What to put on a resume in 2026: your name and contact details, a short summary (or objective if you are new), work experience with three to five result-focused bullets per job, education, and 8 to 15 skills from the job posting. Add certifications, projects, languages or volunteering when they help this application. Leave off your photo, date of birth, full street address and references.
That is the whole list for a US resume, and every section below gets its own rules, examples and a copyable skeleton at the end. The part that decides interviews is not which sections you include but what goes inside them. In 33,746 resumes run through our free ATS resume checker (one per person, re-scored in September 2026), work experience content was the weakest category, averaging 76.4 out of 100, and 43.9% had bullets that describe duties with no result, outcome or number attached. Full figures are in our ATS résumé statistics study.
What goes wrong inside resume sections (33,746 resumes, OwlApply checker, September 2026)
- 43.9%
- had experience bullets that describe duties with no result or number
- 42.7%
- had a summary with no figure in it
- 80.9%
- listed skills where fewer than half appear in the experience, projects or summary
- 28.9%
- were told to add a country code to their phone number
What are the five key things to put on your resume?
The five key things to put on a resume are contact information, a professional summary, work experience, education and skills. Almost every employer expects all five, in roughly that order, and an applicant tracking system looks for them under those standard headings. Everything else, such as certifications, projects, awards or languages, is optional and earns its place only when it strengthens your case for the specific job.
- Contact information: name, phone, professional email, city and state, LinkedIn.
- Summary (or objective): two to four lines on who you are professionally and what you bring to this role.
- Work experience: job title, employer, location, dates, and three to five bullets with results.
- Education: degree, school, graduation year; GPA, honours and coursework if you are a recent graduate.
- Skills: 8 to 15 hard skills, grouped, in the posting's wording.
Resume sections in order: what to include in each
A standard US resume runs in this order: header, summary, experience, skills, education, then optional sections. Students and recent graduates move education up, and some technical candidates put skills right after the summary. The table gives the full list; the sub-sections below explain what goes inside each one.
| Order | Section | Required? | What to include |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Header / contact information | Yes | Full name, phone, professional email, city and state, LinkedIn URL; portfolio or GitHub if relevant |
| 2 | Summary or objective | Recommended | 2 to 4 lines: title, years, specialism, one or two results, aimed at this job |
| 3 | Work experience | Yes (or projects/internships) | Title, employer, city, month and year dates, 3 to 5 bullets with numbers |
| 4 | Skills | Yes | 8 to 15 hard skills grouped by type, in the posting's wording; languages with level |
| 5 | Education | Yes | Degree, major, school, city, graduation year; GPA and honours if recent and strong |
| 6 | Certifications and licences | When the job asks | Name, issuing body, year earned or expiry date, licence number if standard in your field |
| 7 | Projects | Students, career changers, technical roles | 2 or 3 projects with tools, scope and a result |
| 8 | Optional | Only if relevant | Volunteering, awards, publications, languages, professional memberships, relevant interests |
1. Contact information (the header)
Put your full name, phone number, professional email address, city and state, and a LinkedIn URL at the top of the resume. Add a portfolio, GitHub or personal site only if it shows work relevant to the job. Keep all of it in the body of the page, not in the document's header area, because some parsers skip that layer.
Two small things matter more than they look. Use an email made from your name, not a nickname from school. And if you apply across borders, write your phone number with its country code: 28.9% of the resumes in our sample were told to add one. In our file data, contact details placed in the header or footer band appeared on 4.1% of 3,313 PDFs and those files averaged about 13 points lower.
2. Summary or objective
Put a two-to-four-line professional summary under your header: your job title, years of experience, your specialism and one or two results with numbers, written for this specific job. If you are a student or changing careers, a short objective that names the target role and the strengths you bring does the same job.
The summary is where a number makes the biggest difference, and it is often missing: 42.7% of the resumes we scored had a summary with no figure in it. See resume summary examples for 40 versions by role, or career objective examples if you are starting out.
