Writing A Resume Outline Can Simplify Your Resume Creation Process

No one creates a new MS Word document and starts typing the final draft of their resume. Before you even start to type a single sentence, you need to create a plan for your resume. If you don’t plan before you write your resume, a poor outcome is guaranteed, and you’d waste a good number of hours doing revision after revision to the document.

The resume outline is the first thing you must create before you write your resume. Your resume outline doesn’t need to follow a particular format. It is just a rough note that will help you decide exactly what should go in each section of your resume.

You can’t start listing down all your achievements and skills on a paper and call it a resume. A resume needs to be organized and compelling. Even the priority order of your bullet points must be pre-decided. A resume outline will help you with that. The resume outline will decide the basic structure and content of the resume. Once you have the basics going, you can start to add flair to your resume to compel an employer to hire you.

The 6 Key Parts Of A Resume Outline

Your resume outline must have all the sections that your resume has so that you can decide what you must put under each section. Here’s a list you can follow to ensure that nothing is missing:

1. Heading (contact information)

Be sure to include all the contact details a hiring manager needs to know in order to call you back for an interview. This section should include your:

• First and last name
• Address (city, state, and zip code)
• Phone number
• Email address
• LinkedIn address

2. Summary

You can try your hand at writing the perfect summary statement for your resume. A resume summary should typically consist of reasons why you are the best fit for the role and what accomplishments you’ve achieved previously make you the perfect candidate for the role.

3. Experience history

Pay more attention to this section as it is the most important aspect of your resume. What you include in your work history will determine whether an employer would want to hire you or toss your resume in the bin. This section consists of all the jobs you’ve held, volunteer experience, freelance experience, and internships.

4. Education

The education section of your resume outline should include the name of any schools you attended, your degrees, and any additional achievements you earned while in school. If you have academic achievements that are show-worthy, include them in the relevant chronological order here.

5. Skills

Add a perfect blend of the hard skills and soft skills that are needed for the job in your resume outline. Instead of adding vague lines, be as specific as possible when describing your skills. Try to match the language of the job description for maximum results.

6. Other relevant information

If you have anything else that you feel must go in your resume, you can create separate sections for them. Some good ideas for additional resume sections are:

• Hobbies and Interests
• Volunteer work
• Projects
• Language proficiencies
• Research work
• Conferences
• Industry memberships

When the outline is all done, you can easily transfer the details to an existing resume format, or a brand-new resume. Simply start adding the details of your outline sections to your resume. You can then have several rounds of editing sessions where you tweak the action verbs of bullet points, or where you add powerful writing to add flair to your resume.