How to write a resume - a step-by-step guide with examples

A resume isn’t just an inconvenient necessity for job seekers, it’s their passport to a better job, a higher salary, and a happier life. Think about it - your resume is actually one of the most important financial documents you’ll ever own, as it has a direct impact on your career. That means it has a direct impact on whether you can pay the bills, take a holiday, and plan for retirement.

Without a doubt, your resume can open doors to a better life. WIth that in mind, this article will delve deep into how to write a resume. We’ll cover the wording, the layout, and even whether AI can write it for you. With this step-by-step guide, you’ll be well positioned to put your best foot forward in the job search and make a great first impression on hiring managers. 

Your new career awaits… let’s get ready to grab it!

Understanding resume fundamentals 

Before we go any further, let’s just clarify what we mean by “resume.” A resume is different to a cover letter, as it provides a comprehensive overview of your skills, experience, and qualifications, in a structured format, enabling recruiters and prospective employers to evaluate your suitability for their vacant position. 

It’s purpose is: 

• To emphasise your key qualities in relation to the target role

• To show how you can add value to a new company, and ultimately…

• To win interviews!

Remember, the resume doesn’t get you the job, it gets you into the room. In the interview, you’ll have the chance to elaborate further and let your personality shine through, convincing the interviewer that you’re the right person for the job. 

How to write a resume in five steps

Step 1 - Collate the information you need

There’s certain information that you’re going to need as you write your resume, and it will help if you have everything ready to go before you start. There’s nothing to interrupt the flow of writing quite like having to stop and dig about in the attic for long-forgotten documents. 

Gathering this information is likely to require a combination of paperwork, online digging, and brainstorming. The main information we’re looking to note down at this stage is: 

• Dates: You’ll need the start and end dates of every job you’ve held in the last 10-15 years, as well as the dates you finished any qualifications and training courses

• Employer names and job titles: If you have a long career behind you, this will need a bit more head-scratching than if you’re relatively new to the workforce

• Qualifications: Whether academic, professional, in-house, online, formal or informal, make a note of every course you’ve completed

• Job descriptions: If you’ve retained any of your job descriptions, it will help to have them to hand - even though you certainly won’t be copying them wholesale

• Skill clarity: An awareness of your main professional skills, including both hard and soft skills, will provide a good starting place

• Job adverts: The best resumes are tailored to specific roles (or at least specific types of role), so knowing what you’re aiming for is invaluable

Step 2 - Select an appropriate resume format

For most people, the reverse-chronological format is the best option. It’s worth considering the other types of format though, as one size never fits all. Choose from the following three formats: 

• Reverse-chronological: Ideal for people with a linear career path and consistent work history, aiming for a similar role or the next step up. Preferred by hiring managers and recruiters, but unforgiving of long career gaps or career changes. 

• Functional (or skills-based): Puts the emphasis on transferable skills, so often preferred by job-seekers with employment gaps and those looking to change career. Harder for recruiters to work with and can look like there’s something to hide. 

• Combination (or hybrid): Combines both the reverse-chronological and functional formats, to give the best of both worlds, but can result in a much longer document. 

Step 3 - Choose an appropriate resume layout

If you ask 100 people about the best resume layout, you’ll get 100 different answers. There’s no right or wrong format, but you can’t go wrong if you keep these guidelines in mind:

• Font: Choose a sans serif font, which tend to look more modern and are easier to read on a screen. Make sure it’s widely available (for example, Arial, Calibri, or Aptos) and choose an easily readable font size (we recommend 10-12 point).

• White space: Your aim is to make the resume easy to scan through, so that your reader can quickly pick out the salient points. With that in mind, try to keep plenty of white space between sections, avoid small margins, and don’t write long paragraphs. 

• Headings: Your section headings should stand out so that the resume is easy to navigate - choose a large font size or a different colour.

• Colour: And while we’re on the subject, keep the resume looking professional. Black and white is conventional, but one other accent colour can provide interest and emphasis.

• File format: Your resume should always be saved as a Word document or a PDF.  

