Guides · Resumes
How to Write a Resume That Gets Interviews (2026 Checklist)
Most resumes aren't rejected because the person is unqualified. They're rejected in the first ten seconds, because the reader couldn't find what they were looking for. A good resume is a document built for skimming: by a hiring manager with forty others to get through, and often by an applicant tracking system (ATS) before any human sees it.
This checklist walks through what to put on the page, in what order, and how to word it so it gets read.
1. Pick a layout a machine can read
Fancy two-column templates look good in a preview and fall apart when an ATS turns them into plain text. Your safest layout:
- One column, top to bottom, with clear section headings: Summary, Experience, Skills, Education.
- A normal font (Calibri, Arial, Garamond, Georgia) at 10.5 to 12 points.
- No text inside images, text boxes, headers or footers. Many systems skip them, and your phone number disappears with them.
- Save as PDF unless the posting asks for Word. Name the file
FirstName-LastName-Resume.pdf. - One page if you have under about ten years of experience; two pages is fine after that.
2. Put the right things at the top
Your name, city and state (no street address needed), phone, email and a LinkedIn or portfolio link. Then a two-to-three-line summary that answers one question: what do you do, and what are you good at?
Weak: "Hard-working professional seeking a challenging opportunity."
Strong: "Operations coordinator with 6 years in logistics. Cut late shipments 30% by rebuilding the dispatch schedule; comfortable owning vendors, budgets and reporting."
3. Write bullet points that show results
The single biggest upgrade most resumes need is turning duties into results. A useful pattern is action + what you did + the result, with a number wherever you honestly have one.
| Duty (skipped) | Result (read) |
|---|---|
| Responsible for social media. | Grew Instagram from 1,200 to 9,800 followers in 10 months with a 3-post weekly calendar. |
| Handled customer complaints. | Resolved 40+ escalations a week; raised the team's satisfaction score from 82% to 91%. |
| Did bookkeeping. | Closed the books monthly in QuickBooks for a $2M business and caught $14K in duplicate vendor payments. |
No exact numbers? Use honest scale: how many people, how often, how big, how fast. "Trained 8 new hires" beats "trained staff". Keep 3 to 5 bullets per job, newest job first, and start each with a strong verb: built, cut, led, launched, negotiated, fixed.
4. Match the job posting (without copying it)
Applicant tracking systems and recruiters both look for the words in the posting. Read it twice and list the skills and tools it names. If you genuinely have them, make sure they appear in your summary, skills section and bullets, in the same words the posting uses ("customer success" vs. "client support" matters). Tailoring takes ten minutes per application and is the difference between a 2% and a 10% callback rate for many people.
5. Keep the skills section specific
List tools and hard skills, not personality traits: Excel (pivot tables, XLOOKUP), Salesforce, forklift certified, Spanish (fluent), Adobe Premiere. "Team player" and "detail-oriented" belong in your bullets as evidence, not in a list.
6. Cut what doesn't help
- An objective statement (the summary replaces it).
- "References available upon request." Everyone knows.
- A photo, age, marital status (in the US these invite bias and get removed).
- Jobs from 15+ years ago, unless they're directly relevant.
- Every class you took. Degree, school, year, and honors are enough.
7. Handle gaps and career changes plainly
A gap doesn't need hiding; it needs one honest line. "2023–2024: Full-time caregiver for a family member" or "Career break: completed Google Data Analytics certificate" is fine. If you're changing fields, lead with a summary that names the new target and a skills section that shows the overlap, then let your experience prove the transferable parts.
8. Proofread like it costs you the job (it can)
Read it out loud. Check that every date lines up, every job uses the same tense (past tense for old jobs, present for the current one), and your phone number is right. Then have someone else read it, or paste it into a plain-text editor to see what an ATS sees.
Quick checklist
- One column, standard font, PDF, sensible file name
- Contact info and a 2–3 line summary at the top
- 3–5 result-focused bullets per job, with numbers
- Keywords from the posting, in its words
- Specific skills; no fluff, photo, or "references available"
- Gaps explained in one line; proofread twice
If you'd rather hand it off, Chimera does resumes and cover letters: send your current resume (or just your work history) and the job you're going after, and she'll quote a fixed price before she starts. You see the finished resume as a preview before you pay for it.