How to Write a Resume in 2026: The Step-by-Step Guide for India
A resume has one job: get you a call for an interview. This guide walks through every section in the order you should write it, shows ten weak bullets rewritten into strong ones, and ends with a complete sample whose structure you can copy.
How to write a resume: the 12 steps
Two readers will see your resume: an applicant tracking system (ATS) that extracts your text into fields and searches it for keywords, and a recruiter with a hundred profiles open who gives each a few seconds. Every step below serves both.
- Choose the format. Reverse-chronological (latest job first) is right for almost everyone in India, freshers included. A skills-first format only makes sense if you are changing careers and your recent titles are irrelevant. Keep it single-column; two-column designs confuse parsers. Tested layouts are on the templates page.
- Write the header. Name (largest text on the page), the title you are targeting, city, one phone number, one professional email, LinkedIn URL. GitHub for developers, portfolio for designers. No home address, date of birth, photo, or "Curriculum Vitae" heading. "Operations Executive · Logistics" under your name says more than "Hardworking professional".
- Pick a summary or an objective. Experienced: three lines on what you do, what you are good at, one result. Fresher or career-changer: two lines naming the role and what you bring. Never both. Examples are below.
- Write experience. For each job: title, company, city, month-year start and end, then three to five bullets using the action + task + result formula. The current job gets the most bullets; anything older than ten years gets one line or is dropped. Internships go here with "Intern" in the title.
- List skills in a grouped block. "Tools: SAP MM, Tally Prime, Advanced Excel" and "Domain: inventory planning, vendor management, GST compliance". Use the exact names in the job description, because that is what the ATS searches. No star ratings or percentage bars: parsers cannot read them and recruiters cannot verify them.
- Add education. Degree, specialisation, college, university, year, CGPA or percentage, latest first. When to include 10th and 12th marks is covered below.
- Add projects if they carry weight. Freshers and developers: two or three, each with a one-line description, tools, and outcome. Mid-career: fold into experience bullets unless a project (an ERP migration, a plant launch) is a career highlight.
- Add certifications. Relevant and verifiable only: Google Data Analytics, AWS Cloud Practitioner, NISM, Six Sigma, NPTEL. Give the issuer and year.
- Apply the formatting rules. One font, 10.5–12 pt body, standard headings, consistent dates, margins of at least 1.8 cm, one page unless you have eight-plus years of relevant work. Full checklist below.
- Proofread twice. Once on screen for spelling and tense (past jobs in past tense, current job in present). Once on your phone or on paper, where awkward line breaks and three-line bullets show up.
- Tailor for each application. Keep a master version; per job, change the title line, reorder skills to match the ad, and move the most relevant bullet to the top. See the routine below.
- Save as PDF. Name it Firstname-Lastname-Resume.pdf, never "final2 (1).pdf". Open the PDF, select all, paste into Notepad: if the text comes out in order, the ATS will read it the same way.
The bullet formula: action + task + result
Most weak resumes fail in the same place: bullets describe duties instead of outcomes. "Responsible for handling customer queries" repeats your job description without saying whether you were any good at it. The fix is a three-part formula: an action verb (what you did) + the task and context (on what, for whom, with which tool) + the result (a number, a change, or a business outcome). Not every bullet gets a hard number, but every bullet can end in something that was faster, cheaper, larger or fixed because of you.
| Before (duty) | After (action + task + result) |
|---|---|
| Responsible for handling customer complaints. | Resolved 40+ customer complaints a week through the Freshdesk queue, cutting average resolution time from 3 days to 1. |
| Worked on social media. | Ran the Instagram and LinkedIn calendars (12 posts a week), growing followers from 4,000 to 11,000 in 8 months with no paid spend. |
| Made reports in Excel. | Built a weekly sales MIS in Excel (pivots, XLOOKUP) that replaced a 4-hour manual compile with a 20-minute refresh. |
| Did coding in Java for the project. | Developed the order-tracking module in Java and Spring Boot, exposing 3 REST endpoints used by roughly 2,000 daily orders. |
| Handled vendor management. | Negotiated annual contracts with 14 packaging vendors and brought unit cost down 9% year on year. |
| Helped in recruitment. | Screened 300+ profiles a month on Naukri and scheduled 60 interviews for two engineering teams, holding time-to-offer under 21 days. |
| Taught students maths. | Taught Class 9–10 mathematics to batches of 35; 92% of students scored 60% or more in the board exam. |
| Managed accounts. | Maintained books for 3 group entities in Tally Prime, filed monthly GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B, and closed every month within 5 working days. |
| Achieved targets. | Closed ₹1.2 crore of annual SME insurance premium against a ₹1 crore target (120%) across the Pune West territory. |
| Part of the testing team. | Wrote and executed 450 manual test cases for a banking app release and logged 70 defects in Jira, 12 of them critical. |
Each rewrite starts with a specific verb, names the tool or scope, and ends in a figure the candidate can defend in an interview. If you lack the exact number, use a defensible range ("around 40 tickets a week"). Avoid "responsible for", "worked on" and "helped with": they describe presence, not contribution.
