Anatomy of a Resume

Your resume is a marketing tool representing a very special product: you! It is a succinct outline of your knowledge, skills, abilities, experience, and accomplishments relevant to your employment goals. Resumes are used to screen applicants for interviews and determine which candidates most thoroughly match the employer’s needs. This is done through a combination of human and electronic screening methods.

“Transferable skills” are the skills you acquire from part-time and summer jobs, internships, externships, research projects, coursework, roles in campus clubs/organizations, and class projects that transfer to future employment settings. Common examples of transferable skills include interpersonal, communication, leadership, presentation, technical, and organizational skills. You can identify important transferable skills for an internship or job by taking note of keywords and phrases in the job description.

For examples of these required and optional resume sections please visit our Resume Samples by Career Community.

Writing Effective Accomplishment Statements:

According to a 2018 study by Ladder, a job board and career resource platform, employers spend 7.4 seconds reviewing resumes on average. So what does this mean for candidates? Because employers review resumes quickly, highlighting relevant experience and key accomplishments is essential. Employers look for past accomplishments and work samples to visualize how you will contribute to their team.  

Each statement should begin with a strong action verb and tell the reader what actions you took/skills you utilized and the overall result or impact of those actions. For more information and examples for writing effective accomplishment statements, please review Use Accomplishment Statements on our website. You can also find a starting list of strong action verbs by reviewing Power Verbs: Strengthen Your Resume.  

Resume Checklist:

• Is free of spelling and grammar errors.
• Maintains consistent formatting throughout.
• Lists everything in reverse chronological order, with the most recent experience first.
• Uses margins between 0.5 and 1.0 inches.
• Uses a standard font size of 10–12 pt, with the name slightly larger at 14–16 pt.
• Uses an easy-to-read font, such as Calibri, Arial, Garamond, Times New Roman, Georgia, Verdana, or Helvetica.
• Is free of unnecessary colors or graphics.
• Is created in Google Docs or Microsoft Word. Canva and similar templates are not recommended.
• Includes enough white space to make the resume easy to read.
• Avoids the use of first-person pronouns (e.g., I, me, my, mine).
• Uses the Month, Year format consistently for all dates.
• Includes the employer or organization name and location (city, state, or country).
• Lists position titles and dates (Month, Year).
• Spells out abbreviations at least once, except for common abbreviations such as state names.
• Demonstrates accomplishments using strong action verbs.
• Quantifies results whenever possible.
• Is tailored to the position by incorporating relevant keywords from the job description.
• Has been reviewed by a peer or career advisor.
• Is submitted to BigResume for AI feedback.