3. Work experience
For each job, put your title, the employer, its city and state, start and end dates (month and year), and three to five bullets. Each bullet should start with a verb, say what you did and end with a result, ideally a number. List jobs newest first and give detail to roughly the last 10 to 15 years; older roles can shrink to one line each.
This is the section that most needs work. It was the weakest of all 15 content categories in our checker data, and the usual problem is the one above: duties instead of results. "Responsible for social media" says what the job was. "Grew Instagram from 2,000 to 11,000 followers in a year with a three-posts-a-week calendar" says what you did with it.
| Duty (weak) | Result (strong) |
|---|---|
| Responsible for scheduling | Scheduled 40 staff across 3 shifts; overtime fell 18% in two quarters |
| Handled customer complaints | Resolved 25+ escalated complaints a week; repeat complaints dropped by a third |
| Worked on the company website | Rebuilt 12 product pages; organic sign-ups rose 22% in three months |
| Helped with month-end close | Cut month-end close from 9 days to 6 by automating 4 reconciliations in Excel |
Keep one date format all the way down. Dates were among the commonest small fixes we see: 26.2% of resumes were told to standardise their work experience dates.
4. Skills
Put 8 to 15 hard skills in a grouped, plain-text list, using the exact names the job posting uses, and make sure each one is proved somewhere in your experience or projects. Software, tools, methods, certifications and languages belong here. Soft skills such as "communication" are better shown in your bullets than listed.
This is where most resumes overreach. On 80.9% of the resumes we checked, fewer than half of the listed skills appeared anywhere in the experience, projects or summary. Our guide to skills to put on a resume has 200+ examples by job and six copyable skills sections.
5. Education
Put your degree, major, school, its location and your graduation year (or expected graduation). Recent graduates can add GPA if it is strong, honours, relevant coursework and a thesis or capstone. After a few years of work, cut it back to one line per degree, and once you have a degree, drop high school.
Ohio State's career guide suggests listing only schools where you earned a degree or certificate, and removing high school once you have more experience. If you are worried about age bias, you may leave off graduation years for degrees earned long ago; nothing requires you to include them.
6. Certifications and licences
Put certifications and licences that the job requires or values, each with its name, the issuing body, and the year earned or the expiry date. In licensed fields such as nursing, teaching, trades and accounting, this section can sit right under the summary because a recruiter checks it first.
7. Projects
Put two or three projects when you are a student, a career changer, or in a technical or creative field where your work can be shown. Give each project a name, the tools you used, your role and a result. Projects with dates are easier to place: 35.9% of resumes in our data were told to add project dates.
8. Optional sections: volunteering, awards, languages, interests
Add volunteering, awards, publications, professional memberships or languages when they relate to the job or fill a gap. Treat volunteering like a job, with bullets and results. Interests are worth a line only if they are specific and relevant, such as competitive chess for an analyst role or a food blog with real readers for a content role.
What should you not put on a resume?
Do not put a photo, your date of birth or age, marital status, religion, Social Security number, full street address, salary history or references on a US resume. Leave out jobs from more than about 15 years ago in detail, high school once you have a degree, and anything you could not discuss comfortably in an interview.
Most of the personal items are about bias, not looks. the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission enforces laws that bar employers from making hiring decisions based on race, colour, religion, sex, national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information, which is why many employers would rather not see a photo, a birth date or marital status at all. Harvard's career office gives the same advice in plain terms: do not include a picture, your age or gender, or a list of references.
