Most resume advice is folklore. These twelve rules come from how hiring actually works in 2026 — six-second recruiter scans, ATS keyword matching, and the patterns behind resumes that convert applications into interviews.
List your most recent role first and work backwards. Recruiters spend roughly six seconds on a first scan, and they spend them looking for your current title, employer, and dates — in that order, in that place. “Creative” orderings and functional formats read as hiding something. The classic Harvard format exists because this structure works.
The one-page rule is real for students, new grads, and early-career professionals. Past ten years or for senior roles, two pages is normal — but every line still has to earn its place. The test: if a bullet wouldn’t help you get this job, cut it. A sharp one-pager beats a padded two-pager every time.
Most mid-size and large employers run resumes through an applicant tracking system before a human sees them. Parsers still stumble on multi-column layouts, tables, text boxes, icons, and headshots. Use standard section names (Experience, Education, Skills), a common font, and export a text-based PDF or DOCX. Run a free ATS check to see how yours parses.
“Managed social media” is a duty; “Grew Instagram from 8k to 45k followers in 12 months, driving 15% of online sales” is an accomplishment. Numbers give a skim-reader proof at a glance: team sizes, budgets, revenue, percentages, time saved, error rates. If you don’t track numbers at work, start this week — your next resume depends on it.
Led, built, negotiated, reduced, launched, automated, redesigned. Never “responsible for” or “duties included” — those phrases describe the job description, not what you did with it. Vary the verbs; five bullets starting with “managed” read like a copy-paste.
You don’t need a from-scratch resume per job — you need the headline, summary, and first role’s bullets to mirror the posting’s language. If the ad says “stakeholder management” and your resume says “client relations”, use their words: both the ATS keyword match and the human skimmer are grading against the posting’s vocabulary.
Three lines max: who you are professionally, your strongest quantified win, and what you’re aiming at. Delete every phrase that could describe anyone (“motivated team player with excellent communication skills”). If a sentence would survive on a stranger’s resume unchanged, it isn’t about you.
List specific, checkable skills — tools, technologies, methodologies, languages — not traits. “Python, SQL, Tableau, dbt” is a skills section; “hardworking, detail-oriented, fast learner” is filler that costs credibility. Soft skills belong in your bullets as demonstrated behavior (“mentored 5 new hires”), not as adjectives.
Employment gaps are normal — recruiters care how you frame them, not that they exist. For older roles, year ranges (2019–2021) are acceptable and soften small gaps. For longer ones, a single line telling the truth (caregiving, retraining, relocation) beats leaving the reader to guess. Never stretch dates: verification is routine and fatal.
Georgia, Garamond, Calibri, Helvetica, or their system equivalents — at 10–12pt body size with margins no smaller than half an inch. Typography should be invisible; the moment a hiring manager notices your font choice, it’s working against you. Our templates handle this automatically, including print-safe spacing.
A text-based PDF preserves your layout everywhere and parses fine in modern ATS software. Use DOCX when the posting explicitly requests Word format. Name the file Firstname-Lastname-Resume.pdf — “resume_final_v7 (2).pdf” tells a story you don’t want told.
A majority of hiring managers reject resumes for a single typo, and after twenty revisions you can no longer see your own. Read it aloud, have a friend scan it, and run an automated check — our free resume score flags weak bullets, missing sections, and formatting problems in about thirty seconds.
One page for under ten years of experience; two pages for senior professionals with directly relevant history. Academic CVs are the exception and have no length limit.
Ten to fifteen years for most careers. Older roles can be summarized in a one-line "Earlier experience" entry or dropped entirely unless they are unusually relevant to the target job.
Reverse-chronological, single column, standard section headings, exported as a text-based PDF. It is what recruiters scan fastest and what applicant tracking systems parse most reliably.
Not for the US, UK, Canada, or Australia — photos there invite bias concerns and some systems auto-reject them. In Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and parts of Asia, a professional photo remains customary. Match the market.
Substance over decoration: quantified accomplishments, the posting's own keywords, a specific summary, and zero errors. Visual "standing out" helps only in creative fields; everywhere else, clarity wins.
