Writing a resume requires a balance of finesse and attention-to-detail to land an interview for the role you seek. It’s all about presenting your professional brand in a way that will pique the interest of a hiring manager.

There’s more than one way to write a resume. Our resume-writing tips and section-by-section content examples will help you present your best skills and top achievements to potential employers. Here are our eight steps for writing a professional resume.

Step 1: Writing prep

Before you start writing your resume, there are a few things you’ll need to prepare. Remember, each resume you write should be customized to an individual role. To ensure you have all the information you need at your fingertips, use the following checklist:

With this reference material gathered and the resume example review complete, you are now ready to sit down and write.

Step 2: Crafting a professional summary or career objective

The professional summary is how you grab a reader’s attention and express your career goals and interest in three to five sentences. It is usually the section hiring managers spend the most time on, so it should be both succinct and customized to the job posting.

Most applicants will want to use a professional summary as it is the industry standard and provides more descriptive cataloging of your accomplishments in an active voice. Career objectives are one to two sentences that solely convey the job seeker’s goals. They are useful for job seekers who have experience in an unrelated field or are recent graduates.

Wondering how to tell if your final summary is good to go? Submitting draft summaries to a summarizer can be a good move. You can easily compare your summary with the bot-generated summary to make necessary edits for better flow and clarity.

Here are two examples of a professional summary statement:

• “Skilled property management professional experienced overseeing operational aspects, tenant relations, office management, and maintenance coordination. Successful balancing tenant’s rights with business considerations to achieve financial targets. Excellent interpersonal, communication, and leadership abilities.”
• “Analytical Technical Writer with five years of experience writing about engineering. Extensive knowledge of editing and distribution processes with fluency in JavaScript. Able to conform writing style, content, and formatting to proprietary style guides. Dedicated to thorough and accurate writing.”

Here are two examples of career objectives:

• “Dedicated marketing professional with 12 years of experience looking to explore a career in design.”
• “Recent graduate looking to pursue a career at a pharmaceutical company in chemical research.”

Writing tips and examples for this section:

• Articulate your value to the employer with callbacks to their job posting.
• Emphasize your key strengths.
• Show how you have learned from past experiences.
• Save the specifics for the interview.
• Remember, professional summaries adhere to the employer’s needs, and career objectives focus more on the job seeker’s overall goals.

Step 3: Capturing your most notable skills

A great list of skills tells employers at-a-glance about your technical acumen and hard and soft skills. Revisit the list of skills you created during your writing prep and be sure to focus on those that were pulled directly from the job ad. The more relevant skills your resume contains, the more likely it is that your resume will pass through an applicant tracking system (ATS).

And ATS is programmed with critical skills for the role, and applicants whose resumes that do not contain those keywords are often deemed unqualified. For that reason, it’s critical to list skills using the same language as the job ad.

Here is a quick tutorial on the different types of skills you’ll want to add to your resume:

• Technical skills are industry and/or program-specific. They require either a certain level of education or certification and/or are skills that are specific to a particular industry.
• Hard skills can be learned, taught, or measured and aren’t dependent on your industry.
• Soft skills are personality traits that are hard to measure but that make you great at your job.

To further illustrate, here are some of the most common resume skills for each category:

Soft skills:

• Multitasking
• Creativity
• Problem-solving
• Communication

Hard skills:

• Presentation skills
• Project management
• Database management
• Writing skills

Technical skills:

• Mailchimp
• Constant Contact
• Adobe
• Google Suite

Writing tips for your skills section:

• Make a list beforehand of programs, personality traits, and learned abilities you already have. Narrow down this list based on the skills listed in the job posting.
• Put your strongest skills upfront.
• Don’t mention things that are outdated, irrelevant, or that just take up space. (Your 8th-grade spelling bee win doesn’t belong here)

Step 4: Writing your work experience section

Employers want to see the impact your work has had in your previous jobs, so your work experience should be more than just a list of responsibilities. Results matter and numbers are powerful. Regardless of your role, it’s usually possible to find data or metrics that prove your impact in previous roles. Here are some examples from various industries:

• Human Resources Manager: “Reduced labor budget by 15% by devising innovative methods for adjusting salary ranges while preventing layoffs.”
• Teacher: “Evaluated and revised lesson plans and course content to facilitate and moderate classroom discussions and student-centered learning ranging from 22 to 37 students.”
• Concierge: “Greeted and assisted +70 guests per day by gathering information pertaining to reservations or requests.”
• Senior Pharmacist: “Oversaw work activities, performance and service quality of an eight-member pharmacy staff over a two-year period.”

Writing tips for your work experience section:

• List your jobs in reverse-chronological order. Add your most recent position first. If you have many years of experience or have changed jobs often, focus on the first 10 years of your employment history.
• Show off the positive. Did you give great advice to customers or improve a less than effective program? Then let your future employers know so they can see what you’d bring to the table if you are hired.
• Don’t forget keywords. Whenever possible, use keywords from the job ad to describe your accomplishments and job duties. Use the same language as the job posting. Don’t clutter your resume with buzzwords because you think you should. Use your real experience to prove that you’re a great fit.

Step 5: Completing the resume

Now that you’ve written the bulk of your resume, it’s time to focus on the finer details of your document. Listing out your educational experience proves your industry qualifications and lets employers know you are a good fit.

To start, your header/contact information should be in a font that is professional and easy to read. Make sure to double-check your contact information for accuracy. Add the finishing touches to your resume by including:

• Links to your portfolio or website, if applicable
• Link to your LinkedIn profile
• Details about special training and certifications, if applicable
• Information about awards and honors you’ve won, if they are relevant to the role
• Languages
• Volunteer work
• Industry conferences

Step 6: Determining the right resume format

Now that you’ve completed your resume sections, next choose the resume format that best fits your level of work experience. This will help emphasize the most significant sections of your resume.

Most users will opt for a chronological or combination resume format as it works with their skills and experience. However, those with little or no work experience, or job seekers with large gaps in their employment history, should consider using the functional format.

Functional

Combination

Chronological

Step 7: Select a resume template

Consider the employer and industry when making your selection. A colorful creative template would be a great fit for a design position. The simplicity and easy readability of a traditional template is often perfect for fields like banking and law. A sleek modern template is a happy medium between the two and is a versatile choice for many industries.

Traditional

Modern

Creative