Seven Key Resume Sections and How to Organize Them

Did you know that most employers only spend about six seconds skimming each resume that hits their desk? Of course, that means you have moments, at most, to capture their interest and entice them to spend more time reading that document. That’s why it’s so essential to make sure you’re including the right resume sections and organizing them in a structured way.

In this post, we'll explain why organization matters and explore the seven key resume sections you should include in your resume. We'll also provide some useful tips that can help you maximize the effectiveness of each section of your resume.

Why the order of your resume sections matters

Resumes need to do more than just provide basic information about your skills and employment history. They also need to deliver a compelling message about the value you can bring to any organization that's fortunate enough to hire you. 

To convey that narrative, you need to arrange your resume sections in a way that tells a story about your skills, experience, and achievements.

As you explore the key resume sections, you'll notice each is designed to include a specific type of employment information. Several of the sections also have their own headings to ensure that employers can quickly locate those specific details. In addition, certain types of information will be formatted using bullet points to make details even easier for employers to find.

Seven key resume sections

Though there are many ways to organize your resume, resume best practices suggests focusing on a seven-section structure. Those seven sections include:

• Contact information

• Resume headline

• Professional summary

• Skills or core competencies

• Professional experience

• Education

• Optional section (or sections)

To better understand why resumes are organized this way, you need to understand each section’s important role in establishing your career narrative.

1.      Contact Information

It may seem obvious that you need to include your contact details in your resume, but a TopResume study found that 25% of people either forget to include all the necessary pieces of contact information or fail to format them in a way that can be read by an ATS. 

Be sure to format your contact details at the top of the document, but not in the header section:

• Full name: Include your preferred first name (e.g., Bill instead of William) and last name on your resume. Make sure you use the same version of your name on all your other job-search materials, such as your LinkedIn profile, cover letter, and business cards. The key is to be consistent.

• Cell phone number: It's best to include the phone number to your personal cell phone on your resume. That way, you have control over the voicemail recording, who answers calls, and when.

• Address: Contrary to popular belief, it's no longer necessary to include your full mailing address on your resume. Instead, include your city, state, and zip code, especially if you're seeking work near your home. If you're conducting a long-distance job search or you're open to relocation, you may opt to omit any location information or change it to the location you’re relocating to.

• Email address: Create an email address that's dedicated to your job-search activities with a modern provider like Gmail, so that it's easy to manage your job applications and communication with recruiters and valuable networking contacts.

• Social media: The most common social media profile to include on a resume is a customized URL to your public LinkedIn profile. Other social media profiles should only be added if they're relevant to your line of work. If you work in a creative field, you may also want to add a link to your online portfolio or blog.

2.      Resume headline

Your resume should also include a resume headline. This headline is designed to draw attention to the job title you seek and key qualifications you possess that prove you can do that job. It should be located right below your contact information. 

To create an effective headline that draws the right kind of attention, make sure you include your job title and a few descriptive words that convey your value as a potential new hire.

For example, if you're pursuing a position as a Marketing Manager, your headline should include that specific title along with a few descriptive words and relevant skills to bolster that job title and help it stand out from other candidates’ resumes. For example:

Dynamic Marketing Manager and Brand Expansion Expert

PRO TIP: It's common to change the professional title in your resume to match the one listed in the job posting. If you're updating your resume because you’re changing careers, that change can help increase the odds that your resume won’t be immediately rejected by hiring managers.

3.      Professional Summary

A resume professional summary – also referred to as a career summary, executive summary, or career statement – has taken the place of the resume objective statement you likely learned how to write back in school.

Historically, a standard resume objective statement tended to focus on the job seeker's wants, needs, and goals. A resume summary takes a different approach by focusing on how your qualifications can provide value for a prospective employer.

If you're still unsure about how to create a winning resume summary statement, just use this simple template:

[Professional title] with [years of experience] in [job-related specializations and experiences]. [Describe a measurable achievement that demonstrates your value]. [Describe a second professional achievement that highlights your skills and how you used them to create value for an employer. Use real numbers to quantify that value].

