How to write a resume (expert tips & examples)

Whether you’re seeking your first job or advancing your career, a well-crafted resume can help you showcase your unique abilities and tell your story to set you apart in a competitive job market.  

According to a leading recruitment study, candidates have 7.4 seconds to make an impression, so a well-written resume can help you land your dream job.  

Read on to learn how to create and tailor a resume so you can exceed expectations and advance to the interview stage. 

How to write a resume that gets you hired 

1. Review your goals and list your career history  

If you’re creating and updating your resume, it's likely that you’ve found a job that you want to apply for. As always, a little bit of planning can go a long way.  

Prepare key information, such as your educational history, degrees, certifications, working history, professional and technical skills, and any personal or volunteering interests relevant to your ideal job.  

Gathering this information before writing your resume can speed up your resume creation workflow and help you customize your resume. 

Pro tip: If you’re a recent graduate with no work history, compile a list of university coursework, projects and internships instead.  

2. Choose your resume format and layout   

Your resume is your chance to shine. Choosing the right resume format will help you showcase your skills and experience to help you get that next job. You can choose between a chronological resume, functional resume or a combination/targeted resume.  

• Chronological: Ideal for those with a solid work history and want to display their career progression. Craft this resume type like a highlight reel of your professional life; it's a timeline of your work history starting with your most recent job and working backwards and is great for showing career development.   

• Functional: Focuses on your most impressive career achievements. It’s perfect for candidates who want to showcase relevant skills and accomplishments, rather than share every job they’ve ever had. Use it to highlight your transferable skills and show agility, particularly when you have lots of metrics to back up your achievements.    

• Combination or targeted: Begins with a summary of your skills and achievements, followed by a chronological list of your work experience. It's perfect for people who have key highlights, achievements and want to showcase their career progression too.   

3. Add your name, contact and LinkedIn information 

Place essential information about you at the top of your resume, where it’s easy to find. This includes your name, best contact email address, location and mobile number.  

This is the first thing your recruiter will see, so ensure the information is clearly laid out and the font is easy to read. You could also choose a larger font for your name to make it eye-catching.  

Ensure that your email address is suitable for professional contexts. If it’s too casual or quirky, it will hamper your first impression.  

You can also link to your LinkedIn profile, as it will showcase your personal brand and help the hiring manager know where to look for further information once they review your resume. It’s proven to increase your chances of a callback from the recruiter. Consider creating a custom LinkedIn profile URL so it’s easy to link to from your resume.

Did you know? It’s totally acceptable to skip a profile photo in your resume. While it was common practice to add photos to a resume in the past, it’s not mandatory. In fact, a casual or inappropriate photo can come across as unprofessional and affect how receptive the recruiter is to the rest of your resume.  

4. Craft a professional summary or career objective  

Use your professional summary to prove your knowledge and tell your career story, your way. Treat this section as a sneak preview, limiting it only to 2-3 sentences, and write it in a compelling tone so the hiring manager keeps reading your resume. It’s important to tailor the objective statement to the job or industry you're targeting. 

Here’s an example of how to write a summary for a resume:

Analytical, organized and detail-oriented accountant with GAAP expertise and experience in public accounting. Collaborative team player with ownership mentality and track record of delivering high quality strategic solutions to propel business growth.

Avoid over generalizations and buzzwords and lean on industry accepted phrases instead. It’s a good idea to use keywords from the job ad or job description since this shows you’re aligned to the requirements of the role. However, the rest of your resume will need to back it up too. 

A career objective works great for those with no experience, or those applying for a career change. This statement looks ahead towards the future, and you can try to pitch yourself to have the transferable skills required to meet this role.

Here’s an example of how to write a career objective for a resume:

To lead the development of a revolutionary artificial intelligence platform that will disrupt the financial industry and enhance customer experience, by collaborating with cross-functional teams and delivering on time, within budget, and with the highest quality standards.

5. Share your work experience  

The work history section is where you can paint a picture of why you’re the most suitable candidate.  

Planning tip: Share a narrative about your contributions in your previous work experiences to catch the attention of recruiters, rather than just listing every job you’ve ever held: - What abilities do you have?   - What problems have you successfully solved?   - What can you share to prove it? 

Tailor your work history 

• Specific and verifiable: Share a clear overview of your job titles, company names, employment timeframes and key tasks and achievements in each role. Recruiters always need to understand your career path and may even reach out to previous employers to check in on your contributions. Stay honest true and avoid embellishments. 

• Use a storytelling framework: Organize your work experience in a way that tells a story about your skills, work achievements, wins and impact. Two common frameworks are STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Result), and ACE (Action, Context, Impact). Using a storytelling framework can help you showcase your skills and stand out from other applicants. 

• Industry keywords: Use keywords and phrases that are relevant to the job you’re applying for, which indicates your knowledge of the relevant topics. 

• Showcase achievements with metrics: This is done by adding quantifiable metrics like percentage increases, referring to year-on-year changes, quantifiable process improvements, sales growth as well as contributions to company culture. An example of how to include metrics in your resume would be, "Managed accounts payable process for 300+ vendors, optimizing payment schedules, leading to a 20% increase in early payment discounts".

Edit your work experience 

• Use reverse chronological order: Start from the most recent role and work backwards. Only list the most relevant roles to reduce the length of your resume and make it targeted.

• Use action verbs: Update your job highlights and achievements to include strong, industry-relevant action verbs. 

