Beginner's Guide to How to Write a Resume

For job seekers, few things are more important than making a great first impression on employers. Of course, it’s difficult to accomplish that goal without a compelling resume. 

• But what can you do if you’ve never had the opportunity to craft a personalized resume? 

• What do you need to know to write a truly convincing resume that can capture an employer’s interest?

In this beginner’s guide, we will provide you with all the information you need to know to learn how to make a resume that can increase your odds of landing an interview. We’ll explain why it’s so important to know how to make a resume and then walk you through the resume creation process step-by-step.

What is a resume?

Before we explain how to make a resume, let’s make sure that we properly define this vital job search tool. A resume is a brief one to two-page document that highlights your most relevant skills, work experience, achievements, and educational qualifications. If you’ve ever filled out a formulaic job application, then you already have some idea about the type of information you’ll need to include in your resume.

But make no mistake; resumes are not just job applications. 

Instead, they are marketing documents designed to highlight your qualifications and potential value as a new hire. Well-crafted resumes should offer more than just a dull recitation of your skills and experiences. A great resume delivers a powerful and compelling narrative that enables prospective employers to envision all the many ways that you might benefit their company.

Why do you need to know how to make a resume?

To understand why it’s so important to know how to make a resume, consider the following job search challenges:

The good news is that you can overcome all these challenges by learning how to make a resume that helps you capture employers’ interest. With the right approach and execution, you can craft a resume narrative that not only highlights your qualifications for a job but also demonstrates that you know how to provide value for your employers.

How to make a resume, step-by-step

Now that we’ve explained why it’s so important to have a great resume, it’s time to learn how to make a resume for a job. To simplify this process, we’ve broken everything down into distinct steps that you can follow as you craft your resume document. Just follow along with the steps outlined below, and you’ll quickly learn how to make a great resume that can capture an employer’s attention.

1.     Know your goals

First, you’ll need to figure out your career goals so that you can make a resume that is targeted toward jobs in that industry. Have you given any thought to your career path? 

Some of the key things you’ll want to consider include:

Once you’ve answered these questions and formed the broad outline of a career plan, you’ll have a better idea of how to make your resume in a way that speaks to that audience. 

As you craft your resume and continually revise it for each new job throughout your career, knowing your audience can help you focus on creating a professional brand that speaks directly to their hiring needs.

2.     Gather your resume information

The next step in your resume creation process involves preparation – which means getting organized so that all the information you need is readily available before you even begin. This initial preparation can ensure that you don’t waste time looking for key details later and can instead just focus on writing the best resume possible.

Below is a summary of the information you should gather:

1. A list of your marketable skills. Make sure that you focus on hard and soft skills, including technical abilities, industry-specific knowledge, and key interpersonal skills.

2. An outline of your employment history. Create a list that includes each job title, the name of the company you worked for, their locations, and your employment dates.

3. A list of three to five quantifiable achievements for each of those jobs.

4. Your educational qualifications. Here, we’re talking about any degrees that you’ve earned, the schools you attended, the date you graduated, and relevant coursework or certifications.

5. You can also gather details about any volunteer work you’ve engaged in – identifying any key skills that you might have learned or used during that experience.

6. Depending on the job you’re seeking, you may also want to gather information about any accolades you’ve earned – but only if they reinforce your qualifications and past performance.

3.     Choose your format

After gathering your information, you’ll be ready to make your first big resume decision – which format to use. There are three options here, each of which offers a different way to organize and present your information. The choice you make will largely depend on where you are in your career and what you’re trying to achieve. Those three formats include:

The reverse chronological resume format

This format choice is preferred by most hiring managers and job seekers. Its structure and format provide an ideal way to present your work history in a clear and convincing manner by listing your previous jobs in reverse chronological order. That allows employers to focus on your most recent achievements at work while also being able to review your overall career progression.

The functional resume format

The functional resume takes a different approach to organizing your employment information. Instead of focusing on that work history, the functional format emphasizes your skills and education to demonstrate your qualifications for the role. Because it is often used by those with little experience or major gaps in their work history, many employers view this resume format with some degree of skepticism.

The hybrid, or combination, resume format

If you’re looking for a resume format that seeks a happy middle ground between functional and reverse chronological resumes, then the combination option might be ideal. This resume format is often used by people who are changing their careers or who have a great deal of experience that they want to highlight. It is designed to emphasize both skills and relevant experience.

