How to Make a Resume [The Visual Guide]

Knowing how to make a resume is essential if you'd like to build a solid career, but the process can seem quite complicated.

There are so many rules, best-practices and tips you need to follow - and worst of all, everyone and their favorite blog offers different advice on how to make a resume that gets you hired. This is why we're here to help and guide you through the confusion.

In this guide, we’re going to go through every single step of the process and show you real examples. If you don't have a resume to work with yet, have a look at these resume templates.

How to Use This Guide

There are two ways to use this guide. One is to build your resume section-by-section as you go through the guide. If you already have a resume, you can use this guide as a reference to improve the sections that need work.

You will learn:

• Resume Basics - How to build your resume and what tools to use
• Resume Content - How to turn your resume from a boring document to a killer sales pitch
• Sending the Resume - How to make sure the recruiter actually reads your resume

Before we get to the resume content, we’ll need to go through the basics. While the content is important, the technical stuff is what gets your foot in the door.

If your resume is not the right format, for example, it might be sent straight to the shredder.

Today, there are many different ways to build a resume. Traditionally, a resume used to be a piece of paper containing you work experience and written in a very basic manner.

Since technology evolved, however, methods changed accordingly. Now, there are three main ways to create a resume:

• Microsoft Word
• Word Template
• Online Resume Builder

Let's have a look at the pros and cons of each.

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Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word is one of the most popular resume builders to-date. Let's tak a look at its pros and cons.

Word Template

While Word is known for being hard to deal with, the right template can make your job a lot easier.

Some templates are free, while others cost up to $100. There’s a wide variety in terms of templates, and there are a lot of different designs and formats you could opt for.

Resume builders

While Word is the most popularway of creating a resume, it wasn't created with that goal in mind. In fact, the most efficient way to create a resume is by using a builder.

Resume builders are created specifically with the purpose if creating a pristine document that gets you hired. They tend to make formatting much easier, as all you have to do is fill in existing forms with your information.

Traditionally, the resume is defined by:

1. A single column
2. Black & White
3. Simple format

Lately, however, “designer resumes” have gotten quite popular. Those are either custom-made with Illustrator (or any other relevant tool), or with a resume builder.

While the designer resume looks amazing, you need to know in which case you can use it and when it might end up backfiring on you. Go for a designer resume if you're applying to:

1. Small-to-medium sized company or a startup. Bigger companies and corporations tend to use an ATS system (more on that later), which scans the resume for certain keywords. If the resume is not formatted traditionally, the system simply discards it.
2. A “trendy” company. Traditional industries have their standards they tend to uphold. That means that if you’re applying to a bank, you should show discretion and professionalism, and stand out with your skills and experience as opposed to how good-looking your resume is.

One of the most-debated topics in terms of resumes is how long it should be. While there’s no strict guideline, the rule of thumb is that your resume should be just as long as the recruiter's attention span.

If you can keep their attention for 5 hours, go for it, write a novel!

This one’s pretty straightforward - the font should ensure that the resume is clear, putting emphasis on the content, and doesn't distract. You should never use a font that attracts any attention. Think, anything unusual: Comic Sans, anything that makes your resume look like a medieval scripture, Comic Sans, did we already mention Comic Sans?

Real-life depiction of our HR, reading a resume written in Comic Sans..

Instead, here are thes 22 best resume fonts:

Arial	Arial Narrow
Arimo	Avenir
Book Antiqua	Cabin
Calibri	Cambria
Caslon	Didot
Garamond	Georgia
Helvetica	Helvetica Neue
Hind	Lato
Source Sans Pro	Tahoma
Times New Roman	Trade Gothic
Trebuchet MS	Verdana

There are 3 typical types of resume formats.

Reverse Chronological

Reverse-chronological is the most common resume format, and it’s also what you’re probably most used to. It details your work experience in a, well, reverse-chronological order, starting from the latest to the oldest.

When to Use It: At Velvetjobs, we tend to recommend the reverse-chronological format, as it’s the most common one. The recruiters know it, you know, and it’s a lot easier to bring to perfection.

Functional

Functional, on the other hand, is centered around your skills. Instead of listing out your work history, you write down different “themes.” i.e, you write down “sale,” and under it, mention the type of skills you have with it.

