Things to Put on a Resume: 9 Sections With Examples

By Mustafa Tarabya, founder of CVBooster · Published 2026-10-14 · Updated 2026-10-14

8 min read

The things to put on a resume are your contact details, a short summary, your work experience, your education and your skills, plus optional sections such as certifications, projects and volunteer work when they help you get this job. The one constraint is relevance: every line has to help the reader decide on this job, so a thing that is true but beside the point stays off. Harvard's career services office calls a resume "a concise, informative summary of your abilities, education, and experience." Below are the nine sections, a written example of each, and two complete resumes. Written by Mustafa Tarabya, who hired for his own company, read every application himself and now writes CVBooster's guides.

Most people do not get stuck on what they did. They get stuck on whether the summer they spent repainting their aunt's fence counts. Sometimes it does. Here is how to tell.

A complete resume first, so you can see where everything goes

Before the section by section list, here is one full resume with every essential part in place. It belongs to a first-job applicant, the hardest case, because the page has to be filled without a long work history.

Six sections, one page, nothing on it that a front desk manager would skip. That is the whole target.

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The 5 things every resume needs

These five appear on almost every resume in the US, whatever the job.

1. Contact details

Name, city and state, phone, email, and a LinkedIn or portfolio link if you have one that helps. Leave off your full street address, date of birth, marital status and photo. None of them help the reader decide, and in the US most of them invite questions an employer does not want to be asked.

2. A summary or objective

Two or three lines at the top that say what you do and what you bring. Use a summary when you have experience in the field. Use an objective when you are new or changing direction; our resume objective examples show the difference with twelve samples.

For more on writing this part, see our guide to a professional summary for a resume.

3. Work experience

Job title, employer, city, dates, then three to five bullets that show what you did and what changed because you did it. Most recent job first. This is the section a hiring manager reads hardest, so put your strongest lines here.

UC Davis Human Resources describes the standard layout as one that "lists and describes your work history in reverse chronological order with your most recent position first." That is the default, and it is what most readers expect.

4. Education

Degree or diploma, school, graduation year. Add GPA only if it is strong or the posting asks. Add honors such as the dean's list. Once you have a few years of work, education moves below experience and shrinks to one line.

5. Skills

The tools, systems and hard skills the job asks for, in the posting's own words. Keep soft skills out of the list and show them inside your bullets instead. Our page on skills to put on a resume has lists by job type.

4 optional things to put on a resume when they help

Optional means: include it when it supports the job you are applying for, leave it off when it does not.

6. Certifications and licenses

Any license the job requires goes on the page, with the issuing body and the year. So does any certificate the posting names. A forklift certificate belongs on a warehouse resume and nowhere else.

7. Projects

Projects carry the page for students, career changers and anyone in a technical field. Name the project, what you built, and what it did.

8. Volunteer work

Volunteer work counts as experience when it uses the same skills as the job. Write it like a job: role, organization, dates, bullets.

9. Awards, languages and interests

Awards go in when they are recent or relevant. Languages go in with an honest level. Interests go in only when they connect to the job or the company, which our page on hobbies on a resume covers in detail.

Skills employers look for, and where to put them on the page

The National Association of Colleges and Employers names eight career readiness competencies that employers look for in new graduates. Two of them, in NACE's words:

• Communication: "Clearly and effectively exchange information, ideas, facts, and perspectives with persons inside and outside of an organization."
• Teamwork: "Build and maintain collaborative relationships to work effectively toward common goals, while appreciating diverse viewpoints and shared responsibilities."

These are not things to put on a resume as words in a list. They are things to show in your experience bullets. *Trained new hosts on the reservation book* is teamwork and communication in one line, and nobody has to take your word for it.

A complete mid-career resume with every section

Here is the same set of sections at a later stage. Education shrinks, experience grows, and the optional sections earn their place.

Notice what is not there. No objective, no interests, no references line, no GPA. At this level each of those would take space from a line that proves the job.

Things to leave off a resume

• Personal details such as age, date of birth, marital status, religion or a photo. US employers do not need them to decide.
• References. Write them on a separate page and send it when asked. The line *references available on request* adds nothing.
• Every job you ever had. Go back about ten to fifteen years unless older work is directly relevant.
• Reasons you left a job. That is an interview conversation.
• Salary history. Leave it off unless the application form asks for it.
• Skills you could not use tomorrow. If you would struggle with it on day one, it does not go in the skills list.

CareerOneStop, the US Department of Labor's job search site, has a resume writing guide that walks through the same sections; its own description is "Use this Resume Writing Guide to help you write each section of your resume."

How to decide what goes on your resume

Read the job posting and underline every requirement. Then for each thing you are unsure about, ask one question: does this line help prove I can do one of the underlined things? If yes, it goes on. If no, it comes off, however proud of it you are.

For the order of sections, our resume format guide covers layout, dates and file type.

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Frequently asked questions

What should you put on a resume?

Put your contact details, a short summary or objective, your work experience with results, your education and your skills. Add certifications, projects, volunteer work, awards or languages when they support the job you are applying for. Leave off anything that does not help the reader decide on this particular job.

What are the 5 main things in a resume?

The five main things are contact information, a summary or objective, work experience, education and skills. Almost every US resume has these five. Everything else, such as certifications, projects, volunteer work and interests, is optional and goes in only when it supports the job you are applying for.

What should I put on my resume if I have no experience?

Put your education first, then any projects, volunteer work, school activities or informal jobs such as babysitting or helping in a family business. Write each one like a job, with what you did and what came of it. Add a skills section and a clear availability line for hourly roles.

What should not be on a resume?

Leave off your date of birth, marital status, religion, photo, full street address, salary history, references and reasons for leaving past jobs. Also leave off old jobs from more than about fifteen years ago unless they are directly relevant, and any skill you could not use on your first day.

How many things should be on a resume?

Most resumes have five to seven sections: the five essentials plus one or two optional ones that support the job. More sections means less room for each, so add an optional section only when it holds something stronger than the line it would push off the page.

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