While you are free to choose whichever option you think will work best, we typically recommend the reverse chronological format for most job seekers with any level of experience. 

Throughout the rest of this post, however, we will focus on helping you learn how to make a resume that uses the most popular formatting option – the reverse chronological format.

4.     Use a solid structure to outline your resume

Fortunately, the reverse chronological resume offers a simple way to organize your resume information to create a solid structure that is easy to follow and scan. That last part is important because very few employers will ever read through your entire resume when it first crosses their desk. Instead, they will scan it, searching for key bits of information that they’re prioritizing for their hiring process.

Knowing that, it’s important to create an outline that provides that scannable structure. To do so, you need to separate different types of resume information into distinct sections. 

Your resume outline should include the following sections:

• Contact information

• Resume headline

• Resume summary

• Core competencies or skills

• Work experience/Professional experience

• Education

• Optional sections

We’ll examine each of these important sections as we proceed through the guide, providing examples to help you better understand how to present these details to employers.

5.     List your contact information

Your contact information needs to be placed at the top of your resume. That helps ensure that hiring managers and others can easily find the details they need to know if they want to contact you for an interview or a job offer. 

Include the following information:

• Your name. Make sure that it matches the name you use in your cover letter and LinkedIn profile. Also, use both your first and last name, and adjust the font size to a larger font to help it stand out from the rest of your contact information.

• Your location. While there is some debate about this, it is still common for job seekers to include their city, state, and zip code in their contact details. Do not list your home address, though.

• Phone number. Make sure you include a working phone number that employers can use to reach you. Include all ten digits of the number to ensure that there is no confusion.

• Email address. For your email address, try to utilize a professional email rather than a vanity address. For example, you would not want to use an address like friskytom@mailmail.com. Instead, use an address that contains your name and no silly or controversial details. Something like tomthompson21@gmail.com would be a far better option.

• LinkedIn URL. If you have a LinkedIn account that you use for your professional career, include that URL too. Just make sure you’ve cleaned up your profile and updated it to align with your resume and current career goals.

• Website/Portfolio URL. This is an optional contact detail that you may need to include if you have a professional body of work you need employers to see. Website designers, graphic artists, and architects are examples of the type of professionals who often need to rely on their portfolios to demonstrate their skills.

Putting all of that together, your resume contact information section might look something like this:

6.     Create a dynamic resume headline

If you’re confused about resume headlines, relax – they’re easy to understand. Basically, they’re just a job title with some descriptive language that helps to capture hiring managers’ attention. The headline goes right below your contact details, with the text bolded and centered to give it more prominence on the page.

To create a headline, start with the job title. For example: Marketing Manager. Now add some descriptive language that makes that title more compelling. For example:

• Senior Marketing Manager With 10+ Years of Experience in Brand Enhancement

• Dynamic Marketing Manager and Digital Marketing Innovator

• Strategic Marketing Manager, Focused on Data-Driven Analysis

As you can see, these examples offer more than just a bland recitation of the job title you’re seeking. They provide a more compelling argument for your candidacy while helping solidify your unique professional brand. This can help ensure that you develop a reputation that can contribute to career success and advancement as you provide real results for your employers.

7.     Craft a compelling resume summary

You’ll also need to know how to create a convincing resume summary to serve as your resume’s elevator sales pitch. 

Remember how we mentioned that hiring managers only scan your resume? Well, it’s true. 

And because they don’t read the entire document, you’ll need to work extra hard to make sure that you capture their attention as quickly as possible.

Enter the resume summary. 

This short, three to five-sentence paragraph sits right below your resume headline and acts as a quick introduction to the reader. You’ll want to include a brief description of yourself that emphasizes your experience and most relevant skills, as well as language that shows how you’ve used those skills and character traits to produce measurable results for your previous employers.

You should also include a few keywords from the job description to help guarantee that your resume gets past applicant tracking systems, of course. Just scan the job posting to locate relevant skills, character traits, and other qualifications that the employer is looking for. Those are likely to be ATS keywords you’ll need to have in your resume.

Since this paragraph is designed to serve as a summary of your resume and career, it is usually best to write it after you’ve completed the rest of the document. That can help you to identify key points that you can use in your summary. Regardless of when you write it, though, it always needs to have a prominent place in the top third of your resume.