When to Use It: Functional resumes aren’t all that common, so just by using it, you might be taking a risk - it’s possible that the recruiter has never seen this type. You can, however, use a functional resume if you don’t have a lot of experience or if you have a gap in your career that you don’t want to show.

Combination

Combination is the mix of the two formats, including your experience, as well as the skills. It takes the best out of the other two, allowing you to showcase more than your average candidate.

When to Use It: As with the Functional resume, the format isn’t too common. It can be useful, however, if you’re changing industries. It shows that you have a lot of experience in some field, as well as the type of skills you can take with you to your new job.

Some companies tend to receive hundreds of applications per open position. Obviously, they don’t have an army of HR professionals to go through a giant stack of resumes.

Instead, bigger companies tend to use an Applicant Tracking System to filter through them.

In a nutshell, what ATS does is scan through the resume to detect if you have the right keywords for the job mentioned.

We’ll explain how the keyword work in the ATS Tailoring section. As for the formatting, make sure to:

1. Use the company’s preferred resume format. If the company asks for one specific resume format (PDF, .doc, etc.), it might mean that that’s the only one their ATS reads.
2. Use simple formatting. - don't use headings and footers. Keep it simple and well-organized
3. Use single-column - no tables or text boxes
4. Use a standard font - Arial, Georgia, Tahoma, and Calibri are all great choices

Now that we've got all the basics covered, let's go in depth to see how each section should look.

The contact information is one of the simplest sections on your resume - but it’s also one of the most crucial ones. If you mess something up, the recruiter can end up calling someone else’s number, instantly losing you the job.

On a typical resume, you’ll need to mention:

If you have a portfolio online or relevant social media channels, go ahead and mention them. Here are some popular channels you can use to showcase your skills and experience:

Linkedin - think of LinkedIn as your online resume. Polish it by adding thorough information and a professional photo.

Behance - If you’re a designer, this is the best place to showcase your portfolio.

Github - If you’re a programmer and have contributions to Github, you might want to mention that. Recruiters tend to love candidates who code for fun in their own free time.

First impressions matter. Give the recruiter a good idea of who you are, where you’re coming from, and why they should be impressed by you by creating a killer resume summary and objective.

Resume Summary

Think of the summary as your elevator pitch. It acts as an introduction to the rest of the resume, letting the recruiter know whether you’re relevant for the job or not. It has to be short, clear and tailored to the job. Otherwise, your resume will end up in the trash.

A good resume summary should mention:

• Years of Experience
• Specific Industry
• Achievements
• Relevant Education
• Managerial Experience

Check out this example:

Resume Objective

In most cases, it’s better to just stick to a resume summary. You'll use the objective in these 3 cases:

• If you’re changing industries, and want to showcase how transferable your experience is
• In case you’re targeting a very specific job
• If you just graduated college, and don’t have any experience

If you’re a professional, your resume objective should include:

• Years of Experience
• Specialization
• Degree
• Application.

If you’re a student, you probably don't have a lot of experience. Instead, your objective could include:

• University Degree
• Extracurricular Experience
• Application

Let's compare these two examples:

If you don’t have any work experience, skip to how to create a student resume.

The substance of your work experience is really important, as is the way you list it. This section should be in a reverse-chronological order, starting from your most recent job:

• Show progression. What differentiates a high-achiever from your average Joe is their career progression pace. Show how you've developed over the years, and how you managed to get more responsibilities within the company.

• Keep your experience section to the most recent 3 or 4 jobs. Rememeber that your resume is not a biography.

• Under the company name (if not well-known), include a short description. The recruiter would want to know what the company is all about.

• Show your role in the company by discussing your responsibilities and accomplishments.
  • Responsibility: “Oversaw 5+ servers.”
  • Accomplishments: “Rated 4.5/5 in customer feedback 2 years in a row.
• Whenever possible, quantify your responsibilities or achievements. It's a lot more impressive to say, “drove 10,000 in monthly traffic” than “worked on driving traffic to the website.”

As we’ve mentioned before, the best way to show your experience is through accomplishments or numbers. While responsibilities are important, accomplishments show your “highlights.”

Compare the following examples:

Here, the candidate's position is that of a customer support manager. If he or she mentions it again in the responsibilities section, it becomes redundant - we already knew he was a manager.

Saying that they increased the customer support satisfaction index, however, shows how they excel at their job.