Step 4 - Draft your resume

You’ve done the prep - it’s time to start writing! Ease yourself into it gradually by getting your headings in place. Every strong resume will need the following key components. 

• Contact information

• Professional profile (also known as a summary)

• Skills 

• Professional experience

• Qualifications

You may need other sections, depending on your personal situation - consider what will best sell you into the role. For example, you may choose to include additional headings for IT skills, languages, professional development, or publications. The key is to ensure that everything you include is relevant to the role you’re applying for. 

We’ll look in detail at what to include in each of these sections below.   

Step 5 - Finalise your resume

By now, you should have a strong resume, with a professional layout and impactful wording. It’s not quite time to send it off yet, though! Finalise it with these steps: 

• Tailor the resume: What you’ve produced so far is a master document. Save it with a new file name (your name and target job is ideal) and tailor it to the job you’re applying for. That means deleting any irrelevant detail, tweaking the wording to match with keywords from the advert, and ensuring that the profile section is fully aligned with what they need. 

• Proofread: There’s no point doing all that work and then realising there’s a mistake as soon as you hit the Send button. Proofread, proofread again, then ask a trusted friend or colleague to proofread it too. 

• Maintain: Your resume is a living document. It’s hard to update it when you’ve left it unloved on your hard drive for years. Open and refresh it every six months or so, while your successes are still fresh in your mind. 

Summary of the resume-writing process

Step 1: Collate information up front

Step 2: Select the most suitable resume format

Step 3: Decide on your layout

Step 4: Draft the resume

Step 5: Tailor and proofread

Those are the five basic steps to creating a great resume, but we promised more detail on the actual content - and that’s what we’re giving you! After all, content is king when you’re selling yourself. 

How to write a good resume - key components and content 

Let’s look in depth at what should be included in each of the sections we mentioned above. 

Contact information 

This isn’t too basic to cover - it’s not unusual to see resumes with no contact details at all, as the applicant has been so wrapped up in writing about their career! 

Start with your name as the header for the document. If you prefer, you can use a shortened version of your name here (e.g.: Kate instead of Catherine), but do include both a given name and a surname. 

Consider adding a headline - something that will immediately tell the reader what you do and what you’re aiming for. Usually, a job title is sufficient but you can expand on this if you feel it would sell you better. Keep the headline as short as possible and certainly no more than one line. 

You want the recruiter to get in touch to arrange an interview, so next add your mobile phone number and email address. 

Recruiters often check candidates out online now. Direct them to the information you want them to see and grab the opportunity to provide more details in support of your application by adding a hyperlink to your LinkedIn profile. 

Finally, location sometimes plays a part in the selection process. There’s no need to add your full address, but a city or state is standard. Alternatively, you could add “willing to relocate,” or “open to remote opportunities.”

If you have a professional website or portfolio, you can add a link to that - but it must be a professional site, relevant to your target role. Links to social media accounts and personal sites are to be avoided. 

Professional profile 

Possibly the hardest part of the resume to write, you may want to leave this part until last when you’ve considered and articulated your key qualities. Think of this section as your elevator pitch. Consider covering:

• What you do

• Any areas of expertise

• The industry you specialise in

• Your key skills relevant to the target role 

• How you can add value and contribute to the company

It’s considered best practice to write this in the silent third person (i.e. without using “I,” “me,” “my” or other pronouns). 

Skills 

A skills section immediately below your profile provides an at-a-glance summary of what you offer. Ideally, this section should be focused on job-specific hard skills. Even better, it should reflect keywords from the job advert. 

Hard skills are those that you need to do your job, such as computer programming, social media marketing, or mechanical engineering. Soft skills, also known as transferable skills, are ones that can be used in many different roles and industries. Examples include interpersonal skills, public speaking, and problem solving. 

While there’s no harm in including soft skills here, they can be rather subjective. Your resume will be stronger if you can demonstrate your soft skills by including concrete examples throughout your experience section. 

Between 6-12 skills is generally enough to give a solid overview without the list becoming unmanageable. 

Professional experience 

And now we get to the meat of the matter. This section is likely to be the longest, and most detailed, on the resume. It’s critical for providing your reader with a solid overview of your career, so it’s worth spending plenty of time here. 