Here’s an example of what a Marketing Manager resume summary might look like:

Data-driven Marketing Manager with 8+ years of experience crafting and leading high-impact campaigns for more than 200 client companies. Consistently leverage digital campaign expertise to increase client website traffic by an average of 45%, with an 80% boost to customer engagement and 23% average increase in sales funnel activity.  A proven leader focused on creating motivated teams that exceed every expectation.

8.     Highlight your core competencies

Since you’ve already created a list of your core skills, crafting the core competencies or skill section of your resume should be relatively easy. While this is typically one of the smallest sections in any resume, it can also be one of the most effective. After all, this is the one section in which you can include every relevant skill you’ll need to demonstrate your qualifications.

So, let’s start with that list of skills you created. 

You’ll need a total of between 9 and 12 skills for this section, including both hard and soft skills. 

Hard skills include technical abilities that you’ve learned in school or other formal training venues, while soft skills tend to include traits and abilities that are more difficult to measure. 

For example, consider your ability to analyze data. That is a quantifiable skill that can be easily measured in terms of results. On the other hand, communication or negotiation skills are less tangible and more difficult to measure. Data analysis is thus a hard skill while communication and negotiation abilities are considered soft skills.

As you create your core competencies section, start by reviewing the job description to identify all the skills the employer listed as core qualifications. Then, compare the skills you cull from the job description with the personal skills list you created as you gathered your resume information. 

Fuse the two lists and fine-tune it using language from the job description to create your core competencies list and get past the ATS.

A few things to note here:

1. This is the first section in your resume that requires a section label. You can label this section Core Competencies or Relevant Skills – or just Skills. It’s up to you.

2. You’ll want each skill to be listed as a bullet point to help keep them from looking like they’re squished together on the page.

3. It’s typical to format this section into two or three columns, to help save resume space and create a more appealing presentation.

4. Make sure that you list the most important skills first and try to group them according to type. For example, if you’re applying for a technical job, list technical skills first, and then your soft interpersonal abilities.

5. Omit any unnecessary skills that might distract from your more relevant abilities. The goal is to create a compelling list, so quantity is less important than quality.

Here’s an example of what that skill list might look like for our hypothetical Marketing Manager:

9.     Document your work experience

If you’ve ever filled out a standard job application, then you already understand the importance of documenting your work experience for a prospective employer. 

Here, you will need to refer to your list of previous jobs and start with your current or most recent position. To begin, start listing every job that you’ve held for the last 10 to 15 years, in reverse order. 

For each of those positions, you should include the following details:

• Company name

• Company location

• Employment dates

• Job Title

• Four or five bullet point examples of your most notable and quantifiable achievements

Before we get to examples that show how this section might look on your resume, let’s talk about those bullet point examples for a few minutes. 

While there was a time when job seekers would just list their job duties for every position, that approach rarely works in today’s competitive job market. The reason for that is simple: every employee has duties, regardless of their position. 

By listing measurable achievements that use real numbers to quantify your results, you can demonstrate how you provide value as an employee. That’s one of the easiest ways to prove your capabilities and help any prospective employer quickly understand the type of benefits they can expect if they choose you over rival candidates.

Below is an example of the employment experience section for your imaginary Marketing Manager:

As you can see, each of these achievement examples highlights the candidate’s various skills, including negotiation, digital marketing, team building, and project management, as well as core leadership abilities that all managers need to possess. Even better, the candidate uses real numbers to demonstrate how those skills helped to add value for his employer.

Adopt this approach to your work experience section by following that same strategy for each of your job role listings. Whenever possible, try to include several skill-based keywords from the job posting in these achievement listings too.

Finally, make sure that you utilize action verbs that demonstrate that you’ve done more than just fulfill your duties in each role. You want employers to see you as a person of action who’s focused on getting results rather than just meeting your responsibilities. 

Related post: For other great ideas about these types of action words, check out our great post, 101 Power Verbs for Your Resume.

10.  Create an education section

The last required section in your resume is the Education section. This is where you’ll list the degrees you’ve earned that demonstrate you meet the employer’s education requirements for the position. 

Again, refer to the job posting to ensure that you understand what the employer is looking for and make sure that the credentials you list meet those expectations.

This section should include the name of the school you attended and its location, the date you graduated, and your degree. 

Education in progress

You can also include relevant coursework that can help highlight your knowledge base. If you have not yet completed your degree, you can include the anticipated date for graduation. 

GPA

The question of whether to include your GPA is a matter of some debate. As a rule, it’s wise to never include it unless you’ve recently finished school – and that GPA is at least 3.5. Of course, some employers may require that information, in which case you’ll need to add it to your resume. In most instances, however, you’ll want to omit it.

