Professional Resume — structure, examples and a builder

A professional resume answers one question quickly: can this person do the job, and have they done something similar before? Everything else is supporting evidence.

The structure that works

1. Contact block — name, professional title, email, phone, city. Links only when they add evidence.
2. Professional summary — three or four lines: role, experience level, one or two specific strengths.
3. Experience — reverse chronological, three to five bullets for the most recent role, fewer for older ones.
4. Education — above experience only if you are a recent graduate.
5. Skills — concrete, grouped, and honest.
6. Optional sections — projects, certifications, languages and volunteer work, in that order of value.

Writing the summary

Name the role, name the experience, name the value. "Marketing manager with eight years running paid acquisition for D2C brands; scaled one account from £40k to £1.2m monthly spend." Specific beats enthusiastic every time.

Writing bullets

• Start with a verb, not with "Responsible for".
• Put the outcome first when you have one: "Cut onboarding time from 11 days to 4 by…"
• Use a number wherever you genuinely have one — budget, volume, time, team size, error rate.
• Keep them under about 34 words. Anything longer gets skimmed and missed.
• Never invent a number to satisfy the pattern. An honest bullet without a metric beats a fabricated one.

Common mistakes

• A resume aimed at nobody — no title, no sector, no thread
• Duties instead of results
• A two-page resume where one page would be stronger
• Objective statements about what you want rather than what you offer
• Decorative templates with text in sidebars a parser cannot read
• Unexplained employment gaps with no note at all