By Peter Miller · Published October 21, 2026 · Last updated: October 21, 2026
13 min read
The hardest part of a resume isn't the formatting or the bullet points. It's the blank page. I've watched smart, accomplished people stare at an empty document for an hour because they didn't know what the first line should be, or whether they were "allowed" to start with a summary, or how far back to go.
Here's the good news: you're not supposed to start by writing. You're supposed to start by collecting. Once your raw material is in one place, the resume almost assembles itself, and the top section (the part everyone agonizes over) gets written last.
This guide walks you through how to start a resume the way I'd coach someone sitting next to me. We'll gather your material, pick a format, set up the header, build the skeleton, and then write the opening section that sits under your name. You'll get a copy-paste outline and examples for new grads, career changers, and experienced people.
If you've already got a resume and just want a better opening, jump to the summary section. If you're starting from zero, go in order.
Quick Wins
- Spend 20 minutes collecting dates, titles, tools and results before writing a word.
- Use a one-column, reverse-chronological layout.
- Write the summary last, after the bullets tell you what your story is.
What "starting a resume" actually means
When people search for how to start a resume, they usually mean one of two things. Some want to know what to physically put at the top of the page: name, contact details, a summary or objective. Others mean "how do I begin this whole project when I've never done it or haven't done it in ten years?"
Both matter, and they connect. The top of your resume is the most-read part of it. Recruiters skim the first third of the page to decide whether to keep going, so that opening needs to say who you are professionally and what you're aiming for. But you can't write that well until you know what's underneath it.
So the process is: collect, structure, fill in, then write the top. Let's do it.
How to start a resume in 8 steps
Step 1: Pick one target job title
Before anything else, decide what job you're applying for. Not "something in marketing." A real title you've seen on postings, like "Marketing Coordinator" or "Digital Marketing Specialist." Find three postings for that title and save them.
This matters because every choice you make later (what to include, what to cut, which words to use) depends on what the reader is hiring for. A resume aimed at everything lands nowhere.
Step 2: Do a 20-minute brain dump
Open a blank document. Not your resume, just notes. For every job, internship, volunteer role, or major project in roughly the last ten to fifteen years, write down:
- Employer name, city, your title, start and end month and year.
- What you were responsible for, in plain words.
- Tools, software, certifications, and equipment you used.
- Anything you improved, built, fixed, saved, or grew, with a number if you can find one.
- Awards, promotions, or times someone trusted you with more.
Don't edit. Don't worry about wording. The goal is volume. If you can't remember dates, check old offer letters, tax documents, or your LinkedIn.
Step 3: Choose a format
For about nine out of ten people, the answer is reverse-chronological: most recent job first, working backward. It's what recruiters expect and what applicant tracking systems parse best.
A combination (hybrid) format, with a stronger skills section up top, can help career changers. A purely functional resume that hides dates tends to make recruiters suspicious, so I don't recommend it. For more, see the best resume format for US jobs .
Step 4: Set up a clean document
Use a single column, standard fonts (Calibri, Arial, Garamond, Georgia) at 10 to 12 points for body text, and margins between 0.5 and 1 inch. No tables for layout, no text boxes, no photos for US applications. Section headings should be plain words like "Experience," "Education," and "Skills" so software can recognize them.
If you'd rather not fiddle with formatting, the free resume builder gives you an ATS-safe layout to fill in.
Step 5: Write your header
The header is the first thing on the page. Keep it to two lines.
- Line one: your full name, larger and bold.
- Line two: city and state, phone, professional email, LinkedIn URL. Add a portfolio link if your field uses them.
Skip your full street address, date of birth, marital status and photo. They take space and invite bias. Use an email that's just your name; if yours is an old nickname, create a new one for the job search.
Before: Jenny Smith | 123 Oak Street Apt 4B, Springfield, IL 62701 | [email protected] | DOB 03/14/1996
After: Jenny Smith | Springfield, IL | (217) 555-0143 | [email protected] | linkedin.com/in/jennysmith
Step 6: Build the skeleton
Add the section headings in this order:
- Header
- Summary (leave blank for now)
- Skills
- Experience
- Education
- Optional: Certifications, Projects, Volunteer work
New grads with little work history can move Education above Experience. Everyone else keeps Experience first.