Educational awards/honors

Finally, you can include relevant awards or honors if you’re lacking in work experience. If you go that route, make sure that you list the formal award name and include the date that you received it.

So, what does that all look like when you put it together to create a resume section? Let’s return to our Marketing Manager example and see how that resume’s Education section might look:

11.  Add certifications, training, or license credentials when appropriate

Depending on your chosen career path, you may have certain certifications or licensing requirements for any job you’re seeking. Or perhaps you’ve made a point of continuing to advance your career with continuing education that earned certain certifications. 

If you possess those additional qualifications, and they’re relevant to the position you’re seeking, you may want to include them on your resume.

CERTIFICATIONS / LICENSES Google Analytics Certification – Google, June 2023 (Expires June 2024)

As you can see, you’ll want to include the name of the certification and the organization or entity that provided it. Add in the date you earned the certification. In addition, you should include any relevant expiration date. You’ll also notice that we added a title for this optional section, to help keep it separate from the other sections in your resume.

12.  Volunteer work

Volunteer work is an optional section that you may want to include – but only if the skills you used are relevant for the position you’re seeking. If so, then you can add a separate labeled section for this part of the resume. Include the type of work you did, the organization that you worked for, and any measurable achievements. 

For example:

Alternatively, you can simply list volunteer work in your work experience section. This option is especially useful if your resume has noticeable gaps in your employment and you spent some of that off-time doing volunteer work. It’s a great way to demonstrate that you were still actively sharpening your skills during a period of unemployment.

Once your base resume is complete

Once your resume includes all the core sections and any relevant optional sections, you’ll have a base resume that you can use as your template for any resume submissions. 

But your work isn’t done! 

In fact, there are still some steps that you’ll need to complete before you can confidently send your document off to employers. Let’s examine those additional steps now.

Edit and proofread your resume for content, spelling, and grammar

Obviously, you don’t want to send out a resume that’s filled with misspellings, typos, or inaccurate information. To avoid that, you will need to spend some time editing the document for both content and quality. 

Remember this: employers who spot mistakes in resumes are more likely to toss those documents in the trash than spend any real time reading them.

Here’s the problem, though: it’s difficult to proofread your own writing – especially if you try to do it right after you’re done with your initial draft. 

You see, your brain will remember what it wrote, which means that your eyes will likely miss even obvious mistakes since your brain will interpret what you meant to write vs what’s actually there. To avoid that challenge, try to set the document aside for a few days before you begin your edits. You may need to review it several times after that to get it right.

Even then, though, you shouldn’t rely on your own eyes to serve as the final word on proofreading. Instead, have a friend or family member who’s good with words review it too. Print it out and ask them to look for any confusing language, spelling errors, punctuation mistakes, or formatting lapses.

Tailor your resume to each job you seek

Our final step to making a great resume is an ongoing one that you’ll need to revisit with each new job you seek. It involves tailoring your resume to target a specific job role at a specific company. To complete this step, you need to take your base resume and make modifications that specifically target the role you want. 

The following tips can help.

• Begin by making a copy of your base resume on the computer. Give it a different name that identifies it for use in a specific job application.

• Go through your resume and compare the different sections to the job posting for the position you’re seeking. As you read through the job posting, identify those skill and qualification requirements that we talked about earlier in this guide. Write down those exact terms on a sheet of paper. Those will be keywords that you need to add to your resume.

• Review each section of your resume to ensure that your headline, summary, core competencies, work experience, and education section all align with the core qualifications for the position you want.

• Remove any irrelevant skills and replace them with those required for the new job.

• Make changes to your work experience achievements as needed to ensure that your accomplishments highlight the right skills for the job.

• Once you’re done tailoring the resume, go through your proofreading and editing process again to ensure that it’s as perfect as possible.

With a little effort, you can learn how to make a resume that’s sure to impress!

Learning how to make a resume may seem like a tall mountain to climb, but the challenge can be overcome if you know which steps to take. With the right goals, preparation, and attention to detail, you can quickly learn how to make a professional resume that will capture the attention of any prospective employer.

Good luck in your job search!

Wondering whether your resume has what it takes to land you the interviews you need? Get your free resume review from our resume experts today!

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• 30 Resume Summary Examples that Work in 2024

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• 150 Resume Buzzwords to Use and Clichés to Avoid in 2024