What are the main section of a resume?
Luci Peters
Certified Professional Resume Writer
March 25, 2022, 7:23 am

What are the main section of a resume?

In case your current CV doesn’t accommodate the perfect appointments that you seek, or if you're facing difficulties in convincing your future administrative body that you are the perfect candidate, follow with us, because here on ResumeGets we’re sharing a simple easy to follow resume strategy that would help thousands of job seekers go from overwhelmed and overlooked to work in positions they love and make more than they thought was possible.
If you want similar results, you better continue reading this article because we’re sharing important methods and steps that you can apply on your resume right now to help you achieve a great job opportunity. Our interest is helping professionals just like you to adjust their personal image in order to outreach an awesome job and excel within the appropriate business areas where you belong.

We should speak honestly; it's an easy task to organize a good resume. An essential point while writing a resume is to arrange information like your personal information, achievements, activities, academic awards, and a lot more in a functional and proficient manner in order to impress the administration and appear as the ideal applicant for the vacancy, especially in case you're changing your job field or if you lack formal expertise. You have to effectively display your talents and competence so that you make an administrator take action and call you to set an appointment. Now on ResumeGets, we’ll be explaining the basic categories of a resume besides some steps to simplify the entire process of conducting a resume. After reading this article you'll have a clear vision as to how to organize a well-divided resume that will lead you to the next big opportunity. Now if you're excited about this let's dive in and begin with a major feature in every awesome resume.

Resume Structure

The initial step to composing an astounding resume that gets you employed is to make a simple structure, and here appears a question why an organized resume structure is significant?
Your goal is to write a resume that is straightforward and simple to explore. Studies show that administrations take only a few moments to inspect employment forms and applications so your mission is to tempt them to reach what you want, and the most effective way to do this is by writing interesting content and dividing it into coherent and brief sections. Thus we find we need an answer to the inquiry:

What are the standard categories or sections of a resume?

Now we’re going to share the titles of the basic sections each good resume should have, in addition to some optional sections. We’ll then inspect in more detail what to include in each area with some examples.

Headings

It includes your personal information and it takes the top area in your resume including information like:

--Your name--    
--Your phone number--  
--Your city / your country--     

You don't need to include your entire mailing address for security reasons you'll     include a professional-sounding email address  

 --A link to your custom LinkedIn URL --    

Take a look at the model below:

John S.Smith

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

333.555.9990

 

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Skill summary     

The next basic area to organize a good resume is to add a proficient skill summary. A commonplace for this section is to put it after your contact data. We indicated before that you just have a couple of moments to persuade the employing official that they should welcome you in for the meeting, it is here in this section that you should try your best. This is the ideal spot for you to stick out and display a clear presentation of your talents that could be beneficial to the company. While taking a look at the model below, here are a few tips to follow in writing your summary:

Start your skill summary with some type of title. For example, the title of the job you are applying for or something very similar or if you like your present job title.
Directly under the title include three key skills sentences that explain how your professional background training or experience makes you the perfect candidate. Choose these key skills very carefully. They should be some of your greatest strengths and assets but at the same time should also directly relate to the new position. These skills are most likely highly emphasized in the job description that is aligned with your own abilities. Your goal here is to show how you can help solve some of the company's biggest pain points. Now remember you shouldn’t list what you're looking for in your ideal position, this section is an abstract summary of the company and its needs. So avoid saying things like “looking to grow my industry” or “wanting to take the next step in my career”. You need to demonstrate that you are the person they need for the position.

Now here's an example, let's say I’m applying for a senior business analyst position. I would place the term senior business analyst in the title section of my resume, I would then place the skills of client management, business operations, and process design in the skills section on the resume. Keep in mind the three key skills we mentioned here must be found in the job description and must be skills you already possess. This information tells the hiring official what position you're applying for and what they should expect to see in the rest of your resume. It makes their job easier by eliminating the guesswork.

Keep in mind that the career summary is a great place to address any job-related changes. For example, maybe you were furloughed or permanently laid off because your company downsized, or maybe you're one of the millions of professionals who changed careers as part of the great resignation. It’s okay to use your career summary to explain how you're looking to use your skills to transition into a new industry or job.

John S.Smith

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333.555.9990

CUSTOMER SUCCESS MANAGER

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Relationship Building| Performance Management | Crisis Resolution

Skilled Customer Success Manager exceptionally respected for further developing group execution on client support measurements and SLA conveyance. Expert in inspiring groups and training staff to meet expectations of the executive’s potential. Proactive, vigorous, and professional in solving problems with a sharp concentration on creating and carrying out process enhancements to drive organization development and advancement. Outstanding communicative abilities, a solid hard-working attitude, and the capability to work under pressure without affecting the quality of the service provided.

