What recruiters actually do with your resume
Most applications are read twice: once by software that scans for keywords and structure, and once by a human who spends roughly seven to ten seconds deciding whether to keep reading. Both readers want the same thing — a fast, unambiguous answer to "can this person do the job we posted?" Everything in this guide is designed to make that answer obvious in the top third of the page.
The five blocks every resume needs
You do not need a designer template. You need five blocks in a predictable order, in a standard font, saved as a PDF unless the employer asks otherwise.
- Header: name, city and country, phone, email, one link (LinkedIn or portfolio).
- Summary: two lines naming the role you want and your strongest relevant proof.
- Experience: most recent first, with dates as MM/YYYY and three to five bullets each.
- Skills: eight to twelve concrete, checkable skills — tools, systems, languages, certifications.
- Education and training: including paid on-the-job training and short courses.
Write bullets as results, not duties
A duty tells the reader what you were assigned. A result tells them what changed because you were there. The simplest reliable formula is action verb + what you did + measurable outcome. If you have no formal metrics, use volume, speed, consistency or scope — "handled 60+ customer chats per shift with a 95% satisfaction score" is a metric that any support hire can produce.
- Weak: "Responsible for stocking shelves and helping customers."
- Strong: "Restocked a 12-aisle section nightly and kept shrink under 1% across two peak seasons."
- Weak: "Worked in a warehouse."
- Strong: "Picked and packed 300–400 units per shift at 99.6% scan accuracy."
Getting past applicant tracking systems
ATS software fails on formatting far more often than on content. Keep a single column, avoid text inside images, tables or headers and footers, and use the exact job-title language from the posting where it is honestly true of you. If the posting says "customer support representative", do not write "client happiness ninja".
Tailoring without rewriting everything
Keep one master resume with every bullet you have ever written. For each application, spend ten minutes swapping in the six to eight bullets that match the posting most closely and rewriting your two-line summary. That is enough tailoring to change outcomes and short enough that you will actually keep doing it.
A final ten-minute checklist
Before you submit, run this pass. It catches the errors that quietly remove otherwise strong candidates from the shortlist.
- One page for under ten years of experience; two pages maximum after that.
- No typos in your name, the employer's name or the job title.
- Consistent tense — past for old roles, present for the current one.
- Every claim you could be asked to expand on in an interview.
- Filename in the form Firstname-Lastname-Role.pdf.
