera@example.com · +1 555 0134 · Lisbon, Portugal · linkedin.com/in/alexrivera
Product designer with seven years across logistics and healthcare, focused on the operational tools people use all day. Led the dispatch console redesign that cut route assignment from four minutes to forty seconds. Looking for a design systems role at a scale I have not worked at.
Then the first role:
Senior Product Designer, Northwind Logistics, Remote, 2023 to present
- Led the redesign of the driver dispatch console, cutting the median time to assign a route from four minutes to forty seconds.
- Built and maintained the design system used by four product teams, replacing three divergent component libraries.
- Ran the discovery work with thirty warehouse staff that killed a planned feature before it reached engineering.
Three bullets. Each one has a verb, a scope and a number. The third one has a result that is a decision, which counts.
Three checks before you send
- It parses. Hiring systems read the resume as text. Headings in plain words, no tables for layout, no text in images. The score on this site runs the parse check and shows what the parser saw.
- The dates agree. Every date on the resume matches the master, and the master matches the truth. A background check compares them.
- It reads out loud. Read the summary and the first role to yourself as the interviewer. Every sentence has to survive a five minute question.
Questions
How long is the resume?
One page under ten years, two over. The guide on length has the edge cases. The length is set by what the reader will read, not by how much you have done.
Do I need an objective?
No. An objective says what you want. A summary says what you have done and what you want. The summary replaced it twenty years ago.
Which format: chronological, functional, or combined?
Chronological, nearly always. The guide on formats explains why the functional format reads as hiding, and when the combined one helps a career changer.
What about references?
Not on the resume. "References available on request" is a line that says nothing. Keep a separate reference list for when they ask.
Do I write it in a template?
Write it in anything that exports clean text. The builder on this site exports a PDF and a Word file from the same document, scores the parse, and keeps the master and the cuts side by side.