Work experience

After the skill summary, you'll then add some type of work experience. It’s important here to include quantifiable results-driven achievement statements. Yes, that seems meaningless so let's break down what this means exactly. We can say that it means the results of your performed tasks. You want your resume to include not only the tasks you've performed but also the results you've achieved. Anytime you can quantify your results you make your resume even stronger so what kinds of things can you quantify, here are just a few examples:

 

  • Increased sales
  • Decreased costs
  • Improved customer ratings
  • Number of new clients acquired
  • Number of new team members onboarded
  • Number of patients you cared for
  • New processes that created a faster or more efficient workflow
  • increased social media followers
  • increased marketing conversions

And the list goes on and on.

Now let us give you a quick example here you could say the following statement:

Managed Instagram account for small clothing retail company

Or you could say:

Increased Instagram following by 50 within six months leading to increased revenue as well as new partnership opportunities

Do you see how powerful the second example is, it tells not only what you did but also quantifies your success and tells the result of your actions. Here’s a quick formula to help you create your own results-driven achievement statements:

ATR Formula

  1. Start with an action verb
  2. Describe the task
  3. Finish off by putting the outcomes

You can use the acronym ATR action task result to always remember how to create these statements.
Now, these tips will help you to write a perfect work experience:
    

  1. Under the work experience section, write the name of the company that you are currently working for. Keep in mind that we start from the most recent work.         
  2. Additionally, you can add the company’s address, it’s optional.          
  3. On the same line put the dates for the start and end of the job.    
  4. In the next line, add your position.    
  5. After that demonstrate the main task in your work.          
  6. Then you start including your bulleted work experience.     

Check out the model below.

WORK EXPERIENCE:

____________________________________________________________________

American Cooperation ZXC, Ohio 05/2014 - present

CUSTOMER SERVICE REPRESENTATIVE

In charge of supervising 52+ in the production industry and guaranteeing quality to clients.

  • Instantly react to client requests face to face, or by means of telephone, email, mail, or social media apps.
  • Immediately and professionally open client accounts by recording account information in an accurate way.
  • Preserve financial statements by handling client changes efficiently.
  • Expanded client base by 30% during the year 2018 owing to instant service delivery.
 

Business QWER, Ohio 02/2010-04/2014

TELEPHONE SALES REPRESENTATIVE

Created and worked on the abilities of the salesmen group throughout the period of two years.

  • Obtained 97% fulfillment rating from clients after a finished telephone or video call.
  • Kept record of client collaborations, managed client accounts, and documented reports.
  • Worked together with the group to rapidly resolve client protests with appropriate solutions.
  • Dealing efficiently with about 100 received calls on a daily basis.

TELEPHONE SALES REPRESENTATIVE

Created and worked on the abilities of the salesmen group throughout the period of two years.

  • Obtained a 97% fulfillment rating from clients after a finished telephone or video call.
  • Kept records of client collaborations, managed client accounts, and documented reports.
  • Worked together with the group to rapidly resolve client protests with appropriate solutions.
  • Dealing efficiently with about 100 received calls on a daily basis.

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Education and training

The first thing to talk about is that people don't write the name of their school or their awards correctly. Make sure you are writing the correct name of your school for example is it California State Institute or Institute of California, so pay attention to this point it sounds so obvious.

Likewise, when it comes to certificates and degrees it’s a Bachelor of Arts, Master of Engineering, Bachelor of Physics, etc.

Let's say you have switched around schools, so in case you have an Associate of Arts at a Community College and after that transferred to a four-year university and received a Bachelor's degree just make sure that you put the Bachelor's degree first and then your Associate's because remember we go in that reverse chronological order or most recent first order so your bachelor’s would go first and then your Associate’s.

Another point is if you are having a hard time getting to your one-page on your resume and you did receive an Associate of Arts and a Bachelor this is not the right choice to put both. If you need to get some space back on that one page to show some more relevant experience you can totally take off your Associate of Arts degree to gain a couple of lines back.

If you went to Community College and transferred credits but did not receive an Associate your Community College does not go on your resume. For example, I received some credits at my Community College taking psychology while still attending my four-year university to get my bachelor's degree I am NOT putting my Community College on there. So only schools where you received a degree go on your education section.

Finally, if you did any training programs you can list that under education - just put the name of the program and what semester you did that program and that's all you need there.