• Use correct tenses: Make sure to move appropriately between tenses while referring to ongoing jobs and past roles. Use present continuous tense when talking about your current job (such as "overseeing", "leading", "collaborating"), and past tense when sharing experiences from previous jobs (such as "oversaw", "led", "collaborated").

6. Include skills and platform knowledge 

Select a mixture of technical and soft skills that you’re confident in, and list them in this section. It’s not a section for storytelling—it's about getting straight to the point by listing skills, so they stand out immediately. 

For example, a software engineer can list the coding languages they know, software programs they are proficient in and collaborative and problem-solving skills they have while a project manager could focus on task management software and stakeholder communication skills.  

Soft skills are less testable than technical skills, so it’s important to avoid being vague. Soft skills like curiosity, adaptability, growth mindset reflect better on you as a candidate rather than generic terms like “communication” and “leadership”. Get inspired by referring to this list of ideas. 

Pro tip: Choose a bulleted list rather than presenting your skills in tables or using proficiency graphics to ensure your skills are ATS-friendly.   

7. List degrees and certificates 

The education section of your resume should be easy to skim and targeted to the job you’re applying for. Order them in reverse chronology, from most recent to earliest.  

Include information about your degree, major, college/institution, such as the degree title, university, location, graduation date and your GPA. If you’re still in school, you can label your ongoing degree as “unfinished” and add the expected graduation date.  

If you left school or have deferred your studies without completing your degree, you can label it as “paused” and write an expected graduation date if you plan to complete it. If you haven’t pursued tertiary education, consider mentioning any certificates or trainings you may have held in high school.  

Only add information about your certificates or upskilling courses if they are relevant to the job description. It helps demonstrate that you are open to learning and growing, and this mindset is a positive indicator to hiring managers. 

8. Include optional details like volunteering and passions 

Your resume can include optional sections including additional skills, volunteering, mentoring, industry memberships or professional affiliations. Today's recruiters are interested in finding a good cultural fit for their companies so adding these details can improve your chances of an interview call.  

Mentioning your affiliations can show that you're actively engaged in your industry. It also signals your mindset, your proactivity and passions outside of your day job. 

You can also get creative by including infographics such as an additional skills matrix, a word cloud of your passion projects, a timeline of your volunteering activities and badges, among other ideas. Remember that these must be concise and shouldn't extend your resume too much—recruiters are time poor and will only be skimming through it.  

How to proofread your resume 

Proofreading is a step you shouldn’t skip if you want to present yourself to your hiring manager in the best possible light.  Accuracy and attention to detail are important in the day-to-day for any job role. Having a mistake on your resume can affect the impression you make on your hiring manager. You can ask for a perspective from a trusted friend, or simply follow this list of proofreading steps:   

1. Check spellings and grammar: Polish your resume sections by doing a spell check, grammar check and inserting the correct punctuations. For example, bulleted lists do not require periods. If you're creating a resume on Word, use Microsoft Editor.

2. Review the flow of content: Review your sentence structure and choice of tenses to ensure that your resume has a clear and logical flow, with each section leading smoothly into the next. Job roles from the past should be written in the past tense, while ongoing jobs should be written in the present continuous. Consistency can make your resume easier to understand.    

3. Rewrite adjectives and verbs: Update your adjectives and verbs to instill confidence in readers. Use strong, industry-relevant action verbs where possible as they can emphasize your impact. A few examples of action verbs suitable for resumes are “managed”, “developed”, “improved”, “achieved”, “outperformed”, among others. Check out our list here.    

4. Fact-check numbers and metrics: As you need to write about experiences from the past in resumes, and it's possible to get the numbers incorrect or mixed up. Inaccurate data can reduce your credibility, so fact check any sales projections, metrics/percentages, project results, and your educational GPAs. 

3 interesting resume trends to explore in 2025

While you’re in the resume creation process, you can also consider joining a job-seeking trend, such as: 

1. Sharing micro-resumes: There is also a trend for micro-resumes, which are more like an elevator pitch in written form. With the growth of the gig economy, and rise in freelancers, and casual jobs online like social media creators, a micro resume is a very effective way to get spotted. It can be hosted on platforms like Twitter, a personal website, or a link aggregator on your social media.    

2. Creating video resume applications: Resume videos are a trend that can help you stand out from the crowd. It's suitable for marketing roles, sales roles, design roles, teaching rules, and jobs where once own personality, communication skills, and online presentations skills are valuable. It's often created as a slideshow video format with a webcam overlay of the candidate speaking.   

3. Enhancing resumes with AI: Innovative job seekers have been using AI to get through a bout of writer's block and create resume drafts by providing basic information about the job description and position. While it's a time-saving hack, AI can only work with the information it's given so the quality of resume depends on the AI prompt entered. It may also embellish some accomplishments so the text should be proofread to ensure there’s no exaggerating or lying on a resume.

3 good resume template examples to inspire you

Kickstart building your resume with ATS-friendly resume templates. Simply choose a template, customize the text, add your personal information, skills, education, and work experience, and save your resume as a Word doc or PDF file. 

See it in action: ATS friendly resume

See it in action: Modern resume design

See it in action: Simple professional resume design

Next steps: Create a matching cover letter 

Get organized for the remaining elements of your professional job application and read our guide to creating a professional cover letter with Word.

Ready to put your new resume writing skills into action? Choose from a range of ATS-friendly resume templates and make the best first impression when you get started with Word resume builder.