Step 7: Fill in experience before anything else
Move your brain-dump notes into the Experience section. For each role, write three to six bullets starting with a strong verb, and try to end each with an outcome. Spend the most bullets on your most recent and most relevant jobs.
Before: Responsible for social media accounts.
After: Grew the brand's Instagram from 2,100 to 9,800 followers in 14 months by moving to a three-post weekly calendar built around customer photos.
Don't worry if every bullet doesn't have a number. Specific details count too: the size of the team, the type of customer, the tool, the deadline.
Step 8: Now write the top
With experience filled in, you know your story. Now you can write the summary and the skills line. Those are the next two sections.
How to start a resume with a strong summary
The summary is two to four lines that sit right under your header. It answers: who are you professionally, what are you good at, and what kind of role are you aiming for? Think of it as the caption under a photo.
A good summary has three parts: your professional identity and years of experience, one or two strengths tied to the target job, and one proof point. That's it.
Copy-paste: summary formula
[Job title or professional identity] with [X years] of experience in
[industry or specialty]. Known for [strength #1 tied to the posting]
and [strength #2]. Recently [one specific result].
Summary examples
Experienced professional: "Accounts payable specialist with six years in manufacturing finance. Known for clean month-end closes and vendor reconciliation in SAP. Cut late-payment fees to near zero by building a weekly aging review with purchasing."
Career changer: "Former retail store manager moving into HR coordination. Hired, scheduled and trained teams of up to 25, handled employee relations issues on the floor, and completed an HR fundamentals certificate in 2026."
New graduate: "Recent accounting graduate (B.S., May 2026) with internship experience in audit support at a regional CPA firm. Comfortable in Excel and QuickBooks, sitting for the CPA exam in early 2027."
For more versions, see what is a resume summary .
Summary or objective?
An objective statement talks about what you want ("Seeking a challenging position..."). A summary talks about what you offer. Use a summary. The only time a short objective makes sense is when you're making a big change and need to say plainly what role you're targeting, and even then, write it so it also mentions what you bring.
Before: Objective: Seeking a challenging position in a growth-oriented company where I can use my skills.
After: Customer service lead targeting a junior project coordinator role. Ran shift schedules for 14 agents and coordinated a phone system migration with IT and two vendors.
The skills line: start with what the posting asks for
Under the summary, add a skills section with eight to fifteen items. Pull them from the postings you saved in step one. If three postings all mention "Salesforce," "pipeline reporting," and "account planning," and you have those skills, list them using those exact words.
Group skills if the list is long: "Software: Excel (pivot tables, XLOOKUP), Salesforce, Tableau" and "Methods: forecasting, variance analysis." Skip vague soft skills like "hard worker" in this section. Show those in your bullets instead. If you need ideas, see good skills to put on a resume .
A complete starter outline
Here's the whole skeleton in one place. Copy it into a blank document and start filling.
Copy-paste: resume starter outline
FIRST LAST
City, State | Phone | Email | linkedin.com/in/yourname
SUMMARY
[Title] with [X years] in [field]. Known for [strength 1] and
[strength 2]. Recently [result].
SKILLS
[Tool], [Tool], [Method], [Method], [Certification], [Language]
EXPERIENCE
Job Title | Company, City, State | Mon YYYY - Present
- [Verb] [what you did] [result or detail]
- [Verb] [what you did] [result or detail]
- [Verb] [what you did] [result or detail]
Job Title | Company, City, State | Mon YYYY - Mon YYYY
- [Verb] [what you did] [result or detail]
- [Verb] [what you did] [result or detail]
EDUCATION
Degree, Major | School, City, State | YYYY
CERTIFICATIONS
[Name], [Issuer], [Year]
How to start a resume at different career stages
First resume ever
If you've never had a formal job, start with what you have: school projects, part-time work, babysitting, lawn care, volunteering, clubs, sports. Put Education first, then a "Projects" or "Experience" section. Treat a school project like a job: what you built, what tools, what you delivered. Our guide on how to get a job covers the search side.
