How to write a resume when you have experience

Your resume has one job: getting you the interview. A recruiter reads the top half first and decides quickly whether to read on. This guide shows you how to make that top half count, then fill the rest with proof.

1. One page or two?

• Up to about five years of experience: one page is usually enough.
• More than five years, or several roles worth showing: two pages is fine. Never three.
• If a line doesn’t help you get this particular job, cut it.

2. The order that works

1. Name and contact: phone, a professional email, your city and your LinkedIn link. A full home address is not needed.
2. Headline: your target role in a few words, such as “Accounts Manager | GST, TDS, SAP FICO”.
3. Summary: three or four lines (see below).
4. Key skills: 8 to 12 standard skill names that match the job.
5. Work experience: latest job first, with three to six result bullets for recent roles and fewer for older ones.
6. Education: degree, college and year. If your work needs a registration, such as a state nursing council registration for nurses or ICAI membership for CAs, show it here or near the top.
7. Certifications, languages and tools, where they help.

3. A summary that says something

Skip “hard-working professional seeking a challenging role”. Recruiters skip it too. Say who you are, what you are good at, and one proof.

• Example: “Accounts manager with 7 years in manufacturing. Run month-end close for a ₹180 crore company, handle GST and TDS compliance and lead a team of four. Cut close time from 10 days to 5 by moving reconciliations into SAP.”
• Example: “Staff nurse with 4 years in the ICU of a 300-bed multi-speciality hospital in Kochi. BLS and ACLS certified. Registered with the Kerala Nurses and Midwives Council.”

4. Bullets that show results

Each bullet should say what you did and what changed. A simple pattern: action word, then what you did, then the result with a number. The number can be money, time, volume, accuracy or people. Here are sample bullets to adapt with your own real figures.

• Accounts: “Closed monthly books by the 5th working day, down from the 12th, by standardising bank and vendor reconciliations.”
• Accounts: “Filed GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B for 3 GSTINs on time for 24 months in a row, with no late fees.”
• Sales: “Grew territory revenue from ₹1.8 crore to ₹2.6 crore in a year by adding 40 new retailers across Indore.”
• Sales: “Reached 112% of annual target and ranked 2nd of 35 executives in the region.”
• Nursing: “Cared for 2 ventilated patients per shift in a 20-bed medical ICU; trained 12 new nurses on infection control.”
• Software: “Built a payment reconciliation service in Java and Spring Boot that handles 2 lakh transactions a day.”
• Software: “Cut API response time from 900 ms to 250 ms with Redis caching, lowering cloud costs by 18%.”
• Operations: “Reduced order-to-dispatch time from 48 to 20 hours across 3 warehouses by redesigning pick lists.”
• Operations: “Cut inventory write-offs by ₹35 lakh a year with monthly cycle counts.”

5. Skills: use the standard names

Write skills the way job posts write them: “Tally Prime”, “SAP FICO”, “Advanced Excel”, “Power BI”, “GST returns”, “Salesforce CRM”, “Python”, “ICU care”, “BLS”. Many employers use an applicant tracking system (ATS), software that sorts applications by matching these words. Skip skill bars and star ratings. They mean nothing to a reader or to the software.

6. Tailor it for each job

Fifteen minutes per application is enough.

1. Copy the job post and highlight its must-haves.
2. Move your matching skills to the top of the skills list, using the post’s words where they are true for you.
3. Reorder bullets so the most relevant ones come first in your latest role.
4. Adjust your headline and the first line of your summary.
5. Save with a clear file name, such as “Priya-Shah-Accounts-Manager.pdf”.

7. ATS-safe formatting

• One column, plain layout. Tables, text boxes, icons and graphics often come out scrambled when software reads them.
• Standard headings: Summary, Skills, Experience, Education, Certifications.
• A common font such as Calibri or Arial, size 10 to 12.
• One date format throughout, such as “Apr 2022 – Present”.
• Keep key details out of headers and footers, which some systems skip.
• Send a PDF unless the employer asks for Word. Open it once to check the text can be selected and nothing has shifted.

8. Keep LinkedIn in line

• Use the same job titles, employers and dates as your resume. Recruiters do compare them.
• Use your resume headline as your LinkedIn headline, and your summary as the start of your About section.
• Add the same key skills, and ask two or three colleagues for short recommendations.
• Add a clear, recent photo on LinkedIn, even though your resume doesn’t need one.

9. What to leave out

A private-sector resume in India does not need your photo, date of birth, religion, caste, marital status, father’s name, full home address or passport number. They take space and can invite bias. Government application forms ask for some of these separately, so keep them for those.

• The “Declaration: I hereby declare that…” line at the bottom. It adds nothing.
• “References available on request.” Employers will ask if they need them.
• Your current salary. That conversation comes later.
• Class 10 and 12 marks once you have a few years of experience, unless the employer asks.
• Duties copied from your job description.

Mistakes to avoid

• Listing duties (“responsible for accounts”) instead of results.
• Typos in your name, email or phone number. Check them twice.
• Unexplained gaps. One honest line is enough: “Career break, 2023–24: family caregiving; completed SAP FICO certification.”
• Inflating titles, dates or numbers. Background checks will find it.
• Sending the same resume to every job.
• Fancy templates that break in an ATS.