The best way to show your accomplishments is through numbers. If you say that you “did a great job,” that doesn’t really mean anything. The recruiter doesn’t really care whether you worked at the company - they care about how you excelled.

Take the following examples:

The first shows the exact numbers, which prove how good you are. The second, on the other hand, is vague and says pretty much nothing.

The secret to cracking the recruiter code tends to lie in the job description - all you have to do is learn how to read between the lines.

Let’s take this job ad for example:

From here, you've got 2 ways of going about applying:

The right answer is obviously the second. By tailoring your resume to the job description, you’re practically doubling the chances of getting the job. To make this easier, we’ve highlighted all the parts you should pay attention to.

This is what a resume tailored to this ad would look like:

Tailoring Your Resume to the Company

While tailoring your resume takes to a job description takes you a long way, there's yet another part of the equation you have to consider.

Even if your resume is the most impressive piece of paper the recruiter has ever seen, you still don't have a shot at the job if you don’t fit into the company culture.

This is why it's essential that you show in your resume how you will fit in. Let’s say, for example, you’re trying to get a job in a trendy startup.

See the pattern here? Everything yells out “we’re a modern, breaking-the-rules kind of company.”

Your old-fashioned, 100% work experience banking resume simply won't cut it here. Instead, you’d want to have a section or two specifically tailored to show how you’d fit into the company.

Let's take these two examples:

Or, you could go with the same old:

The difference between the two here is obvious - the first is directly speaking to the interests of the company. It says, “this is what I have, and this is how it would work with you.”

The second, on the other hand, is your average, conservative professional who's not very likely to be willing to adapt to a new environment.

Work experience can be tricky if you’re a student, since there’s a good chance that you don’t have any professional experience yet.

Even if you do have some experience, seeing how it would fit with the job is not always obvious. How can a part-time job as a server help your career in sales, for example? Is that even something you mention in a resume?

When assessing a university student or graduate, the first thing a recruiter looks for is transferable skills.

You actually don’t need ANY work experience to get an entry-level job. You might even beat someone who has some if you show your skills and experiences well enough.

When it comes to creating a student resume, you want to nail 2 sections: Work Experience and Extracurricular Activities.

Work Experience

As a student, there’s a good chance you have some work experience. A summer job as a server, or a part-time clerk gig during university time still counts.

While that might seem very irrelevant to your career, it doesn't have to be. Employers tend to prefer candidates with at least some work experience, rather than none.

Plus, these jobs have most likely given you some transferable skills. If you’ve worked at a restaurant, for example, you know how to handle a high-pressure environment. If you’re applying for a job in logistics, that skill is very relevant.

Working in sales requires people skills, something you get from working in customer support. If you deal with hundreds of people on a daily basis, you probably can handle yourself with words.

But again, the key here is relevancy.

If you’re working as a financial analyst, you need math skills, critical thinking skills, etc. If you've worked as a cashier, for example, you don't mention that, as the job doesn't involve any relevant skills.

Extracurricular Activities

If college were a real-life simulation, extracurricular activities would be your simulated career. Taking part in clubs, for example, shows that you’re proactive. A higher-up position in a club, on the other hand, can mean that you’re very achievement-oriented.

You can mention your extracurricular activities as a substitution for the lack of work experience. As with work experience, you want to clearly define your responsibilities and achievements, and quantify whenever possible. Let's look at these two examples:

In many cases, having the right education is the baseline requirement for the job.

That's why it’s important to get this right. Begin by writing down your education history in a reverse-chronological order.

Other than that, keep in mind that the best practice is to mention your GPA only it if it’s above 3.5. If your university is highly competitive (think, Ivy League). Otherwise, strive for above 3.0

You don't have to mention every single one of your degrees, just the most recent or relevant ones.

If you have an MBA, no one cares about your high school diploma, for example. A golden rule here is to mention the past 2 degrees. Think, Ph.D., MA. Or, Ms, BA.

One of the most commonly misused resume sections is "skills." Positioning yourself the right way through skills shows the employer that you’re qualified for the job. Doing it the wrong way, however, makes you seem incompetent.

Take the following example:

Skills: Business Administration. Leadership. Critical Thinking.

“So, what’s wrong with all that,” you might think.

Imagine you saw the keywords we mentioned before on a resume. What exactly did you understand about the writer’s skills? Nothing.