Returning after a break
Start the same way: brain dump, pick a target. Put a single line for the gap in your experience section if it's longer than a year ("Career break, family caregiving, 2023 to 2025") and keep moving. Lead the summary with your most relevant skills, and mention any courses or freelance work you did during the break.
Career changer
Your summary carries more weight here, because it needs to frame old experience for a new reader. Identify transferable skills from your brain dump that match the new postings, and put those first in each job's bullets. A projects section showing work in the new field helps a lot.
Senior professional
You'll have too much material, not too little. Go back 10 to 15 years in detail and summarize earlier roles in one line each or drop them. Lead with scope: team size, budget, revenue, markets. Two pages is normal at this level.
What your first hour should look like
If you want a concrete plan, here's how I'd split the first sixty minutes. It's the routine I give people who tell me they've been "meaning to start" for weeks.
Minutes 0 to 10: Search for your target job title and save three postings that look like jobs you'd actually take. Copy each into a document. Highlight every skill, tool, and requirement that shows up in at least two of them. That highlighted list is your keyword map.
Minutes 10 to 30: Brain dump. Every job, every date, every tool, every result you can remember. Don't stop to polish. If a memory is fuzzy, write "check" next to it and keep going.
Minutes 30 to 40: Paste the starter outline into a new document and fill in the header, the section headings, and the job titles, companies, and dates. This feels small, but it turns a blank page into a structure, and structure is what gets you unstuck.
Minutes 40 to 60: Write bullets for your most recent job only. Aim for four or five. Use the highlighted keyword list to decide which of your tasks matter most to this reader.
Stop there. Seriously. You've broken the hardest part. Tomorrow, write bullets for the next job back, then the skills line, then the summary. Most people finish a solid first draft in three short sessions this way, instead of one exhausting evening that ends with a half-written page they never open again.
Mistakes people make when starting a resume
- Starting with formatting. Choosing fonts and colors before you have content wastes the energy you need for writing.
- Writing the summary first. You end up with something generic because you don't know your story yet.
- Copying a fancy template. Two-column designs with icons and skill bars often break in applicant tracking systems. Stick to one column.
- Listing duties instead of results. "Responsible for" is the most common start to a weak bullet.
- Trying to fit everything. Relevance beats completeness. Cut anything that doesn't help you get the target job.
- Leaving it untargeted. A resume that works for "any job" rarely gets callbacks for a specific one.
I've reviewed resumes that took people weeks to start and ten minutes to fix, because the material was always there. They just started in the wrong place.
Check your start before you finish
Once you have a draft (even a rough one), test it. Upload it to the free ATS resume checker with one of the job postings you saved. You'll see which skills and terms from the posting are missing and whether the software reads your sections correctly. Fix those, then keep writing.
If the job asks for a cover letter too, the cover letter generator can draft one from your new resume and the posting. And if starting from scratch feels like too much, HireFlow resume writing will build it with you from your notes.
Start tonight with 20 minutes
Knowing how to start a resume takes the fear out of it. You don't start with the first line. You start with your notes.
- Pick one target title and save three postings.
- Do a 20-minute brain dump of jobs, tools, and results.
- Paste the starter outline, fill experience first, then write the summary.
When your first draft is done, run it through the ATS checker and fix what it flags. If you want an expert to take it from there, HireFlow's resume writers can help.
Read more
Frequently asked questions
Your name and contact details go at the very top: name on the first line, then city and state, phone, email, and LinkedIn. Right below that, add a two to four line summary aimed at the job you want, followed by a skills section.
Start with your education, then a projects or activities section. Include school projects, volunteering, part-time work, clubs and anything where you took responsibility. Write them like jobs, with what you did and what you produced.
Use a summary in almost every case. It tells the reader what you offer rather than what you want. A short targeted objective can help career changers, but it should still mention a relevant skill or result.
The first sentence usually states your professional identity and experience, such as "Registered nurse with five years in emergency care." It should match the job you're targeting as closely as honestly possible.
Ten to fifteen years in detail is standard. Earlier roles can be summarized in one line or left off unless they're directly relevant to the job you're targeting.