| Leave off | Why |
|---|---|
| Photo | Standard in parts of Europe and Asia, not in the US, UK or Canada; invites bias and breaks single-column layouts |
| Date of birth or age | Not relevant to the job and protected from use in hiring decisions for people 40 and older |
| Marital status, children, religion, nationality | Protected or private information; nationality only matters if the posting asks about work authorisation |
| Social Security number, ID numbers | Identity theft risk; give them only on official forms after an offer |
| Full street address | City and state are enough; nobody mails you anything |
| "References available upon request" | Assumed by every employer; send references separately when asked |
| Salary history or expectations | Belongs in the conversation, not the resume, unless the posting asks for it in the application |
| Reasons for leaving | Too much to explain on paper; save it for the interview |
| Personal pronouns ("I", "my") | Resume style drops them: "Led a team of 6", not "I led a team of 6" |
| Skill bars, icons, rating dots | A parser cannot read them; skills-area charts averaged 70.5 in our file data against 89.4 for clean files |
| An unprofessional email address | Use a plain firstname.lastname style address |
| Lies or stretched dates | Background checks verify titles and dates; one false line can cost an offer |
Rules differ outside the US. A German Lebenslauf often includes a photo; a biodata for some jobs in India or the Gulf includes personal details. If you are applying abroad, follow that country's norm. For US, UK, Canadian and most multinational employers, the list above holds.
How to order your resume sections for your situation
Put your strongest evidence for the job first. For most people with work history that means experience directly after the summary. For students, new graduates and career changers it often means education, skills or projects first. The table shows the usual order for seven common situations.
| Situation | Recommended order |
|---|---|
| Experienced professional | Header · Summary · Experience · Skills · Education · Certifications |
| Student or recent graduate | Header · Objective/Summary · Education · Projects · Experience (internships, part-time) · Skills · Activities |
| Career changer | Header · Summary (target role first) · Skills (transferable) · Relevant projects or training · Experience · Education |
| Returning after a gap | Header · Summary (mention the return) · Experience (gap noted in one line) · Recent training or volunteering · Skills · Education |
| Licensed role (nurse, teacher, electrician) | Header · Summary · Licences and certifications · Experience · Skills · Education |
| Technical (software, data, IT) | Header · Summary · Skills (grouped) · Experience · Projects · Education |
| Executive | Header · Summary with scope (team, budget, revenue) · Experience · Board roles · Education |
Most people should use the reverse-chronological format, newest job first. A functional resume that groups skills instead of jobs can hide a messy history, but recruiters often read it as hiding something, so use it sparingly.
A resume skeleton you can copy
Copy this skeleton into a document, fill each line, and delete any optional section you do not need. It follows the standard order, uses headings every tracking system recognises, and works as one page for most people with under ten years of experience.
How do I write a resume as a beginner?
As a beginner, start with education, then add projects, internships, part-time jobs, volunteering and activities as experience, each with bullets that show what you did and what came of it. Finish with a skills section built from the job posting and keep the whole thing to one page. Employers hiring for first jobs expect evidence of effort and ability, not a long job history.
- Pick one target job and read three postings for it; note the skills they share.
- Write your header and a two-line objective naming that job.
- List your education with any relevant coursework, projects or honours.
- Turn every project, job, club role or volunteer post into an entry with 2 or 3 result bullets.
- Build a skills section of 6 to 10 skills from the postings that you can prove.
- Read it as text, fix anything vague, and save it as a PDF named Firstname-Lastname-Resume.pdf.
Ohio State's career guide recommends keeping a student resume to one page. Our resume with no experience guide covers this in depth, and resume format for freshers has layouts for graduates in India.
What are the top 5 resume mistakes?
The five most common resume mistakes are bullets that list duties instead of results, skills you list but never prove, a generic summary with no numbers, a two-column or sidebar layout that confuses tracking systems, and inconsistent dates. All five show up in our checker data, and all five can be fixed in an afternoon.
| Mistake | How common (our data) | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Duties with no result | 43.9% of 33,746 resumes | Add the outcome: a number, a time saved, a rate improved |
| Skills listed but never shown | 80.9% of 33,746 resumes | Prove each skill in a bullet, or cut it |
| Summary with no figure | 42.7% of 33,746 resumes | Put your biggest number in the first two lines |
| Two-column or sidebar layout | 17.2% of 3,313 PDFs, about 15 points lower on average | Use a single-column layout |
| Inconsistent work dates | 26.2% told to standardise dates | Use one format, such as "Mar 2022 – Present", everywhere |
What do resumes look like in 2026?
