How to Write a Resume in 2026: 7 Fixes From 1,400+ Resume Reviews

"I'm not super confident with the CV, so I just kind of wanted to like get a bit of a almost verification that I'm kind of on the right track with it."

Frontend developer, on a free Huntr support call

Part of The Ultimate Job Search Guide

"In those 12 to 15 seconds, you want to give them every reason to say yes ... and, like, as little questions in their mind, that would make them think that you're a no."

Gino Calavitta, go-to-market recruiter

The 7 fixes I make most, after reviewing 1,400+ resumes

1. Cut the AI slop. Resumes that open with "results-driven" and "detail-oriented." Percentages with no context, and too many of them. Long dashes everywhere. Recruiters spot AI slop fast.
2. Show the size, scope, and scale. How many people, how much money, how many customers. Without those numbers, a reader can't see the proof of your impact.
3. Use the formula. "Did X, which led to Y result."
4. Move your biggest win to the top. On 1 call, I found $310 million managed across 2 government funds, buried on page 2.
5. Cut the text. Dense paragraphs are hard to read. Use short bullets. (2 pages is generally the best length, even if you are entry-level)
6. Write numbers as numerals. "Led 3 teams," not "led three teams." A Microsoft recruiter taught me this one.
7. Fill out your education. An Amazon recruiter told me she scrolls straight to the education section, so make sure it is filled out EVEN if you graduated a while ago.

What recruiters read first

Every recruiter reads in a different order. Put your proof in every section.

"I scroll to the bottom ... And then I scroll up from there to see progression ... I'm looking at companies and title and tenure."

Cameron Black, contract recruiter at a large manufacturer

"Look at your resume as a technical manual of accomplishment ... Give me numbers, percentages, dollar signs ... and don't make it a paragraph. The more paragraphy a resume is, the more likely we are to simply not read it."

Ted Staeb, technical recruiter at Microsoft

Header

Include your name, email, phone, city or region, LinkedIn, and a portfolio or GitHub link if it fits. Put them on the page itself, not in the header area of Word or Google Docs. Parsers often skip that area. See Understand the ATS.

Keep official job titles. If a title is obscure, add a short, true explanation: "Client Partner (account management and renewals)." Don't invent a title to match the posting.

Summary

Lead with the strongest relevant thing you've done. Aim for 2 to 3 clear lines that connect your experience to the work ahead.

Put a dollar figure or another key number in your summary. Resumes whose summary included a dollar figure had a 7.24% interview rate, against 4.13% without one. Having a summary at all made no reliable difference in our format study. What goes in the summary does.

Several recruiters told me they don't read the summary. So keep it short, with a number in it.

Changing careers? Your summary is the bridge. It's your best argument for why you're uniquely able to do this job: the work that carries over, the new skills you can show, and the role you want.

Experience

For unfamiliar employers, add 1 short line about the business or team: customers, product, team size, budget, or scale. Then write each bullet around what you did, what changed, and why it mattered. Order bullets by relevance to the target job.

Illustrative rewrites; fictional numbers:

Separate your work from the team's. "Led the rollout" and "contributed to the rollout" are different claims. Give percentages a baseline or time period. If you lack reliable numbers, describe the scope, difficulty, or decision your work enabled. Don't invent a metric.

Career breaks

Resumes with a gap did about as well. In our data, resumes with no current role interviewed at about 5.65%, against 5.14% for resumes listing a current job.

A short, factual line can help when it explains the timeline: "Career break for family caregiving" or "Planned career break; returned to work in March 2026." You don't owe an employer private medical details.

Skills

List skills you can use and discuss, in the employer's words when they describe your real experience. Put the most important skills in your bullets too.

Where to put your skills section: in a technical role, right after your summary, so the reader sees your tools first. In other roles, put the skills section at the end. The section is still worth having, because recruiters search the ATS by skill and your resume needs those words to show up.

Don't aim for 20 or 30 skills, don't copy every term from the posting, and don't chase a perfect match score.

Read every line AI writes for you.

"I've seen resumes come in with, like, the prompt at the end of ChatGPT ... I've declined based off of that because I'm like, your attention to detail right there was very bad."

Cameron Black, contract recruiter at a large manufacturer. More in how to use AI for your resume.

Education, projects, and certifications

New or recent grad? Put education right after your summary. Fill it out with the most interesting, impressive things you did: honors, research, leadership, clubs, and projects.

Fill it out even if you graduated years ago. An Amazon recruiter told me education is the section she looks at most. Recruiters and hiring managers went to school too, and a shared school, club, or professor can start a human connection.

For projects, explain the problem, your part, the result, and where someone can see the work. Say whether a project was a personal demo or production work, and whether you did it alone.

List required licenses and relevant certifications first. A course completion is not a professional certification. List the ones that matter for the role.

See resumes that landed interviews

Each example is built from real, anonymized Huntr resumes whose owners moved a job to the interview or offer stage. The companies named are real.

Start here: 100+ real resumes that landed interviews

• Data: data analyst, financial analyst, data scientist
• Engineering and IT: software engineer, systems engineer, engineering, cybersecurity
• Programs and operations: program manager, program coordinator, project manager, operations manager
• Sales, marketing, and customers: account executive, sales development, marketing, customer success
• Changing careers: career change examples

More by field on Advice by field.

Your action items

• Put your most impressive win for this job in the first 2 lines.
• Put your target city in the header.
• Rewrite your summary in 2 to 3 lines with at least 1 dollar figure or key number.
• Fill out your education section.
• Rewrite your weakest 3 bullets with the formula above.
• Change every spelled-out number to a numeral.
• Ask someone to read the top half and name the role you want. If they can't, fix that first.

Further reading

• The Resume Is Dead and Other Job Search Nonsense: 40 years of claims that the resume is finished, and what our data says instead.
• Best resume format study: 94,338 applications.
• Q2 2026 Job Search Trends Report and Q1 2026
• How to use AI for your resume

Consult the experts. Robin Ryan has written thousands of resumes. Greg Langstaff spent 11 years as a hiring manager and makes the best short resume videos I know. Tayyaba Manaal writes resumes for middle managers and executives. More in the coaches I recommend.

Next: Tailor your resume and use AI

Tailored resumes got 1.85x the interview rate. Back to the guide home

How can I make this page better? Send me a quick note or email [email protected]. I read every one.

A weekly call with me. Huntr Pro subscribers using this guide get a weekly 15-minute job search support session with me. Email [email protected] to book yours.

Sam Wright

Sam Wright is the Head of Career Strategy at Huntr. Drawing on proprietary data from 1.7 million applications, 1 million job postings, 243,000 résumés, and a 1,049-respondent survey, Sam provides actionable, data-driven blueprints to help professionals navigate today's fractured hiring landscape. He has conducted over 900+ free support calls with job seekers, giving him frontline insight into today's job market. His work and insights have been featured in Business Insider, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and The Seattle Times.

Outside the tech world, Sam is a part-time farmer from a five-generation legacy of organic vegetable farming. He is a passionate advocate for farmland preservation.

More from Sam Wright