Resume sections: What to include and in what order (2026 guide)

Resume sections should help a recruiter identify your role, experience, qualifications, strongest evidence within a quick scan. Most applicants need five core sections, plus job-related optional sections.

The parts of a resume change in order and length. Graduates may lead with education and projects. Experienced applicants usually lead with work history.

What are the 5 main sections of a resume to include

If you’re deciding what sections should be on a resume, start with five core areas: contact information, a professional resume summary or objective, work experience, education, and skills.

What should the 5 parts of a resume include

Before sending the resume, call the listed number and open every link. A typo in an email address can make an interested recruiter unable to reach you.

2. Professional summary or objective section

Strong resume summary examples have two to four lines to state your target role, relevant background, strongest area of experience, and one result that supports your claim.

Use a professional summary when you already have related experience. A focused objective works better for students, recent graduates, career changers who need to explain their direction.

A useful structure is: Job title / professional area + experience level + relevant specialty + proof of performance

❌ Weak example:

Motivated professional seeking a growth opportunity where I can use my skills and contribute to company success.

This version could describe almost any applicant. It doesn’t name a role, field, skill, or result.

Avoid unsupported resume buzzwords such as “results-driven,” “dynamic,” or “excellent communicator.” Replace self-ratings with facts.

3. Work experience section

A useful format of work experience section is: 

   Job title

   Employer, Location | Employment dates

   Three to five bullets for recent relevant roles

   Fewer bullets for older or less relevant jobs

For example:

Customer Support Specialist
Northstar Software, Austin, TX | June 2022–Present
 - Resolved 40 to 50 weekly tickets in Zendesk while maintaining a 94% customer satisfaction score.
- Rewrote 25 help-center articles, reducing repeat setup questions by 18%.
- Trained three new team members on escalation procedures and account troubleshooting.

❌ Weak bullet:

- Handled customer requests.

✅ Improved bullet:

- Resolved 40+ weekly support tickets in Zendesk with a 94% customer satisfaction score.

The improved bullet gives the recruiter three useful facts: workload, software knowledge, service quality. 

A chronological and functional resume will affect how visible your career history is. Most candidates benefit from a reverse chronological structure since recruiters will not need to search for dates.

Internships, contract assignments, and substantial freelance work can appear in this section. Use “Relevant Experience” to separate related work.

4. Education section

Include your degree, major, institution, and location. Add the graduation date, expected graduation date, GPA, honors, or coursework only when those details support the role.

Use this format:

   Bachelor of Science in Business Analytics

   University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX

   Graduated May 2025

A current student could write:

Bachelor of Science in Computer Science
Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ
Expected May 2027

Remove high school once you’ve completed a college degree. Senior applicants can usually omit GPA, coursework, campus clubs, and graduation dates that no longer help assess current ability.

5. Skills section                               

List a focused group of tools, technical abilities, methods, and languages that match the job description. 

For most applicants, 8 to 12 relevant skills provide enough coverage without turning the section into a keyword list.

• Marketing example:

SEO strategy | GA4 | Ahrefs | Content planning | A/B testing | Email marketing | Conversion analysis

• Data analyst example:

SQL | Excel | Python | Tableau | Power BI | Data visualization | Forecasting

• Customer support example:

Zendesk | Salesforce | Ticket triage | Account troubleshooting | Customer onboarding | Knowledge-base writing

Don’t add:

❌ Skills you cannot discuss in an interview

❌ Basic tools expected for the role

❌ Progress bars or percentage ratings

❌ Broad claims such as “leadership” without evidence

❌ Long lists copied from the posting

For example:

Skills section: SQL, Excel, Tableau

Experience bullet: Automated a monthly Tableau report using SQL and Excel, cutting preparation time by three hours.

The first entry confirms the keywords. The second explains how the applicant used them and what changed.

Your mix of hard skills vs. soft skills depends on the role. The strongest skills to put on a resume are relevant to the posting and supported elsewhere in the document.

Use the employer’s wording when it accurately describes your experience. A job posting that repeatedly asks for “pipeline management” gives you a reason to use that term instead of the broader phrase “sales skills.”

Which optional sections to include on resume

Add an optional section when it supplies relevant evidence that your five core sections do not show clearly. The right sections to include on a resume depend on the role and proof available.

• Certifications and licenses

If the employer requires certifications or licenses, or if they confirm current technical knowledge, list the credential name and issuer with the date.

Leave out expired, introductory, or unrelated certificates. Minor badges can hide stronger credentials.

• Projects section

Add projects for student, technical, creative, freelance, or career-change applications. A project can show current ability when a job title doesn’t match the target role.

One r/careerguidance user had eight years in IT service management, a two-year gap, and a move into data and AI. SQL training and an analytics project connected past knowledge with the new target.

Describe the problem, your work, tools, and result. A career change resume should make that connection clear near the top.

• Volunteer experience

Add volunteer work on a resume when it shows relevant duties, fills an activity gap, or adds job-related evidence. Format substantial service like paid experience, with dates and results.

List the organization, role, dates, and results.

• Languages

List languages on a resume with an honest proficiency level. Move the section higher when the posting asks for multilingual ability or daily work in another language.

Avoid progress bars. Use native, fluent, professional working proficiency, or conversational.

• Awards, publications, or affiliations

Add these sections when entries are recent, related to the role, and supported by a clear title, organization, and date. Each entry should add evidence missing elsewhere.

Order for career changers

If you’re a career changer, lead with a targeted summary, relevant skills, and recent projects, so recruiters see the connection to the new field before reviewing your older titles.

1. Contact information
2. Targeted summary
3. Relevant skills
4. Relevant projects or certifications
5. Work experience
6. Education

Order for technical or project-based roles

As a technical applicant, you can place skills above work history when the job has firm tool, language, platform, or certification requirements that recruiters check early during review.

1. Contact information
2. Professional summary
3. Technical skills
4. Work experience
5. Selected projects
6. Education and certifications

The final choice should match the resume format and your evidence.

Use familiar headings such as Work Experience, Education, Skills, Projects, and Certifications. Clear labels help recruiters find information and help parsing software classify it.

No public heading whitelist covers every ATS. Standard labels are safer because their meaning is clear.

A plain heading cannot replace missing qualifications. ATS checkers can flag formatting concerns, yet their scores do not predict an employer’s decision.

In one r/recruitinghell discussion, applicants reported conflicting scanner results and unreadable “ATS-friendly” templates. One resume appeared garbled in employer systems for months.

Quick formatting checklist before you submit a resume

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FAQ

What are the 5 parts of a resume?

The main five parts of a resume include contact information, a professional summary or objective, work experience, education, and skills. Optional sections such as projects, certifications, languages, and volunteer work belong only when they add relevant evidence missing elsewhere.

What order should resume sections be in?

Resume sections should usually follow this order: contact information, summary, work experience, skills, education, and optional sections. Recent graduates can move education and projects higher. Career changers may place relevant skills, projects, or certifications before work history.

What section headers does ATS recognize?

ATS software commonly reads standard headers such as Professional Summary, Work Experience, Education, Skills, Certifications, Projects, Volunteer Experience, and Awards. No single public list applies to every system, so use familiar labels and a simple document structure.