A resume in 2026 is a one- or two-page PDF in a single column, with a readable font at 10 to 12 points, standard section headings, a short summary at the top and plenty of numbers in the experience section. In the US it has no photo. It is usually tailored to each posting, and it is written to be read both by a person and by an applicant tracking system.
Type size is the most overlooked part of that. In the 3,313 PDFs we analysed, 15.2% had body text set below 9 points, usually to squeeze a second page onto one. Cut a bullet instead. For layout and font specifics see the best font for a resume and the ATS resume format rules.
| Element | 2026 norm |
|---|---|
| Length | 1 page under about 10 years of experience; 2 pages above that |
| File type | PDF with real, selectable text, unless the employer asks for Word |
| Layout | One column, contact details in the body, no tables for layout |
| Font | A common font at 10 to 12 pt for body text, 14 to 20 pt for your name |
| Headings | Plain: Summary, Experience, Skills, Education |
| Photo | None for US, UK and Canadian employers |
| File name | Firstname-Lastname-Resume.pdf |
What are 5 personal skills examples?
Five personal skills examples are communication, reliability, adaptability, problem-solving and teamwork. On a resume, show them through results rather than listing them: "Covered three roles during a staff shortage without missing a delivery date" proves reliability and adaptability in one line. Put the job's hard skills in the Skills section instead.
What are good examples of a resume?
A good resume example is one written for your job and level, with numbers in most bullets and a skills section the experience backs up. The three below show the sections from this guide in place. Open one in the builder and replace the content with yours, or browse resume examples by job.
Project Manager
Why this resume works:
- Managed 12 concurrent enterprise transformation projects totaling $47M at Accenture with 96% on-time delivery
- Led cross functional teams of 35+ and reduced average project cycle time by 22% through PMO governance implementation
- PMO framework saved $3.2M in unplanned costs and cut scope creep incidents by 38% over 3 years
Customer Service Representative
Why this resume works:
- Maintained a 96% CSAT across 2,400+ monthly interactions on phone, email, and live chat
- Top 5% on first-contact resolution for 2 consecutive years across a 240-agent contact center
- Bilingual English and Spanish with Zendesk and Salesforce expertise plus CCM certification
Software Engineer
Why this resume works:
- New-grad Software Engineer resume for 2026 FAANG / AI-first recruiting
- Programming languages, frameworks, and system design coursework
- LeetCode counts, GitHub star totals, and open-source contributions
Resume section checklist
What to include on a resume: final check
- Header: name, phone (with country code if you apply abroad), professional email, city and state, LinkedIn; all in the page body
- Summary: job title first, one or two numbers, written for this posting
- Experience: newest first, title, employer, city, month and year dates, 3 to 5 bullets per role
- Most bullets end with a result or number, not a duty
- Skills: 8 to 15, grouped, in the posting's wording, each proved somewhere above
- Education: degree, school, year; GPA and honours only if recent and strong
- Certifications and licences with issuer and year or expiry
- No photo, date of birth, marital status, full address, SSN or references
- One date format everywhere; one column; body text 10 to 12 pt
- Saved as Firstname-Lastname-Resume.pdf and read once as plain text
Check what a parser reads from your resume
A resume can look right and still read wrong to software. The free ATS resume checker gives you an ATS score and shows the text a parser extracts from your file, with every file-level problem flagged, such as a sidebar, contact details in the header band or a missing text layer. It needs no account. The full report with content fixes for your experience, skills and keywords is part of Pro: 7 days for $2.95, then $17.49 a month unless you cancel.
To build the resume itself, the resume builder lays out every section above in a single column, and you can edit any of its 50+ templates for free. If your history is already on LinkedIn, turning a LinkedIn profile into a resume saves the typing.
See your resume the way an ATS sees it
Upload your resume and get your score plus the extracted text, with every layout, font and contact problem flagged. No account needed.
Check my resume