Put contact information, a targeted summary when it adds context, relevant skills, work experience, and education on a resume. Add projects, certifications, publications, volunteering, or awards only when they help prove fit for the target role.
Deciding what to include in a resume is an editing decision: each section should either establish eligibility, prove relevant capability, or help a reviewer understand your career context.
Direct answer
A typical experienced-candidate order is Contact, Summary, Skills, Experience, and Education. Students may move Education and Projects higher. The best order makes the strongest relevant evidence easy to find rather than following one rigid template.
Essential resume sections
Contact information
Include your name, a professional email address, and a reliable phone number. Add a city and region when location matters; a full street address is usually unnecessary. Include LinkedIn, a portfolio, or GitHub only when it is current and supports the application.
Professional summary
A summary can state your role, experience, specialty, and strongest relevant evidence in two to four lines. Skip it if it only repeats a generic objective or takes space from stronger proof.
Skills
List tools, methods, languages, credentials, and domain capabilities relevant to the job. Group technical skills when that improves scanning, and demonstrate important ones in experience or projects. See skills to put on a resume.
Work experience
For each relevant role, show job title, employer, dates, and concise achievement-focused bullets. Explain actions, scope, and outcomes without inventing numbers. Earlier unrelated roles can be shortened.
Education
Include the qualification, institution, and completion date or expected date when useful. Experienced candidates rarely need school-level details. Students can add relevant coursework, honors, or projects selectively.
Optional sections that can strengthen a resume
Projects help when they show skills not yet proven through employment. Certifications matter when current and relevant. Volunteering can demonstrate leadership or domain experience. Publications, patents, awards, languages, and professional memberships belong only when they affect the role or explain meaningful expertise.
Hobbies are optional. Include them when they add credible context—such as endurance coaching for a sports role—not as filler. References normally stay off the resume unless specifically requested.
What not to include
Do not include identification numbers, financial details, confidential employer information, false credentials, or sensitive personal data. Photos and demographic details vary by country; follow local conventions and anti-discrimination guidance. High-school applicants should avoid publishing a full home address or unnecessary information about minors.
Remove “references available on request,” generic claims such as “hard-working,” and outdated software that does not help the target application. Never hide copied job-description keywords in white text.
Adjust the content by career stage
Students can emphasize education, projects, activities, part-time work, and transferable skills. Career changers should surface relevant achievements from any setting and explain the transition briefly. Experienced professionals should prioritize recent scope and results while compressing old roles. Senior candidates need evidence of decisions, leadership, scale, and influence—not a longer list of routine duties.
Resume content checklist
- Every section helps evaluate fit for this role.
- Important requirements are supported by truthful evidence.
- Dates, titles, and qualifications are internally consistent.
- Contact and portfolio links work.
- The strongest evidence appears early.
- Optional material has not crowded out relevant experience.
- The exported document remains readable and selectable.
Put the sections in a clean layout
Use familiar headings and keep each role's title, employer, and dates together. The ATS formatting guide explains file types, columns, fonts, and text extraction. When the content is ready, build it in the resume builder and review the exported file rather than relying only on the editor preview.
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Continue with FreeATSThis guidance is educational and cannot guarantee an interview or predict a particular employer’s screening decision.