Summary vs objective
A summary looks backward and compresses your track record into three lines. An objective looks forward, naming the role you want and why you fit; it suits freshers and career-changers.
Summary (5 years, HR)
HR Generalist with 5 years across manufacturing and IT services, handling end-to-end hiring, payroll inputs for 600+ employees and PF/ESI compliance. Reduced shop-floor attrition from 28% to 17% at Kalpana Auto Components through a structured 90-day onboarding programme. Comfortable with Keka, Darwinbox and Excel-based MIS.
Objective (fresher, mechanical engineering)
Mechanical engineering graduate (2026, 8.1 CGPA) seeking a Graduate Engineer Trainee role in production or quality. Completed a 6-week internship at a tier-2 auto supplier, mapping rejection causes on a press line and helping cut rework by a fifth. Trained in AutoCAD, SolidWorks and basic GD&T.
Neither uses "dynamic", "hardworking" or "seeking a challenging position". More phrasings by field are on the career objective page; the one-line title above it is covered in resume headline examples.
Education: when to include 10th and 12th percentages
A uniquely Indian question, because campus and mass recruiters (TCS, Infosys, Wipro, Accenture and similar) often apply an eligibility cutoff, commonly 60% throughout, at 10th, 12th and graduation.
| Your situation | 10th and 12th marks |
|---|---|
| Fresher or under 2 years, applying to campus drives or mass recruiters | Include, in a compact academics table (year, board, percentage). A missing figure looks like a hidden one. |
| Fresher applying to startups or small companies | Optional. Include if strong (80%+); otherwise list only degree and CGPA. |
| 3+ years of experience | Drop them. Highest degree first; graduation degree if relevant. |
| Postgraduate (MBA, M.Tech, M.Sc) | PG and UG with CGPA. School marks only if a form asks. |
| Government, PSU or bank exams | The application form collects every mark separately; keep the resume clean and carry a full academic record to the interview. |
Write the degree as your certificate states it ("B.E. Mechanical Engineering"). The academics-table layout is in the fresher resume format guide.
Sample resume: Operations Executive, Nagpur
Five years in logistics on one page: the summary states the domain and one result, every bullet ends in a number, and the skills block uses words a recruiter would search on Naukri.
Prateek Deshmukh
Summary
Operations Executive with 5 years in 3PL and FMCG distribution across Vidarbha, running a 22,000 sq ft warehouse and a fleet of 18 contracted vehicles. Improved on-time dispatch from 84% to 96% at Vidarbha Cargo Movers through route planning and daily dock scheduling. Hands-on with SAP MM, WMS and Excel-based MIS.
Experience
- Manage daily inbound and outbound operations for a 22,000 sq ft FMCG warehouse handling around 1,400 SKUs and 350 dispatches a day.
- Redesigned delivery routes for 18 contracted vehicles across Nagpur, Wardha and Amravati, lifting on-time dispatch from 84% to 96% in six months.
- Cut damage-in-transit claims by 31% by introducing a pallet-wrapping SOP and a loading checklist for 40 handlers.
- Reconciled monthly transporter bills of about ₹45 lakh, recovering ₹3.2 lakh of duplicate and excess billing in FY 2025–26.
- Coordinated hub-to-hub line-haul for a regional e-commerce client, tracking around 120 trips a week and escalating delays within 30 minutes.
- Built the weekly MIS in Excel (pivots, conditional formatting) that replaced a 3-hour manual compile with a 25-minute refresh.
