A resume is a summary of your skills, experience, qualifications or training and your career to date. Some people also call it a CV (short for Curriculum Vitae – the story of your life).

Because employers sometimes have to read hundreds of resumes, it’s important to make yours as clear, concise and easy-to-read as possible.

You can start by preparing a standard resume that you can adjust to each job you apply for, highlighting the most relevant skills and experience for that position. Each resume you do takes time and effort.

A resume needs to answer the employer’s question: 'How will I benefit from employing this person?'

Step 1: Gather information

Before you begin writing, think carefully about the different roles you’ve had and the strengths and skills you’ve got.

ways2work has several different tools to help you with this:

• to capture all your skills, revisit or create your About Me profile
• to see what employers look for visit Building on your skills 
• to help you use the language of the workplace in your resume, refer to WorkSpeak for Your Resume (PDF 79kb)

Step 2: Start to narrow it down

You need to decide which are the most relevant skills, experiences, and qualifications to include in your resume.

Step 3: The first draft

Resumes are commonly presented either as a chronological list of the positions you've held or as an outline of all the skills you have.

• Functional or skills-based
  Here you summarise and highlight your particular skills, with an emphasis on your employable skills, rather than the actual jobs you’ve previously held.
• Chronological
  Here you provide your employment history by starting with the most recent role you’ve held and outlining all the roles you’ve had in the past 10-15 years. You also need to list any gaps in your employment history, including for parenting, caring, illness, travel etc.
• Hybrid
  This is now one of the most commonly used resume styles and is a combination of functional and chronological resumes. Here you highlight your career objectives and skills, as well as provide your employment history, starting with your most recent role. Make sure you include the responsibilities and achievements you had in each role to highlight the skills you have listed.

Open the Hybrid Resume Template (Word 54kb) and download it to your computer. Fill in the details using the information you’ve gathered in Step 1 and then print it off or save it so that you can update it at any time in the future.

Do include:

• your contact details including postal address, telephone number(s) and email address
• any education and training
• your employable skills and achievements
• any work experience, including volunteering, as well as skills acquired from volunteer work. This will highlight that you are highly motivated and community minded.
• your Referees

Don’t include:

• personal information such as your age, race, sex, marital status, political affiliation, names and ages of your children or if you’ve got a spouse or partner and their job
• salary history or expectations; leave this for the end of the job interview or when they offer you the job
• expectations regarding flexible work arrangements; this should also be discussed at interview or job offer stage

Step 4: Presenting your resume

Your resume should look clean and be easy to read:

• don’t include a separate title page

• use plain white paper and print only one side

• be consistent – use the same types of headings in the same font and size throughout

• aim for a balanced look – use lots of white space without looking like you are wasting space and paper

• avoid big blocks of text – consider using bullet points

• don't use cartoons, clip-art or illustrations

• take letters of commendation and other supporting documents to the interview rather than attaching them to the resume

These tips come from Live in Victoria which has jobseeking resources for immigrants. You might find it helpful too.

Step 5: Review your resume

Re-read it. Be as critical as you can. To help you, use the Resume Tips (PDF 75kb) fact sheet.

Errors in grammar and spelling can really put employers off. Don’t just rely on a computer's 'spell check' function to catch them. Print out your resume and read it through several times.

Triple check you've spelled the employer's name correctly!

Check your contact details are correct. If an employer tries to contact you and gets a wrong number, chances are they won’t try you again.

Ask someone else to read it as well, to check for mistakes and suggest improvements.

More information

There are many websites that provide help with resume writing. You could start with the three most popular jobsearch websites which all have advice and resources including sample resumes and job applications:

• Seek
• MyCareer
• Careerone