Contact Information

Contact information appears at the top of your resume and consists of your name, address, phone number, and/or email address. Each of these fields is optional but, at a minimum, you should include your name and a primary phone number at which you can be reached.

Career Objective or Summary

Career Objective or Summary is a paragraph that typically appears directly under your contact information and gives a brief synopsis of your qualifications, skills and experience related to the job for which you're creating this resume.

Skills and Competencies

Skills and Competencies lists your technical job related skills divided into skill types. For example, if you're proficient in Microsoft Word and Excel you may have a line in Skills and Competencies with a skill type of "Software" and a skill list of "MS Word, MS Excel".

Education and Training

Education and Training lists education and training. This could be a degree from a college or trade school, a certification, apprenticeship, or any other formal instruction you've received that demonstrates your capabilities.

Professional Skills

Professional Skills are typically included when creating a functional resume and consist of several categories of skills followed by a list of bullet points emphasizing your experience in that skill area.

Employment History

Your Employment History is a list of the jobs or other experience you've had and a brief summary of your responsibilities and accomplishments. If you're creating a chronological resume you'll typically have this section instead of a Professional Skills section but both can be included on your resume as appropriate.

Employment History (Bullets)

This section is identical to Employment History except that the summary paragraph is replaced by up to five bullet points allowing you to zero in on specific responsibilies or accomplishments of a particular job. Using this section over Employment History is simplay a matter of preference.

Honors and Awards

Honors and Awards list any honors or awards you've received that are relevant to your career. Each line in this section is free form and you'll typically list one honor or award per line.