There are 2 types of skills you’ll mention in your resume: technical and soft.

Technical Skills

Tech skills tend to be very important. If the employer is looking for a designer skilled in Photoshop, and you don’t have it mentioned in your resume, you’re going to get skipped.

Even worse, if they’re using an ATS system, then your resume just gets deleted if it doesn’t mention the right words.

Mentioning technical skills is pretty straightforward:

• Make sure to list skills by level
  • Beginner - Just starting out, <1 year of experience
  • Intermediate - 1 - 3 years of experience.
  • Expert - 3+ years of experience, less if you have achievements to back up the claim
• Show what you know
  • If you’ve worked with Photoshop, for example, you can mention what, exactly, you’ve worked on: “Banners, Facebook Ads, Article Images.”
• Back it up with experience (if you can) - In the same Photoshop example - if you can direct them to the images you’ve worked on, this will give the recruiter a real idea of your expertise.

Soft Skills

Soft skills are a bit tricky While technical skills are easy to measure, that's not the case with soft skills. Take “leadership” or “critical Thinking” for example. They are both very abstract concepts. Soft skills are usually used by recent graduates when they don’t have a lot to mention in their resume, hoping to fill it up.

The only way to make your soft skills count is to back them up with facts. Take these two examples:

If you’re applying to any high-demand company, chances are, you’re one out of a thousand applying for the same position. As we’ve mentioned before, those companies tend to use Applicant Tracking Software.

Unless your resume matches the job description, it won’t even get a glance from the recruiter. Instead, the system checks if your resume mentions the skills that the company is looking for. If it does, it greenlights the resume.

You’ll have to mention the exact keywords that you see in the job description. Even if your keywords are slightly different than what the job description mentions(MS Word vs Word), the ATS might not catch that.

Let's say that the position requires:

• MS Word
• Excel
• Photoshop

There are two ways you can list your skills:

In both cases, the applicant has the same skillset. The first, however, is more likely to be "liked" by the applicant tracking system because it mentions the skills exactly as stated in the description.

Some experts tend to recommend creating a hobbies section on your resume. This works for 3 reasons:

1. Hobbies make you stand out from the standard resumes
2. You offer a bigger picture of you, other than your career
3. Hobbies make you more relatable to the recruiter

While the reasons might seem accurate, at the end of the day, it’s all situational. While you might be able to bond with the recruiter over a mutual love of underwater basket-weaving, it sure won’t get you hired.

Once you're done with all the resume contents, there are couple of things you might want to take care of before sending in your resume.

Proof-Reading the Resume

You want the recruiter to know that you REALLY care about their job and your career. The best way to forever destroy your chances of getting hired is to send a page riddled with spelling and grammar mistakes.

Before sending your resume in, check it with Grammarly. If you can get a second pair of eyes, then that’s even better - you might be a minor edit away from your dream job.

Creating a Killer Cover Letter

Before you earn the rite of passage for your resume, you’ll have to impress the recruiter with a cover letter.

Think of a cover letter as a resume of your resume - a short document highlighting the resumes best qualities so that it’s invited for a review.

One way to do that is by creating having it summarize the best points of your resume.

Tracking Your Job-Search

Looking for a job is a stressful process. You pour your soul into your resume and send out hundreds of emails and applications, but that's just about everything you've got in your power.

While some recruiters are nice enough to let you know that you’re being rejected, most don't have the time. You can’t even know if they received your email - let alone opened the resume.

Here’s some good news: this used to be a big deal years ago. Today, you can track every single step of your job search. Download Bananatag.

The tool sends you an email whenever someone opens your emails. So, if the recruiter doesn’t even take a look at the resume, you’ll know when to send a follow-up. Or, if the resume is what you’re worried about, give DocSend a try.

You get a personalized link for your resume and get data whenever someone opens that link. You’ll know how long the recruiter looked at the resume, and gauge whether they’re interested or not based on that.

Keep in mind that these tools work specifically if you’re reaching out to small and medium businesses, as corporations tend to have their own application forms.

Congratulations!

You’re halfway there to landing your new favorite job, and you didn’t even need to sell your house for it!

Why halfway? Well, you still need to learn how to ace your upcoming interview, of course!

Stay tuned for our all-in-one guide on the interview process and have a look at these resume templates for some extra inspiration.