Table of Contents
- Picking the Right Format Reverse-chronological Functional and Combo
- Basic Formatting
- The One-Pager Resume
- Core Resume Sections
- Contact Information
- Summary or Objective
- Work Experience
- Education
- Skills
- Bonus Sections
It’s important to get your resume layout right.
Imagine spending hours and hours perfecting your resume. Filling in all your experiences, following all the resume best-practices, and perfecting the content to the smallest detail is exhausting.
All of that will be pointless if you don't nail your resume layout. After all, what’s important at the end of the day is how readable your resume is.
If the recruiter has to spend half an hour trying to make sense of it, they won’t even bother! And there goes all your hard work down the drain.
So before you even start working on your resume, you should make sure that your layout is top-notch: Have a look at these resume templates for inspiration. Then, read on to discover the best tips on resume layout.
In this guide, we will teach you…
- Which resume format to pick, and why
- Formatting your resume: Fonts, margins, etc.
- The one-pager best-practice: why your resume shouldn’t be too long
- The how and why of the core sections of your resume
- What other sections you could add to the resume
If you want to skip the entire formatting thing, you could use a resume builder. Let the pros do it so you don't have to.
Before digging into the different sections of the resume, you have to decide which format you’re going to follow.
There are 3 types of resume formats - reverse-chronological, functional & combo. In about 90% of the cases though, you’ll end up using the first.
- Reverse-chronological - Your typical resume format. You list your work experience in reverse chronology, starting from your latest job and ending with your first.
Functional - Rather than talking about your work experience, a functional resume is focused on your skills. You divide your experience and skills in “themes” and mention the relevant accomplishments with each. Here's an example:
In this example, the emphasis is placed on the SKILLS section of the resume, showing what the candidate can directly contribute to the position. The work experience comes secondary. Notice that there is an accomplishment added to each skills section.
- Combo - This is a mix of the other two formats. That means that you’ll mention both your work experience in reverse-chronology, as well as different skills, accomplishments, qualifications, etc.
Looking at the highlighted areas, you will see that this resume includes both detailed experience information and skills divided into sections + accomplishments.
Chances are, regardless of your industry or experience level, that you'd go for the reverse-chronological resume - it’s the most common of the 3, and it’s every recruiter’s favorite.
Basic readability for your resume is essential - if you use Comic Sans as a font, for example, you’ll have the recruiter laughing all the way to the trash bin.
Some general guidelines on formatting are:
- Use an established font - Arial, Calibri, Georgia, Helvetica
- Stay consistent - use one, maximum of 2 fonts (if you want your headers to stand out)
- Use bold & italics to point attention to specific sections or points
- If you’re using a Word resume, set your margins to one inch (or just use a resume builder, those have it preset)
When it comes to your resume layout, the beauty’s lies in the details. Check out the Top 22 Fonts For Your Resume.
“So how long should my resume be, anyway?”
You’ve probably pondered the question before - and maybe still are. The answer differs based on the length of your career.
If in some weird universe, the recruiter is happy to read all 200 pages of your career-biography, then you could go for as many pages as you want! That, however, is not the case.
On average, the recruiter spends 6 seconds looking at each resume - and you’ve got to make that time count. Are 6 seconds enough to list your entire life story? Definitely not.
As a simple rule, keep your resume down to one page. Have a look at these resume templates for a real-life example.
If you’ve got years and years of experience under your belt, then you might even go for 2, but in most cases, that’s not recommended.
If you’re a seasoned professional with 20 years of experience, you might be tempted to list every single one of your accomplishments. Don’t. Chances are, the job you’re applying for doesn’t involve using every single one of your skills.
Focus only on your relevant experience. Take a look at the following example:
Correct
Web Developer, 2015 Sep - 2017 Jul
Boston, Massachusetts
MadeUpAgencyInc.
Web Developer, 2013 Jun - 2015 Sep
Salt Lake City, Utah
OtherMadeUpAgencyInc.
Incorrect
Marketing Expert, 2013 Jun - 2015 Sep
Salt Lake City, Utah
MadeUpMarketingAgency
Web Developer, 2013 Jun - 2015 Sep
Salt Lake City, Utah
MadeUpTechAgency
Cashier, 2013 Jun - 2015 Sep
Salt Lake City, Utah
MadeUpRetailInc.
Still not sure how many pages your resume should be? Check out our guide: How Long Should a Resume Be: Everything You Need to Know.
Regardless of the field you’re in, you’re going to need to include the same sections in your resume.
Here are the most important sections your resume should feature.
The contact information section is the first thing you put on your resume, so it should go right on top. It’s extremely important to get it right. Even if your resume is the holy grail of all resumes, you’re still not getting a call-back if you typed in your phone number wrong.
In your contact information, you need to mention…
First Name / Last Name
Phone Number
Location
The first 3 are self-explanatory. The location, though, is also very important - the recruiter needs to know that you’re actually based in the area and aren’t just applying for random jobs from the other end of the world.
