Ask any ten people what your resume should look like, and you’ll probably get twenty different answers. Make sure it’s only one page. Include every job you’ve ever had. Only include your last five years. Use a template. Never use a template.
At the end of the day, there is no a single answer for what the perfect resume looks like. But there are best practices and approaches that can make your resume stand out from what is an increasingly crowded field of applicants for any given job. Below we’ll break down the elements that are absolutely essential and how to best organize your resume to make the most of the space you have.
Should You Use a Template to Structure Your Resume?
Before we get into the content in your resume, let’s talk about templates. They’re all over the place, and they may seem like the easy way to create a resume. It might make sense for you to use a template to help guide you if you feel stuck to get started, but there are some things to be on the lookout for:
- Avoid templates that don’t leave you enough room for you to tell the story of your accomplishments. They might look flashy, but if the design elements are taking up too much space, you’ll be robbing yourself of real estate.
- Avoid overly busy templates. Just like you want to make sure you have enough room, you also want to make sure that there’s enough white space that is easy to read.
In the end, you get to decide whether to use a template or create from scratch. Always remember that you want the recruiter or hiring manager to have an easy time reading it. You can always use one of our Jobalope Resume Templates. They’re clean, easy to read and scan, and free and ready to use.
The Top of Your Resume
Your resume should start by communicating who you are. Your name should be in bold, large font, followed by your contact information (phone number, email, and LinkedIn profile). It is not necessary to include a full address, but you should include the city and state you live in, as that is often relevant since there might be a requirement that you live in a certain area for a job. After your personal information, you should have a summary. Think of this as the elevator pitch for who you are and why you are the right person for the job. This is just one part of a resume that should be customized for each job to make sure your summary of why you’re right for the job is personalized for the individual job application.
Here are three examples of summaries from the resume of the same person, customized for different job applications:
- Summary Example 1: I am a passionate proponent of education and the need to preserve our history as part of our cultural story and heritage.
- Summary Example 2: I am a Content Strategist, Project/Program Manager, and Customer-First Enthusiast with 14 years of project management experience looking for her next chance to innovate and contribute.
- Summary Example 3: I am a Content Manager, Communications Manager, and Marketer with 14 years of project management experience looking for a meaningful role where I can make a difference.
Each of these summaries tells the story of a person who has the experience and passion the individual job is looking for. Without a clear and relevant summary at the top of your resume, the reader might just stop reading after that first sentence. You can use our Resume Summary Generator here. It will not only summarize your accomplishments, but it will also take a job description into account to make sure the summary pulls the experience and accomplishments from your resume that are most relevant to the job you’re applying for!
One quick note on what not to include at the very top of your resume. Unless you are a recent graduate and applying for jobs specifically for people newly entering the workforce, you should not be placing your educational information before your work experience. That information should come at the bottom, in descending order from your most recent to least recent degrees. Include the name of the school, your major, and the year you graduated. Unless the job description specifically asks for it, you do not need to include your GPA.
The Relevant Work Experiences Section
This section is the most important part of your resume and also the part people disagree about the most when it comes to what it should contain. There are a few standard best practices, however:
- List your jobs from most recent to oldest.
- Include your job title, the name of the company, and the month/year you started and left.
- Don’t just provide a list of your duties – talk about the outcomes of the work that you did.
- Use the active, not passive voice.
- Update how you describe each job to highlight the parts of your work that best match the role you are applying for. Jobalope has a great resume tool that scans the job description and your resume and helps you make sure you are using the right vocabulary to match any specific job post.
Certifications, Skills, and Education on Your Resume
If you have relevant certifications, list them after your work experience, including the name of the certification, the issuing body, when you received it, and the expiration, if relevant. Again, as with jobs, there’s no need to list every single certification if it isn’t relevant to the position you’re applying to.
Finally, you’ll end your resume with a list of your degrees, including major, school, and graduation date and month
Frequently Asked Resume Questions about Structure and more
Do I Need to Include Every Job I’ve Ever Had?
- There’s no need to include information about jobs that are not in any way relevant or a job you had twenty years ago. While it’s no longer expected that a resume will only be one page, you also don’t want it to be overly long, especially with irrelevant information.
Do I Need to Worry About “Gaps” in My Work History?
- If you’re only including relevant job experience, you’ll likely have some gaps, and that’s okay. Instead of starting this section with the words “Work Experience,” you can instead say “Relevant Work Experience.” If you do have gaps in your resume, be prepared to answer questions about why in your interviews in a professional manner.
Should I add a section that lists skills?
- It’s very important that your resume includes your skills, especially those that are listed in the job description as requirements or essential to the role. However, we recommend integrating these naturally within the Work Experience section and highlighting the most important and relevant skills in the summary. We find that skills in context demonstrate that you understand what they mean deeply rather than just pasting a long list of buzzwords. So, what kinds of skills should you include? Skills come in 2 basic flavors: hard skills and soft skills. Skills include things like communication, collaboration, teamwork, and change management, as well as Microsoft Office, social platforms, Google tools, etc. The skills you include can vary widely. For applying to software jobs you will want to list the programming languages you know. For product and project management jobs, you’ll want to list skills like various Agile and other planning methodologies. Just like all the parts we’ve spoken about so far, you want to make sure to customize this to the job. While some skills are likely to translate to almost any job you apply for, if something isn’t relevant, don’t clutter your resume with it.