What should be on a resume

As with a resume summary, a resume objective should be around sentences. The most important part of your resume is your work experience. This is where you really sell yourself, displaying your past accomplishments and responsibilities. There are a lot of best practices for writing your work experience. As you can see, the work experience listings should be mentioned in reverse-chronological order - starting with the most recent job, going all the way back into the past.

Are you a student with no work experience? Check out our guide to writing an internship resume here. One of the most common resume mistakes is listing only responsibilities in your work experience section. Your responsibilities would be:. Coincidently, this is exactly the same list of responsibilities for every sales manager.

So, to stand out, you want to focus on mentioning achievements in your resume instead. Or in simple terms, how exactly you helped the company grow, reach quarterly quotas, and so on. Your day-to-day responsibilities probably involve:. An ATS for resume is software that helps companies filter through hundreds of resumes they receive per day. The key here is to tailor your resume to each job you apply. To do this, you need to mention the right keywords from the job ad in your resume. Now, to tailor your resume to these requirements, simply mention each in your resume, considering you have the relevant achievements and qualifications!

Here, you want to mention all your know-how that makes you the perfect candidate for the job. Hard Skills Measurable abilities.

This can be anything from coding in Python to knowing how to cook Thai cuisine. Soft Skills Personal skills. These are a mix of social skills, communication skills, personal traits, career attributes, and so on. Leadership, critical thinking, management, and communication, just to name a few.

For each hard skill you list, you want to mention your proficiency level:. You can coach other employees, and understand the skill on a high level. It should be much higher up, and should be visible when they open your resume on a computer without having to scroll down. Hiring managers will typically look here even before your skills section, so always be looking for opportunities to highlight technical skills and relevant job skills here. Instead, put bullets highlighting what you did in each job.

You can write a small introductory paragraph for each job, but most of the content should be in bullet format. The image above is an example of a resume work experience section with accomplishment-driven bullets. You might be tempted to put your skills before your employment history… and other people may have even told you to do this.

But the only time I think it makes sense to list skills first is if you have absolutely no work experience. The bottom line is: If you want a good resume, then your skills should come after your experience section. You should focus mostly on hard skills. The best skills to put will be found directly on the job description. Some people might only need ; others might put And think about keywords too — this is a great place to put keywords on your resume so you can get past online job application systems.

Put the name of your school s , your field of study, and graduation date — unless you feel your graduation date will leave you open to age discrimination on your resume. If you graduated decades ago, feel free to leave the dates off. You can also put your GPA in this section. Otherwise, leave it off. Just exclude it from your resume. If you got an academic award, you can list it under your education section beneath your degree, GPA, etc. If you received an award or recognition for outstanding performance at a previous job, you can list it as a bullet point or a note underneath that specific job in your Employment History section.

You can present your work experience in a variety of ways. The most straightforward way is the chronological format. List your current or most recent job, and work backwards in time. Include your job title, your employer's name, the city and state in which it is located. Also list the start and end dates month and year of your employment. For each position, add a summary of your responsibilities and accomplishments. Learn about the three types of resume formats chronological, functional, and combination resumes and resume keywords and action verbs.

List your educational accomplishments, starting with your most recent or highest degree. Related: 20 Skills in Demand in Today's Workforce. Carefully review the job posting for clues on which of your technical and soft skills will be most important and relevant.

A resume summary will describe your work experience, while a resume objective will state your short-term goals. A summary is good if you have at least some work experience that can be quickly summarized. An objective statement, however, is better suited for those who have recently graduated from high school or college, or who otherwise have limited job experience.

The resume education section is helpful for employers who require a certain degree, certificate or level of experience. You should include your most recent and relevant education based on your level of experience. The elements of an education section should include:. Consider only listing educational experiences as they make sense for your career experience. As such, high school graduates should list their high school information, but college graduates need not list their high school.

However, once you have a post-secondary degree of any kind, you should always list that and any other post-secondary educational experiences in your education section. Hillvalley Technical College Aug.

Related: How to List Education on a Resume. Here, you should list all of your most relevant work experiences, beginning with your most recent job. You should focus on your experiences from the last 10 to 15 years. Alternatively, if you have little to no job experience , you should list what employment you have had, even if it does not seem completely relevant or related.