____________________________________________________________________

EDUCATION

___________________________________________________________________

Bachelor of Art – Communications - ABC College – New York City

Expected graduation – May 2022

 

Skills

We have two types of skills:

Soft skills:     

those are skills like excellent communicator, responsible superior time management, and they don't go in a skills section.     


If you want to show me that you are an excellent communicator and then you have great time management prove it to me in bullet points under your experience section. so instead of saying excellent communicator tell me about how you resolve all customer service issues in a timely and efficient manner resulting in a hundred percent customer service satisfaction and I will get to decide that you not only have great customer service skills but also you have great time management because you were efficient. So it needs to go in bullet points under that experience section.

Hard skills:     

hard skills are things like software, languages, typing speed, social media, and depending on what you want to do any equipment you know. For example, if you want to go into film and television production and you know how to use DSLR and an HD and a red digital camera that can be put there.


So the skills section should include any type of skills that you could test. I can't technically test your communication skills but I could test if you know Excel.

And then we have languages.

With languages, you're just going to put a bullet point and the languages you know then describe your proficiency accurately. 

Another tip is please don't put the word proficient with skills, for example: proficient in Microsoft Word, due to the fact that this is not the section for professional work. So only those things and apps that you think you know are the types of things that could go under skills. So let's leave the soft skills in the bullet points and put your hard skills in that skills section.

____________________________________________________________________

SKILLS

____________________________________________________________________

  • Managerial and technical experience using Ambition Sales Performance Management Platform, Sales Cloud by Salesforce, and OnePageCRM. Mastery of Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Cloud, and G Suite by Google.

 

Languages: English – native

French – B2 professional

Russian – A2 beginner

 

 

Resume optional sections

There are different parts of a resume that you could include in a particular situation but are not required. So they are not sections that we would say every student needs to make.

Objective statements     

Now in general we do not recommend most students use an objective statement and we'll get into why in a little bit. However objective statements can be really helpful for some folks in particular in the following situations:

Career outside your major

If you need to do some explaining about your history or your current situation. For instance, if you are applying for a career outside of your major and you need to make connections about how you have the skills necessary to do that career that can be a useful way to include an objective statement.

Career change

It can also be useful when you're making a big career change that doesn't make a lot of sense in a linear sense. For instance, if you were working in a pharmacy and decided all of a sudden that you wanted to go into accounting or something so you would want to explain that career change and why you're qualified to do that change.

A typical career path     

Maybe you worked for 10 years and then decided you wanted to go to college. Here you kind of want to explain that period and why your path looks a little bit different than other people's.

Lack of experience     

If you don't have enough experience but maybe you have a lot of leadership and involvement experience that makes you a really outstanding employee this can be a great use of the objective statement.

Why objective statements are optional

The reason for this is most students when they have an objective statement it sounds like all other students’ objective statements because there are a lot of things that are very similar about students. Like studying things and having internships.

Moreover, it’s something that an employer mostly going to skip over because it’s not that useful to him and it’s taking up the most important place at the top of your resume, so we really want to replace that with education, and experience.


Relevant coursework

Another section that you can put in if you need to fill some extra space or if you've done some really cool high-level coursework is the relevant coursework section. We recommend this when you need to fill some space. If you're a first-year student you may not have higher-level coursework so this is where you could put some relevant coursework to the positions that you're applying for. However, if you are a senior wanting to include any of the project-based practical experiences that you've had would be awesome to include a relevant coursework section. In addition to that if you have any coursework that's outside of your major that you think's really set you apart this would be a really great place to include this as well.

Why relevant coursework is optional

The reason relevant coursework is optional is that experience is so important and a lot of times we see people including in this section some kind of courses that everybody takes in the CV that doesn't show how you stand out as a candidate. However again if you follow those guidelines that we just went through you will stand out. If you have unique experiences from the coursework or if you've done something way outside of your major that kind of sets you apart from the pack.

The benefits of resume writing services

CV writing services can be used to your advantage when seeking employment. CV writing services will provide you with the most accurate and comprehensive way to showcase your skills. Aside from making your resume look nice, they will also assure that your information is presented in a way that makes your qualifications stand out. A resume that is well-written can make all the difference especially if you are one of the many candidates for a specific position. Grammatical errors can make your resume look unprofessional and may cause it to be remanded to the bottom of the stack. If you aren’t comfortable writing your own CV, you can count on a professional service to get the job done for you.

You will work closely with a company or individual to help you put your resume together. They will ask you to gather all the pertinent information that you wish to be included. They will meet with you to make sure everything is accurate and that nothing has been left out.