Resume builder for a perfect finish

A perfect resume has no detail that makes a hiring manager wonder whether you were careful: every bullet follows one pattern, each job sits in the right tense and every name is spelled right. If you write it in our resume builder, the design sets your fonts, spacing and alignment, so the checks below cover your words and any bold or italics you add. Do them in order once the writing is done.

How do I keep tense, punctuation and capitals consistent?

Pick one style for each small detail and use it everywhere. Mixed styles, such as one bullet ending in a period and the next without, make a page feel careless even when the reader can't say why. Go through your resume once for each item below, since one kind of slip is easier to spot than several at once.

• Tense: past tense for jobs you've left, present tense for what you still do in your current role.
• Bullets: each one opens with a verb, and either all end with a period or none do.
• Styling: bold and italics used the same way in every job, and no job's lines switched to a numbered list.
• Capitals: job titles, employers and tools written the same way each time, such as Excel and QuickBooks, never excel or Quickbooks.
• Numbers: the same style for every figure in every section, such as 12 stores and a 30% rise.
• Dates: your design writes every job's dates in one style and puts Present against the job you hold now, so check only that each month and year is right and your newest job comes first.

Our resume writing FAQs settle the common arguments, from past or present tense to whether you can use "I". Not sure what to do when one bullet runs to two sentences? The FAQ on this page has the rule.

How long should a perfect resume be?

One page, for most people with under 10 years of experience. Move to two once you have more relevant work than one page can hold, with your strongest lines on page one. Either way, look for bullets that spill a word or two onto a new line and trim each one to fit, since every spill costs a full line. Then cut duties every applicant in your field shares, which tell a reader nothing about you.

How do I catch typos I keep reading past?

Change the way you read. After a few passes your eyes fill in the words you meant, so read the resume from the last line up or hand it to someone who hasn't seen it. Then check by hand what spell check can't judge: employer and school names, and real words in the wrong place, like manger for manager or form for from. Our guide to making your resume stand out recommends the same bottom-up read.

Does my resume use the job ad's exact terms?

It should, wherever they honestly describe your work, spelled the way the ad spells them. A recruiter searching for Salesforce or PMP is looking for those words, so a line about "CRM software" or "a project certification" can get missed. Copy tool names, certifications and capitals exactly, and write an acronym out in full once, such as Certified Public Accountant (CPA), before you use the short form. If your resume opens with a headline or summary, name the role the way the posting does, such as Accounts Payable Specialist rather than AP Clerk, as long as it fits what you do. Our answer on whether you need the ad's exact keywords explains how far to take it.

What should I check in my last read before sending?

Read the whole page once more at normal speed, the way an employer will, then run through these checks:

• No doubled words or half-finished phrases are left where you rewrote a line.
• No bullet repeats a point you already made under another job.
• Nothing is left over from an earlier version, like another company's name in your summary.

Small slips matter more when a reader has a stack to get through. As the hiring research shows, employers now see far more applications for each hire than a few years ago, so a careless detail gives a busy reader an easy reason to move on.

Build a polished resume with Rocket Resume

Rocket Resume's builder takes you through your resume one section at a time, and every design in the template gallery is ATS-friendly. Type a job title to get AI-enhanced expert lines to start from, and edit any of them as you go. See what the builder handles while you proofread, then start:

1. Give your experience level and choose a design, which you can change later without retyping a line.
2. Fill in your contact details and each job, and keep the expert suggestions for that title that are true for you.
3. Add your education, skills and summary, then reword any line and drag sections into order on the final screen.
4. Read your whole resume there from the last line up, then download it and apply.

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