---
name: resume
description: Use when asked to write, revise, or tailor a resume (US) or CV (UK/international) — contact info, summary, experience, education, and skills — as the candidate-side document submitted to apply for a role, distinct from a cover letter, which is narrative rather than structured, and tailored against a job description or job posting rather than being one.
---

# Resume

A resume is a structured, factual document a candidate submits to
apply for a role: who they are, what they've done, and what they can
do, organized for a reader who will spend seconds, not minutes, on a
first pass. Outside the US, the same core artifact is usually called a
CV (curriculum vitae) — same purpose, different regional term, though
in academic and research hiring "CV" means something longer: a
comprehensive, ever-growing record of publications, grants, teaching,
and talks, not a one-to-two-page pitch.

## Key components

- **Contact info** — name, phone, email, location (city/region is
  usually enough), and links (portfolio, LinkedIn, GitHub) relevant to
  the role.
- **Summary or headline** — two or three lines pitching who the
  candidate is and what they're looking for, optional but useful for
  career changers or senior candidates whose title alone doesn't say
  enough.
- **Experience** — reverse-chronological by default, each role with
  employer, title, dates, and bullets stated as achievements ("cut
  onboarding time 40% by rebuilding the intake flow") rather than
  duties ("responsible for onboarding").
- **Education** — degree, institution, and dates; recent graduates lead
  with this, experienced candidates push it toward the bottom.
- **Skills** — a scannable list of concrete, verifiable skills
  (languages, tools, certifications), not vague traits like
  "hardworking" or "team player."

## Reverse-chronological vs. functional format

- **Reverse-chronological** — the default and most trusted format;
  recruiters and applicant-tracking systems (ATS) parse it most
  reliably, and it makes career progression easy to follow.
- **Functional or skills-based** — groups content by skill area instead
  of employer timeline. Useful for a genuine career change or to
  de-emphasize a real gap, but experienced recruiters read it warily
  because it can look like something (a gap, a short tenure, a
  demotion) is being hidden — use it deliberately, not as a default.

## Tailoring to a specific role

A resume tailored against a specific [[job-description]] or
[[job-posting]] beats one generic version sent everywhere: mirror the
posting's own terms for skills and tools (so both a human reader and an
ATS keyword match recognize the fit), reorder bullets so the most
relevant achievements for *this* role sit at the top of each entry, and
cut or shrink experience that has nothing to do with the role being
applied for.

## Resume vs. cover letter

A resume is structured facts, laid out for fast scanning; a
[[cover-letter]] is the narrative companion submitted alongside it,
explaining motivation and fit in prose. Neither should just restate the
other — the resume shouldn't try to tell a story, and the cover letter
shouldn't just re-list the resume's bullets in sentence form.

## Common pitfalls

- **One generic resume sent to every role** — skips the tailoring step
  above, and reads as generic to both the recruiter and any ATS keyword
  match.
- **Duties instead of achievements** — "responsible for X" describes a
  job posting's expectations, not what the candidate actually
  accomplished; results and numbers are what differentiate candidates.
- **Functional format used to hide a plain job change** — raises more
  suspicion than it resolves when there's no real gap or pivot to
  explain.
- **Inconsistent dates or formatting** — trips up ATS parsing and reads
  as careless to a human reviewer either way.
- **Wrong length for the context** — most non-academic resumes run long
  past one or two pages by including everything ever done, or run too
  sparse by omitting real accomplishments.
- **Typos and inconsistent verb tense** — past roles in past tense,
  current role in present tense; small errors here are read as a proxy
  for overall carefulness.

## Learn more

- [[cover-letter]] for the narrative document submitted alongside a resume.
- [[job-description]] for the internal role definition a resume is tailored against.
- [[job-posting]] for the external advertisement a resume is tailored against.