Most people start a resume by opening a blank document and typing their name. Then they stare at it for twenty minutes. The faster way is to collect everything first, pick a structure, and only then write. Done in that order, a solid first version takes about an hour.
Below is the exact sequence we recommend, with examples you can copy and adapt.
Step 1: Collect your raw material
Before you write a single sentence, open a notes file and dump everything you might need. Don’t filter yet.
- Every job from the last 10–15 years: title, employer, city, start and end month.
- Education: degree, school, years. Add your thesis or final project only if it relates to the jobs you want.
- Certificates, licences and courses (driving licence, language certificates, IT certifications, first aid).
- Languages and your honest level.
- Numbers you can prove: sales figures, team size, budgets, number of customers per day, tickets solved, exam pass rates.
- Links: LinkedIn, portfolio, GitHub.
The numbers are the part people skip, and they are the part recruiters remember. If you don’t know them exactly, an honest estimate (“about 40 calls a day”) is fine.
Also open two or three job adverts for the role you want. You will use their wording later.
Step 2: Pick the format
Use the reverse-chronological format: latest job first, then the one before. Recruiters expect it, applicant tracking systems read it without trouble, and it shows progression at a glance. Functional resumes (skills first, dates hidden) tend to make recruiters suspicious, so we don’t recommend them except in rare cases. If you have long gaps or are changing careers, a combination format is the better compromise. We compare all three in our guide to the best resume format.
Step 3: Write the header
The header holds your name, the job title you are targeting, email, phone number and city. That’s enough. Your full street address is not needed any more, and neither is your date of birth in most countries.
Use a professional email address. firstname.lastname@gmail.com works. partyking88@yahoo.com does not.
The job title under your name matters more than people think. Write the title from the advert (“Customer Service Representative”), not a vague label (“Hard-working professional”).
Step 4: Write your work experience
This is where most of the effort should go. For each job, list the title, employer, city and dates (month and year), followed by three to five bullet points.
Each bullet should describe something you achieved or owned, ideally with a number. Compare these two versions of the same job:
| Weak | Strong |
|---|---|
| Responsible for customer calls | Handled 60+ customer calls a day with a 96% satisfaction score |
| Did social media | Grew Instagram from 2,000 to 11,500 followers in 10 months |
| Helped with month-end close | Cut the monthly close from 8 to 5 working days by automating bank reconciliations |
Start each bullet with a verb (led, built, reduced, trained, negotiated) and keep it to one or two lines. If a job was more than ten years ago and unrelated to what you want now, one line is enough, or drop it.
Stuck on wording? Our builder has pre-written phrases for 13 job fields that you can add with one click and then edit. Replace the [X] placeholders with your own numbers.
Step 5: Add education
Degree, school, city and years. If you graduated more than a few years ago, that’s all. Recent graduates can add relevant courses, a final project or a grade if it is strong. Put education above work experience only if you are a student or graduated in the last year or two.
Step 6: Choose your skills
Six to ten skills is the right range. Go back to the job adverts from step 1 and pick the skills they mention that you genuinely have, using their exact wording. Mostly hard skills (Excel, SAP, Python, forklift licence, wound care), plus two or three soft skills that you can back up in your experience section. Our list of skills to put on a resume has examples by job.
Step 7: Write the profile summary last
The summary sits at the top, but you should write it at the end, once you can see what is strongest in the rest of the resume. Two to four sentences: who you are professionally, how many years of experience, your main strength and the kind of role you want.
Example for a sales representative:
Sales representative with 5 years of B2B experience in industrial distribution. Above target for the last three years, with a portfolio that grew from 60 to 95 accounts. Looking for a field sales role with a larger territory.
Avoid phrases that fit anyone (“motivated team player with excellent communication skills”). We collected resume summary examples for different jobs and career stages.
Step 8: Add extra sections only if they help
Languages are almost always worth including, especially in Europe. Courses and certifications help when they relate to the job. Volunteering helps when you have little work experience. Hobbies rarely help, unless they say something useful (marathon running for a role that values discipline, chess club organiser for a community manager job). References: write nothing, or “available on request”, and keep the actual names for later in the process.
Step 9: Design and length
Pick a clean template with clear headings, one or two fonts and a single accent colour. Avoid tables-within-tables, text inside images and icons instead of words, because applicant tracking systems may not read them. One page is right for most people with under 10 years of experience; two pages is fine beyond that. More on that in how long a resume should be.
Always send a PDF unless the employer asks for Word. It keeps your layout exactly as you designed it.
Step 10: Tailor and proofread
Sending the same resume to fifty companies is the most common mistake we see. You don’t need to rewrite everything for each application, but do adjust the job title under your name, reorder the bullets so the most relevant come first, and swap a few skills to match the advert. Ten minutes per application makes a real difference.
Then proofread. Read it out loud, check the dates line up, check every phone number digit, and ask one other person to read it. Sending a cover letter too? Our cover letter guide has a full example. Spelling mistakes are still one of the fastest ways to get rejected.
A faster route
If you would rather not fight with Word margins, you can do all of the above in our builder: choose a template or copy a resume example for your job, fill in the sections with live preview, and follow the resume score until it reaches 100%. Writing and previewing is free; you only pay when you want to download the PDF. (Wondering whether paying for any builder makes sense? We wrote an honest answer: is a resume builder worth paying for.)
