How to write a resume: step by step, with real examples.

Step 1: Contact details

Put your name at the top, larger than anything else, followed by one line with your city and state, phone number, professional email and, if you have one, a LinkedIn or portfolio link. A full street address isn't needed.

Type these as plain text in the body of the page — not in the document's header area, which some applicant tracking systems skip, and not behind icons. Leave off a photo, date of birth, marital status and Social Security number; none of them belong on a US resume.

Step 2: A short summary

A summary is two or three lines that tell the reader who you are and what you're best at: your level, your focus and one result. It replaces the old "objective statement", which talked about what you wanted rather than what you offer.

Skip adjectives a reader can't check — "hard-working", "detail-oriented", "results-driven". A number or a named area of work does more. Here is how the same kind of summary changes with experience, from our data analyst resume example:

Stuck on yours? The free resume summary generator drafts one from your title, experience and strongest result, and you edit it from there.

Step 3: Experience, with achievement bullets

This is the section that gets read. List your jobs most recent first. For each one, give your job title, the employer, the city and state (or "Remote"), and start and end dates as month and year. Under each job, write three to six bullets — more for your current role, fewer for older ones.

Each bullet should show what changed because you were there, not what your job description said. A reliable pattern is:

Action verb + what you did + the result. A duty says what you were supposed to do; an achievement says what happened because you did it.

• Start with a strong verb — led, built, cut, launched, negotiated — not "responsible for" or "helped with". The resume action verbs list has alternatives by skill.
• Add a number when you have one — money, time, volume, people, percentages — and only numbers you could explain in an interview.
• No number? Show scope instead: how many people used it, how often, for whom, or what it replaced.
• Keep each bullet to one or two lines. If it wraps to a third, split it or cut the least useful words.

Here are duty-style bullets rewritten as achievements, taken from our resume examples:

If you have a bullet that still reads like a duty, paste it into the free resume bullet point generator and it suggests achievement-style rewrites you can edit with your real numbers.

Step 4: Skills

List the hard skills, tools and certifications the job calls for and that you'd be comfortable being asked about: software, programming languages, methods, equipment, languages you speak. One or two lines of comma-separated terms is easier to scan than a grid.

Name each skill the way the job post names it. If the posting says "Salesforce" and "forecasting", write those words, not "CRM tools" and "planning". The resume keywords pages list the terms that come up for each role.

Leave out rating bars, stars and percentages next to skills — a parser can't read them and a recruiter can't interpret "80% Excel". Soft skills such as communication or leadership are better shown in an experience bullet than claimed in a list.

Step 5: Education and certifications

Give your degree, school and graduation year (or "Expected May 2027" if you're still studying). Add honors, a relevant minor or a strong GPA only while you're a student or recent graduate; after a few years of work, the degree line is enough.

If you graduated recently and have little work history, move Education above Experience and add relevant coursework, projects or internships. Otherwise it sits below Experience.

Licenses and certifications that the job requires — RN, CPA, PMP, a teaching license — deserve their own short section or a clear line under Education, with the issuing body and the year.

Step 6: Tailor it to the job post

One resume sent to every opening reads like one. Keep a full master version with everything you've done, then make a copy for each application and adjust it:

1. Read the post twice. Mark the job title, the required skills and tools, and the two or three outcomes the role is clearly hired to deliver.
2. Mirror the wording where it's true. If you've done the thing, use the posting's term for it — in a bullet, and in your skills line.
3. Reorder. Put the bullets that match the posting first under each job, and move the most relevant job details up.
4. Rewrite the summary so its first line answers the posting's headline need.
5. Cut what doesn't help for this role, to keep the length in check.

Here is what that looks like in practice. In our data analyst resume example, the bullets themselves carry the skills recruiters search for — highlighted below — rather than leaving them in a list at the bottom:

Never add a skill or a result you don't have to match a post. Interviews test the resume, and a mismatch costs more than a missing keyword.

Step 7: Format it for ATS and for people

Many employers read applications through an applicant tracking system (ATS), which turns your file into text and sorts it into fields. Formatting that confuses the parser can leave your job history empty even when the page looks fine. Keep it simple:

• One column, with nothing side by side.
• Standard headings: Summary, Experience, Education, Skills.
• No tables, text boxes, icons or images in place of words.
• A common font at a readable size, with consistent dates and spacing.
• A text-based PDF — exported, not scanned — unless the posting asks for Word. Name it plainly, like Firstname-Lastname-Resume.pdf.

Length is part of formatting too: one page early in your career, two once your relevant experience fills them. The resume length guide covers each experience level, what to cut and the federal two-page rule.

To see how a parser reads your file, run it through the free ATS check. It flags columns, tables, missing contact details and inconsistent dates, and needs no account.

Step 8: Proofread before you send

Typos are the easiest reason to be passed over, and the easiest to fix. Proofread on a different day from the one you wrote it if you can, and check it against this list:

Then ask someone who knows your field to skim it once and tell you what they remember. If it isn't your strongest result, move that result higher.

Put it together: a full example

Here is a complete resume that follows every step above, rendered in one of LaunchCV's templates. Compare its bullets with your own: each starts with a verb and ends with what changed.

There are written examples for more roles — from registered nurse and teacher to software engineer and accountant — on the resume examples page, each with summaries and bullets you can adapt.

Next: the cover letter

Many applications still ask for a cover letter, and a short, specific one helps when you're changing careers or writing to a hiring manager directly. Start from the copyable cover letter template, which explains each paragraph and includes a filled-in example.

Keep "References available upon request" off the resume itself. Prepare a separate references page instead, and send it only when it's asked for.