Every role should have its own sub-heading, detailing your job title, employer name, and the start and end dates (just the month and year is sufficient). You may also like to include the location, particularly if you’ve worked internationally. 

Beneath the sub-heading, briefly summarise the purpose and remit of your role. This is generally formatted as a short paragraph of 4-5 lines. Again, no pronouns are needed, just dive straight in with solid action verbs. Use figures to help explain the scope of the role. 

Expert tip: Never simply duplicate your job description here. The paragraph should be short, sharp, and accurately reflect your day-to-day role. 

Finally - and this is what will set you apart from other candidates - add a bulleted list of achievements. Everyone achieves something at work so, even though accomplishments might be hard to identify at first, consider how the business has benefitted from employing you. Bonus points if you can quantify your successes!

Aim to start each bullet point with an active verb that clearly shows your contribution - for example, saved, reduced, increased, delivered, launched… the options are endless, so use a good variety to avoid repetition. 

Follow the same layout for every role you’ve held in the last 10-15 years. Earlier jobs can be added in an “early career summary” section, giving just job titles and employer names. Add dates too, as long as you’re sure that age discrimination won’t be an issue. 

 Led a team of 15 staff and managed a fleet of 5 vehicles. Delivered service excellence as the main customer contact for 7 building trade accounts. Identified new opportunities for business growth and negotiated with both suppliers and customers. 

• Expanded operations to 3 additional sites as the Project Lead, managing a $100,000 budget to ensure operational readiness within agreed deadlines

• Enabled the company to win a $50,000 new contract and reduce tool supply costs by $10,000 

• Exceeded KPIs for customer service and right-first-time deliveries 

Qualifications

After the professional experience, this section should be pretty straightforward. List your qualifications in reverse-chronological order; this will usually ensure that the most recent and high-level qualification is at the top. 

The information required is:

• Level (e.g.: degree, diploma)

• Subject

• Awarding institution

• Year of completion

Recent graduates should include more information, such as modules and projects completed. Anyone who graduated over 10 years ago can eliminate the completion date. 

If you’re working towards a qualification, you can still include it on your resume - just be sure to state that it’s still in progress or expected to be awarded by a certain date. 

Professional development, such as online learning, external training and in-house courses can either be included in this section or added under a separate professional development heading.

A note on ATS

ATS stands for Applicant Tracking System. These systems are nothing to fear - they’re simply a tool that helps recruiters to file and sort the hundreds of resumes they receive.

To ensure that your resume is accurately parsed by an ATS, bear in mind these guidelines: 

• Use a conventional format - graphics, images, and logos can be read incorrectly - or not at all

• Use relevant, job- and industry-specific keywords, particularly those you find in job adverts, to ensure your resume pops up in recruiter searches

• Remember that information in headers and footers may not get read, so don’t use them for critical information such as contact details

• Avoid special characters, such as ©, ½, é, as they can sometimes corrupt and appear as a blank box: ▯

Top ten resume writing tips and tricks

We’ve discussed in detail how to write a resume, but let’s just summarise some important points to bear in mind: 

1. Write with your reader in mind

2. Focus on your most recent and relevant jobs, qualifications, skills and achievements 

3. Stay laser-focused on the role in hand 

4. Explain - or even better, avoid - jargon and acronyms

5. Try not to split sections across pages, if it can possibly be avoided 

6. Quantify wherever you can

7. Consider what value you can add with additional sections

8. Double check that your resume is consistent within, and across, different sections

9. Positively explain career breaks

10. Avoid vague and lazy fillers such as “responsible for,” “etc.,” and “as required”

Top ten resume writing pitfalls to avoid 

We’ve discussed what makes a great resume, but what makes a bad one? Don’t make these common mistakes: 

1. Adding a photo - recruiters should ignore them, as they can lead to bias and discrimination.

2. Using an unprofessional email address - it’s time to ditch the account you set up as a teenager.

3. Throwing around cliches - precise and specific wins every time; don’t be tempted to say you’re a “hardworking team player who also works well independently.” 

