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What to put on a resume

A good resume gets straight to the point. At the top: your name, target job and contact details (a professional email address, phone number, city and state, LinkedIn profile or website). Your age, date of birth, marital status and full street address aren't needed, and in the US and UK they're usually left off. Next comes a summary of a few lines about what you bring, then your work experience in reverse chronological order: job title, company, location, dates and bullet points, each starting with an action verb (“Led”, “Designed”, “Trained”). Quantify your results whenever you can, with your real numbers. Finish with education, skills, languages with your level (A1 to C2 on the European CEFR scale, or “native”, “fluent”, “conversational”) and a few specific interests rather than a vague list.

Resume or CV, which template, and should you add a photo?

In the US and Canada, this short document is called a resume; in the UK, Ireland and most other countries, it's called a CV (in the US, a CV usually means a longer academic record). All three templates hold the same information, so you can switch between them without retyping anything. Classic is plain and works in any field; Modern adds a sidebar and a touch of color; Compact tightens the layout to fit a rich career. Aim for one page, especially early in your career; two pages are fine with long experience, and are common for UK CVs. In the US, the UK and Canada, the norm is to leave the photo off; in countries such as Germany, France or Spain, a professional photo on a plain background is common. Choose Letter paper for the US and Canada, A4 for the UK and most other countries, and give the file a clear name, such as “FirstName-LastName-Resume.pdf”.

Getting past applicant tracking systems (ATS)

Many companies screen applications with an applicant tracking system, or ATS, which reads the text of your resume. To make sure it understands yours, send a PDF with real text, not an image or a scan. Stick to standard section headings, such as “Work Experience”, “Education” or “Skills”. Reuse keywords from the job posting when they genuinely match your background: job title, software, certifications. Don't put important information only in an image or an icon. The PDF you create here through your browser's print dialog contains selectable text: check it by copying a passage. To see what software can extract from a resume that's already a PDF, use “PDF to Text”.