Resume Writing Rules

A resume's only job is to get an interview, not to document a career — every line competes for a reader (human or ATS) who spends seconds, not minutes, deciding whether to keep reading. Cut anything that doesn't help that decision.

Length and format

• Default to one page for anything under ~10 years of relevant experience; two pages only when the extra content is genuinely load-bearing (senior/executive roles, extensive publications), never as a place to dump everything.
• Use a single-column, linear layout: no tables, no text boxes, no multi-column sections, no graphics, icons, or embedded charts. Many ATS parsers read left-to-right top-to-bottom and silently mangle or drop content trapped in a table cell or column.
• Use standard section headings the parser and the recruiter both recognize: "Experience," "Education," "Skills." Avoid creative renamings ("My Journey," "Where I've Been") — cleverness costs parseability for zero benefit.
• Use a standard, widely-supported font and save as the format the application system asks for (usually PDF, sometimes .docx) — never submit as an image or a scanned file.
• Keep formatting consistent throughout: one date format, one bullet style, one heading style. Inconsistency reads as carelessness before a single word of content is evaluated.

Achievement bullets

• Write every bullet as: strong action verb + what you did + measurable result. "Managed a team" is a duty; "Led a 6-person team to ship a redesign that cut onboarding time 40%" is an achievement. Prefer the second form every time a number exists to support it.
• Quantify wherever honestly possible: percentages, dollar amounts, time saved, scale (users, requests, records), team size. If no metric exists, use a concrete scope or outcome instead of inventing a number.
• Lead each bullet with the verb, not with "Responsible for" or "Duties included" — those phrases describe a job description, not a person's impact, and waste the highest-attention word position in the line.
• Keep bullets to one line to two lines each. A bullet that runs three-plus lines is usually two ideas that should split, or padding that should cut.
• Order bullets within a role by impact, not chronology — the strongest achievement goes first, not whatever happened first in the job.

ATS-safe formatting

• Use the exact section names and standard date formats (Month Year – Month Year) an ATS is trained to parse; unusual formats increase the chance a field is misread or dropped.
• Avoid headers/footers for content that must be searchable — some parsers skip them entirely. Put contact info in the main body, not only in a header.
• Spell out acronyms at least once if the target role/industry might use either form ("Search Engine Optimization (SEO)") so keyword matching catches both.
• Avoid special characters, symbols, or non-standard bullet glyphs that can render as garbage characters when parsed.

Tailoring to a job description

• Read the target job description and mirror its exact keywords and phrasing where they honestly match your experience — if it says "stakeholder management," use that phrase rather than a synonym, since ATS keyword matching is frequently literal.
• Never claim a skill, tool, or responsibility you don't actually have just because the posting lists it — a resume that gets a candidate through ATS screening but fails the interview or the job itself wastes everyone's time.
• Reorder and re-emphasize existing bullets per application rather than writing fiction: the same experience described with the receiving role's priorities in mind, not a different experience.
• Put a tight, role-specific skills list near the top or in a dedicated section so both the parser and a skimming recruiter hit the relevant keywords early.

Summary section

• Use a 2–3 line summary only if it adds information a title and bullet list don't already convey — a specific specialization, years of experience in a named domain, or a notable scope. A generic summary ("Hardworking professional seeking...") is worse than no summary.
• Write the summary last, after the rest of the resume is final, so it can accurately compress what's actually there.

What to cut

• Cut the objective statement entirely — "Seeking a challenging role where I can grow" states what the candidate wants, not what they offer, and every recruiter has read the same sentence a thousand times.
• Cut "References available upon request" — it's assumed and wastes a line.
• Cut standalone soft-skill lists ("Team player, hard worker, excellent communicator") — these claims are worthless without evidence and are better demonstrated inside achievement bullets than asserted in a list.
• Cut irrelevant early-career roles or outdated skills (obsolete tools, unrelated jobs from over a decade ago) once enough relevant experience exists to replace them.

Tense and consistency

• Use past tense for all previous roles, present tense only for bullets describing the current, ongoing role — and keep that split consistent throughout.
• Keep verb tense, punctuation (periods or no periods on bullets), and capitalization style identical across every section; pick one convention and apply it everywhere.