4.      Skills, or Core Competencies

Your “Skills” or “Core Competencies” section is a great place to incorporate the all-important keywords that will help your resume get found in searches. Focus on highlighting hard and soft skills that are most relevant to the role you're pursuing.

If you're unsure what to include in this part of your resume, gather a few job descriptions that interest you and run them through a word cloud generator. This will help you quickly identify which terms routinely pop up for this type of job opportunity. 

If you possess that skill, be sure to incorporate it into this section of your resume, your professional summary, and even your work history, where appropriate.

The job posting is the best place to see which skills and experiences the company lists as required qualifications. There's always a good chance those qualifications may be used as keywords by applicant tracking systems. Make sure you use those exact terms in your resume, to increase your odds of getting past the ATS screens.

As you create your skill section, try to limit the relevant skills to between nine and twelve key abilities. You should list them in bullet point format to help draw attention to them and then format the entire section into two or three columns. This will help save valuable space on your resume and improve overall readability. 

For example:

• Skill #1

• Skill #2

• Skill #3

• Skill #4

• Skill #5

• Skill #6

• Skill #7

• Skill #8

• Skill #9

• Skill #10

• Skill #11

• Skill #12

5.      Professional Experience

The most popular resume format requires you to list your work experience in reverse chronological order. This means that your most recent professional experience will appear toward the top of your experience section, and your earliest experiences will be listed toward the end. The general rule of thumb is to elaborate on the most recent 10-15 years of experience only to guarantee that your resume is fresh and relevant.

The work history part of the resume can include a variety of professional experiences beyond a full-time job, from unpaid internships to consulting gigs and relevant volunteer work. That can be vitally important if your work experience is a little thin – for example, if you're trying to change careers and possess very little experience as a result from just graduating college.

For each job you’ve held, include the following information:

• The company name and location

• Employment dates

• Your job title

It's also important to make sure that you include measurable achievements for each job title you've held. Instead of listing the role's duties and responsibilities, focus attention on how you used your skills to provide your employer with real value. Aim for three to five bullet-point examples of these achievements and quantify each one with numbers. 

For example:

• Increased client acquisition by 23%, boosting sales revenue by an average of $120,000 each year

• Led network acquisition and implementation effort that reduced workplace inefficiencies by 30%

• Created a new sales training program that reduced onboarding time by 20% while increasing team productivity and sales goal achievement by 13% and 31%, respectively

When you put that all together, you should have a work experience entry that looks something like this:

ABC Marketing, Dallas TX | 2018-2025

Marketing Manager

• Led 20-person team that expanded company market share by 23%

• Created customer engagement program that increased client retention by 33%

• Developed and initiated online marketing strategy that boosted conversions and sales by 41%

6.      Education

If you're a recent college graduate, chances are your newly minted diploma is one of your top selling points at this stage in your career. If that's the case, then this information should appear near the top of your resume, just above your skills and work experience. However, if you're no longer an entry-level professional, it's best to move your education details to the end of your resume. 

This section should include 

• The name of the school

• Its location (city and state)

• The degree you earned

• Any honors with which you graduated (such as summa cum laude)

PRO TIP: If you graduated college within the past 5 years, you could include the year that you received your degree; otherwise, leave the date off. It's also only necessary to include details about your GPA and some of the main courses you completed if you're new to the workforce and need more fodder to demonstrate your employability to companies.

If you've earned multiple degrees, list these accolades in chronological order, starting with the most recent. This part of the resume is also a great place to list any relevant certifications, licenses, training, or professional development coursework you've completed that will make you a more desirable candidate.

7.      Optional: additional parts of a resume

In addition to these standard resume components, you may want to include some of the following sections, depending on your experience and the role you're targeting.

• Career highlights: This section, which is typically used by senior-level professionals with more than 10 years of experience, may be included in addition to, or in lieu of, a professional summary. It calls attention to relevant, noteworthy achievements that may be scattered throughout a professional's extensive work experience.

