Our resume-building wizard guides you through the complete process of creating a resume, giving you tips and advice every step of the way. Our professionally designed templates give your resume a polished look, while our powerful tools fix common grammar and spelling mistakes. Your perfect resume practically creates itself!
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How our resume builder helps you
- We do the heavy lifting. Just follow our step-by-step instructions and suggestions for filling out your document.
- Employer-ready templates. We have a wide range of customizable templates for all types of jobs.
- Multiple personalized resumes. Create, save and use different versions of your resume for different jobs — as many as you want.
- Say goodbye to typos. Our tools check your resume for common mistakes in areas such as spelling, grammar and formatting.
- Find the right job. Our Chrome extension matches your resume with the right jobs, helps you update your resume, and autofills job applications.
8 steps to build your resume
1. Provide accurate contact information. Seems obvious, but it’s easy to make mistakes when you’re adding your contact information. Make sure your name, city and state of residence, and phone number are all correct, and that you’re using a professional email address (“musclemikey89@mail.com” won’t cut it). You can also include a link to a portfolio or your LinkedIn page.
2. Create a compelling summary statement. Avoid the old-fashioned resume objective. Instead, craft a succinct summary that tells the reader what you’re capable of doing for them in fewer than six full lines of text. Consider this your “elevator pitch” to recruiters — a short and sweet overview of your strengths.
Begin by identifying yourself as a professional. A “driven bank teller” informs the reader that the applicant is interested in advancement opportunities, for example. Next, summarize your best skills and proudest accomplishments without using “I.” For example: “Offers exceptional customer service.” Our resume builder helps you build a great summary statement with job-specific examples you can adapt and incorporate into your document.
3. Create a skills section based on keywords. Read through the job description and pick out required skills that match your own — these are the keywords you should include in your skills section. We’ll also provide you with suggestions for skills you can include. For more tips, see our article How to Write the Perfect Resume Skills Section.
4. Organize your work history section. Start with your most recent or current job position, and work backward, sharing dates that you were employed. Be consistent. Don’t write “April 2012 – Sept. 2015” in one section, then “July 16 – July 17” in another. As with your skills section, highlight achievements that match keywords from the job description, using our own job-specific examples as a guide.
5. Focus on accomplishments, not duties. Don’t spend all of your precious space explaining standard tasks and duties. By all means, detail some of your duties to prove that you are capable of tackling the job at hand, but don’t create a laundry list. Instead, emphasize your accomplishments, quantifying them with numbers whenever possible. For example: “Earned a 90% customer satisfaction score for two years in a row.”
6. Utilize strong action verbs. Show you’re a proactive employee by starting your descriptions of each work experience with a strong action verb. For example:
“Was responsible for a variety of administrative duties, including answering phone calls and book appointments.”
vs.
“Managed a variety of administrative tasks, including answering phone calls and booking appointments.”
Though both sentences convey the same message, the second is more commanding, and presents you as in charge of your own achievements. Use strong action verbs such as managed, executed, created, designed, facilitated, planned, initiated, reconciled, increased, oversaw and modified.
7. Be specific in your education section. Unless your industry requires it, a long education section can waste valuable resume real estate. Limit yourself to your highest education credential, including your degree. Only include other studies, academic work or experiences with campus organizations if they’re directly relevant to the job. Also, forgo listing your GPA unless your industry values it. For more tips, see our article How to Improve the Education Section.
8. Know what to leave out. No need to share anything too personal, like your marital status, or whether you have children (or pets). Similarly, employers won’t benefit from learning your religious or political affiliations. Don’t include your social security number, and unless the job posting requests it, abstain from sharing references — that can come later.
Resume builder FAQ
Below are our answers to the most common questions about our builder. You can also find a wide range of resume-writing advice in our Career Center.
1. What makes a good resume builder?
A good resume builder doesn’t just provide you with employer-ready templates to help create your resume. It also includes expert tips and advice to help you complete your document, options for customizing your resume quickly, and tools that help you proofread your resume. Save as many versions of your resume as you want, in the file formats employers prefer. Our Resume Builder fits the bill for all of the above.
2. How long does it take to create a professional resume using our builder?
From start to finish, completing a resume using our builder takes only minutes. Just choose a template that fits the job you’re applying for and reflects your personality, follow our directions and suggestions for filling out each section, do a quick spell-check using our tools, save and download your resume, and you’re good to go! For more help and ideas for putting your resume together, visit our How to Write a Resume section.
3. How do you format a resume using our builder?
First, you should figure out which format works best for your resume: chronological, combination or functional. Then, using our builder, you can easily rename, move and organize your resume sections to fit the correct format. For example, a functional format will feature your skills and training up top, while a chronological resume will focus on your work history and career progression.
 Chronological |  Combination |  Functional |
4. How can a resume builder help me with my resume layout?
Avoid overstuffing your document with too much text that makes reading difficult, or utilizing fancy graphics that might confuse a hiring manager. Our builder provides professional templates so you don’t need to worry about the right “look.” You can also preview your resume in the builder to make sure it strikes the right balance between text and white space. For more layout tips, see our article How to Design a Resume With a Template.
5. How do I make resumes for different jobs using the builder?
Creating different versions of your resume for different jobs is a snap — just go back to each section of your resume and update them with skills and experiences that fit what each job requires. Make sure your summary is also updated, and save a new version of your resume! Our builder also makes it easy for you to move sections around, highlighting the right aspects of your career. Once done, you can download your resume in all the major formats, including Word documents, PDFs and even text versions.