4. Including an objective statement - your resume should be about what you can offer to a new employer, not what you want from them.

5. Giving too much detail - your resume is your shop window, you can elaborate on the details in an interview.

6. Not giving enough detail - don’t assume the recruiter knows what you did and understands the ins and outs of your role.

7. Hyperlinking - recruiters and hiring managers rarely have time to follow hyperlinks, but why would you want them to? Keep them focused on your resume, rather than distracting them by sending their attention elsewhere.

8. Telling, rather than showing - saying you can do something is a start, but it’s so much more impressive to provide a quantifiable example of when you actually did it.

9. References - there’s no longer any need to add contact details of your referees, or even “references available on request” - let’s face it, if the employer wants them, they’ll ask anyway!

10. Unhelpful file names - how many resumes do you think recruiters receive with the file name “resume” or “resume-April25?” Your name and target job title would be more useful.

Frequently Asked Questions

How far back should a resume go? 

We recommend adding the last 10-15 years in detail and summarising anything earlier than that. Dates relating to earlier roles and qualifications can be omitted if age discrimination could be an issue. 

How long should my resume be? 

In most cases, two pages is the perfect length for a resume. It’s long enough to give enough detail, but short enough to avoid drifting into irrelevance. Of course, a senior executive will have more to say than a recent graduate, so feel free to adapt the length to effectively sell you into the role. For a recent college leaver, one page will be sufficient. For a Board-level executive of a multinational corporation, three pages may be more appropriate. Any longer than three pages? Not advisable - it’s time to start ruthlessly editing!

How can I write a resume with no experience? 

If you’re looking for your first step on the career ladder, it’s likely you still have something to write in the professional experience section. Rename it to simply “experience” and add voluntary work, positions held at college or university, casual work for family or neighbours, positions on sports teams and temporary jobs. Focus on transferable skills, such as communication, teamwork, and problem solving, and include as many achievements as you can. 

Should I include a photo on my resume? 

Absolutely not! Photos are not expected on resumes. Consciously or unconsciously, recruiters and hiring managers could be influenced by the photo, rather than by your achievements and experience. It’s never a good idea to include anything that could lead to bias, including photos, age, nationality, marital status and more. Only include information that shows how well you can do the job in hand. 

Do employers like simple resumes? 

The most successful resumes are the ones that clearly show how you fulfil the company’s requirements. If you can keep your resume simple, in terms of layout and content, it can make the employer’s job easier. Initial scans of resumes are generally only a matter of seconds, so the faster the reader can see the pertinent information, the more likely they are to progress your application. 

What is a good resume template? 

We recommend staying away from premade resume templates. There are many available online, but the vast majority are created by designers rather than professional resume writers. They often include graphics and space for a photo, which we strongly advise against, and even the ones that don’t usually prioritise visuals over content. The best template is one that is created especially for your resume - unique, individual, and with the right amount of space for each section to show your accomplishments off to perfection. 

Can AI write my resume? 

It’s tempting to outsource the whole process, isn’t it? But remember, your resume is your personal career story. There’s no-one who knows that story better than you. 

Can AI write a resume? Certainly. But it will be remarkably similar to all the other resumes it writes. You can ask it to tailor the resume to a specific job description - and it will. But the resume you get out is only as good as the information you put in, and recruiters are very switched on to spotting AI-generated resumes. They look generic, low-effort, and generally low impact. 

So, while AI can write a resume, it can’t write your unique story in an impactful manner. 

You’re not alone!

We’ve covered a lot, but there’s so much to consider when you’re telling your career story! It’s vital that the final document is personal to you, shows off your qualities in relation to the vacancy, and is formatted and worded in such a way that the hiring manager immediately sees value in interviewing you. 

The task can seem overwhelming, but you’re not on your own here. TopResume has a team of expert writers on hand, ready to provide support whenever you need it. Send your resume for a free resume review, or dive straight in with a full service resume written for you.  Our writers know exactly how to write a resume in Australia and will work with you to develop your personal career narrative into a compelling professional document. Your next role is waiting - it’s time to take control of your job search!