Now, let’s pull all that into an example…
Correct
Keep in mind, though, that you should be extra careful with the contact information section. If there’s a typo in your email or you forget to mention your area code, you lose your chances with all the companies you’re applying for!
Incorrect
You really don’t want to get your contact information wrong. Learn how to list your contact information in a way that you get a call back every time!
Under the contact information section, you can add either a resume summary or an objective.
The summary is an “introduction” to your resume, briefly summarizing your work experience.
The objective, on the other hand, is your sales pitch - it should explain why you want to work for that company.
Both of these should be around 4 to 5 sentences and located right under your contact information.
Unless you’re a recent graduate with no work experience, you probably want to go for the resume summary.
In most cases, your resume summary should mention:
- Years of Experience
- Industry-related Experience
- Achievements
- Relevant Education
Let's look at this example:
Proactive account manager with 5+ years of experience working in a fast-paced environment looking for new opportunities. Passion for working at startups; self-motivated, ready to walk the extra mile. A-player, having the highest sales in MadeUpCompany for 2 months in a row, totaling over $50,000. B.A. in business administration.
Want to go for a resume objective instead? Learn how to do that with our guide! Or, if you’d like to learn more about the resume summary, we’ve got you covered there too!
Here, you list your work experience, starting from your latest job and ending with your first. The work experience will be the core of your resume layout, since it's the most important section.
The location of your work experience in your resume is interchangeable with education - both go under your contact information and summary/objective.
In most cases, you’d want to put your work experience first, since that’s what’s going to get you the job. If, however, you’re a student with not much experience, you can put education on top instead.
The typical work experience formatting is as follows…
Position + Dates
Company Name / Location
Company Description
*Responsibility or Achievement
*Responsibility or Achievement
*Responsibility or Achievement
Now, let’s turn that into an example…
Work Experience Example
Account Manager, 2014 Sep - 2017 Jul
Boston, Massachusetts
MadeUpSalesFirmInc.
*In charge of acquiring new clients through cold calling & maintaining relations with the old ones
*Closed deals numbering in $15,000 per month on average
*Recognized employee of the month for June 2015, hitting a record number of monthly sales at $55,000
There’s more to listing your work experience than just mentioning your responsibilities. Learn why achievements matter and how numbers can save your career with our Step-By-Step Guide to Listing Your Resume Work Experience Section.
Or, if you're a student with no work experience, we've got you covered too with our Complete Guide to Writing a Student Resume (10+ Examples).
As we’ve mentioned before, your education comes before or after your work experience section. Listing education is pretty standard - there’s not that much you can really invent here.
The typical formatting for education iS:
Type of Degree + Field of Study
University Name + Duration
GPA
Honors or Distinctions
Check out this eample:
education listing example
B.A. in Business Administration
Sheffield University, 2012 - 2016
3.76 / 4.0
Have more questions on listing education? Have a look at How to List Education on a Resume (10+ Examples and Tips).
Mentioning your skills on a resume is essential - how else is the recruiter supposed to know that you're a Javascript wizard, for example?
This section’s pretty simple, all you have to do is list your soft & hard skills & mention your expertise along with them.
Skill listing
Javascript - IntermediateHTML - Expert
CSS - Expert
Never lie about your experience with certain skills, though. The recruiter will find out eventually, and you’ll both end up wasting time for nothing.
Listing soft skills, on the other hand, can be a bit different. The problem with those is that they’re not tangible. Everyone can just mention that they have “leadership” skills on their resume - whether they’re the CEO of a multi-million dollar company or just a student.
If you’d like your soft skills to have an impact, try mentioning specific experiences.
soft skill listing example
Leadership - held managerial positions throughout half of my career, experienced in leading teams of 10+
Not sure which skills to mention in your resume? Check out our 50+ Skills to Put on a Resume [Key to Get a Job] guide.
Depending on your field and experience, there might be some other sections you’d want to add to your resume.
These don't have much of an effect on your resume layout, since formatting them is pretty simple. So, let’s go through each of them briefly.
Bonus Section Listings
- Languages - list them & mention your level (beginner, intermediate, fluent, native)
- Hobbies & Interests - while this definitely isn’t a mandatory section in your resume, you can still mention them, hoping to find something in common with the recruiter
- Awards & Scholarships - these go with your education. You can mention them in bullet points under your GPA, for example
- Publications - this one’s a bit tough since chances are, your resume is going to be printed, and any links you mention will be obsolete. The best you can do with this is to mention the link if it’s brief (website.com/article-name), or make it easy to find on Google (publication name, article name, publication date)
- Projects & Portfolio - this works with just about the same formatting as your work experience. Mention project name, date, achievements, etc.
Hobbies can, surprisingly, be good for your resume (and career). Learn how & why to mention hobbies on your resume with our guide.
Conclusion
Now that you know how the resume layout works, you might want to master the content. Having a working layout is just the step #1 of creating a killer resume.
Learn everything there is to know about creating a resume with our complete guide.
If you already know how that works, though, then you might just want to start building your resume.