What to Put on a Resume: 7 Essential Sections

1. Contact information

Always include:

• Full name
• Phone number
• Professional email address (firstname.lastname@, not partygirl99@)
• City and state (full street address is unnecessary and a privacy risk)
• LinkedIn URL (customized, not the default random string)

Optional: personal website, GitHub (for developers), portfolio link (for designers/writers).

2. Professional summary or objective

A 2-4 sentence paragraph at the top that gives the recruiter a reason to keep reading. Include your title, years of experience, 2-3 key skills, and one quantified achievement.

Use an objective if you're entry-level or changing careers. Use a summary if you have 2+ years of relevant experience. See our objective vs summary guide for examples of both.

3. Work experience

This is the most important section. For each role, include:

• Job title
• Company name
• Location (city, state, or "Remote")
• Dates (month/year or year only)
• 3-5 bullet points starting with action verbs and including quantified results

Strong vs weak bullets

• Weak: "Responsible for managing social media accounts"
• Strong: "Managed 4 social media channels, growing followers 45% and engagement 62% in 8 months"

• Weak: "Helped with data analysis projects"
• Strong: "Built a predictive churn model in Python that identified at-risk accounts, recovering $380K in annual revenue"

For more examples, see our action verbs list and resume examples by job title.

4. Education

Include:

• Degree (B.S., M.A., etc.) and field of study
• School name
• Graduation year (or expected graduation)
• GPAonly if 3.5+ and you graduated within the last 2-3 years
• Relevant coursework, honors, or thesisonly if entry-level

Place education after work experience for experienced candidates, or before it if you're a recent graduate with limited work history.

5. Skills

List 8-12 relevant skills, prioritizing hard skills that the job description mentions. Group them by category for clarity:

• Languages: Python, JavaScript, SQL
• Tools: Tableau, Salesforce, Figma
• Certifications: AWS Solutions Architect, PMP

Mirror exact terms from the job posting, ATS match on specific keywords, and "Microsoft Excel" doesn't match "MS Excel" in every system.

6. Certifications (optional)

Include certifications that are relevant to the target role or industry-recognized. Format each as:

• Certification name · Issuing organization · Year earned

Examples: CPA, PMP, AWS Certified, Google Analytics, HubSpot Inbound Marketing, SHRM-CP.

If you have only 1-2, include them in the skills or education section instead of creating a separate section.

7. Projects & volunteer work (optional)

Especially valuable for entry-level candidates, career changers, and technical roles:

• Projects: personal projects, hackathons, open-source contributions, capstone projects. Include a brief description, technologies used, and results.
• Volunteer work: especially if it demonstrates leadership, relevant skills, or fills an employment gap.

Format these like work experience entries with title, organization, dates, and bullet points.

What to leave off a resume

• Photonot expected in the US/UK/Canada and can trigger bias
• Age, date of birth, marital status, religionirrelevant and potentially discriminatory
• Social Security number or government IDnever include this
• "References available upon request"this is assumed and wastes a line
• Salary history or expectationssave this for the interview
• Irrelevant hobbies"watching Netflix" adds nothing. Relevant interests (e.g., competitive chess for an analyst role) can stay.
• Every job you've ever hadgo back 10-15 years max unless older roles are directly relevant
• Outdated skillsdon't list Internet Explorer, Windows XP, or floppy disk formatting
• Objective statement (if experienced)use a summary instead