By highlighting these accomplishments at the top of the first page of the resume, you're helping readers understand the value you bring to the table and enticing them to thoroughly read your resume to learn more.

• Volunteer experience: Hiring managers and recruiters alike look favorably on professionals who engage in philanthropic activities such as volunteering for non-profits and mentoring programs. If you actively volunteer for a non-profit organization, consider sharing this information on your resume and LinkedIn profile.

• Technical hard skills: If you work in a technical field, this section may take the place of your “Skills” section near the top of your resume. However, if you work in a non-technical profession but use many technical platforms to do your job – and these tools are often noted in the job descriptions you're interested in – then you may want to add an optional section at the end of your resume to list all those tools.

• Language skills: If you're multilingual, be sure to note these language proficiencies in your professional summary and detail them in a separate section toward the end of your resume. As a rule, you should only list a language on your resume if you would feel comfortable going to an interview that was spoken in that language.

• Publications: If you are seeking work in an academic, scientific, or research field, then your academic resume – also known as an academic CV – will likely include a section to showcase the presentations you've given or publications you've written or been featured in.

Tips for making the most of your resume sections

Get up to speed on how to organize your resume sections and make the most of each one with these helpful tips:

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Choose the right resume section order

While it's important to include the seven essential sections (plus any optional sections) in your resume, there may be times when you need to use a different structure than that provided above. For example:

• Resume sections for students are often organized using a different order: contact information, headline, profile summary, education, experience, skills, optional sections.

The goal of that structure is to focus on your educational qualifications and career objective to compensate for your lack of experience and skill. If you have some relevant skills, you may want to move that skill section closer to the top of the resume.

• If you’re an experienced professional, you may use a structure that emphasizes your work history and achievements: contact information, resume headline, resume summary, work experience, education, skills, optional sections.

In most instances, when you have a great deal of experience in your industry, you will want to emphasize your career trajectory and achievements rather than your skills.

• Career changers often want to use a structure that focuses attention on transferable skills and related achievements. The following structure can help to draw attention to those qualifications: contact information, resume headline, resume summary (including career objective), key skills, work experience (focusing on related experience and emphasizing achievements), education, and optional sections.

Keep it brief

While it might seem as though seven sections will require a lot of resume space, your goal should be to limit the total length of your resume to no more than two pages. Remember, hiring managers may be put off by longer resumes, especially if they have hundreds of other applicants to consider.

Make it readable and informative

Your most important goal is to ensure that your resume provides the right kind of information in a format that is easily readable by any hiring manager. If your resume document seems cluttered or disorganized, most hiring managers won’t take the time needed to decipher its contents. 

• Use bullet points for your skills and work achievements. By avoiding big blocks of text and injecting some white space, you can help human hiring managers skim through your resume. 

• Don't just list skills in your Skills section. You should scatter mentions of them throughout your resume, including in your resume summary paragraph and work history achievements. Just make sure  ou’re not listing the same skills over and over again.

• Don't use the same resume for every job submission. Instead, tailor your base resume to each job you're seeking. 

• Make sure that your resume is easy to read and pleasing to the eye. If everything seems a little cramped on the page, try to adjust your margins, fonts, and other page elements to ensure there's enough white space on the page to make for easy reading. If your resume comes in at a page and a half, you’ll want to reformat things to balance the content across both pages.

• Always use a blank space or a solid line to separate the different sections on your page. Include headings for your skills, professional history, education, and any optional sections to help employers quickly locate the key information they're seeking. 

Using the right resume sections is vital for telling the right story

As you design your resume's structure, consider the story you're retrying to convey to your reader. Each resume section is there for a purpose and plays a vital role in convincing the employer that you have what it takes to be a valuable member of their team. With the right resume section structure and a keen commitment to highlighting your value, you can increase your odds of landing that essential interview!

Need more help creating your perfect resume? Get in touch with our team of professional resume writers today!

This article was originally written by Amanda Augustine and has been updated by Ken Chase.