- Trained 12 new hires on the WMS and stock-count procedure, bringing cycle-count accuracy above 99% in their first quarter.
Skills
Warehouse operations · Fleet and route planning · SAP MM · WMS · Inventory control and cycle counts · Transporter billing and reconciliation · Advanced Excel (pivots, XLOOKUP) · Vendor coordination · Team supervision · Marathi, Hindi, English
Education
Certifications
Lean Six Sigma Yellow Belt, 2024 · Advanced Excel for Business, 2022 · Warehouse Management Fundamentals (NPTEL), 2023
More full examples by role are on resume samples, including accountant, sales and data analyst pages.
Formatting rules that keep it readable and ATS-safe
- One clean font (Calibri, Arial, Georgia), 10.5–12 pt body, 14–16 pt headings, 20–24 pt name.
- Single column. Right-align dates with a tab stop, not a table or second column.
- Standard headings: Summary, Experience, Skills, Education, Projects, Certifications. "My Journey" will not be recognised by a parser.
- Dates as month and year ("Jul 2021 – Mar 2023"); year-only dates raise questions about gaps.
- Bullets of one to two lines, three to five per role.
- Margins of at least 1.8 cm and visible white space between sections.
- No text boxes, images, icons, or contact details inside the page header or footer.
- One page up to about eight years of experience; two pages beyond. Never one and a quarter.
- Saved as PDF, named with your full name, under 1 MB.
Why each rule matters for parsing is explained on the ATS resume guide; if you are building in Word, the resume format in Word page shows the exact settings. Before sending, check your resume's ATS score free.
Tailoring the resume for each job
- Paste the job description into a document and highlight every tool, skill and responsibility that appears more than once. Those are the keywords.
- Change your title line to the role's title if you can do so truthfully.
- Reorder your skills block so the highlighted keywords come first, using the employer's spelling and abbreviations (both "SAP MM" and "SAP Materials Management" if the ad uses both).
- Swap the top bullet of your current role for the one that best proves the ad's main requirement, and rewrite the summary's second sentence to name the employer's industry or problem.
On Naukri, also update your profile headline and key skills with the same terms (see the Naukri headline guide). A short cover letter still helps at smaller companies.
Mistakes that quietly cost interviews
- Biodata fields in a resume. Date of birth, father's name, marital status and a "Declaration" line belong to the biodata format, a different document for a different purpose.
- Buzzword summaries. "Dynamic, result-oriented professional seeking a challenging position" says nothing. Replace every adjective with a fact.
- Unexplained gaps. A six-month gap is fine; an unmentioned one invites suspicion. One line ("Career break for family care, 2024") settles it.
- Sending a .jpg or scanned PDF. The ATS sees an image with no text, and your application is effectively blank.
Frequently asked questions
How long should a resume be in India?
One page for freshers and anyone under about 8 years of experience; two pages once you have a decade or more of relevant work. Recruiters at large Indian IT and services companies skim, so the first half of page one must carry your strongest material. Never pad to fill a second page.
Should I include a photo, date of birth or father's name?
Not for corporate jobs. Photos, date of birth, marital status, religion and parents' names are biodata fields, not resume fields, and they take up space that should go to your work. Only include them when a specific form or a government or Gulf employer explicitly asks.
Do I need to mention my 10th and 12th percentages?
Include them if you are a fresher or have under two years of experience, because many campus and mass recruiters still apply a marks cutoff. Once you have three or more years of experience or a postgraduate degree, drop them and list only your highest qualifications.
What is the best file format to send my resume in?
PDF, unless the job posting or portal asks for a Word file. A PDF exported from a text-based builder or from Word keeps your layout intact on every device and remains readable by applicant tracking systems. Do not send a scanned image or a photo of your resume.
How do I write a resume with no experience?
Lead with education, then projects, internships, positions of responsibility and certifications, using the same action-plus-result bullet style you would use for a job. Our resume format for freshers guide has two full fresher samples and the exact section order.
Related guides & tools
- Free ATS score checker — see what the parser reads
- Resume format for freshers — section order and two full samples
- ATS resume guide — what breaks parsing and how to fix it
- Career objective examples — by field
- Resume headline examples — the title under your name
- Resume templates — 100 ATS-safe designs
- Resume samples by role
- Campus placement resume checklist