Resumes & CVs
The type and style of document you create for your resume or curriculum vitae (CV) will depend on your major, industry, years of experience, or academic pursuits. Review the resources below and connect with us for specific questions and nuanced situations.
You can schedule an appointment in Handshake or stop by Monday - Friday from noon to 3:00 for a 15-minute drop-in to have your resume/CV reviewed.
A successful resume/CV is tailored to the purpose, industry, and specific opportunity. On this page, you will find suggestions for content and formatting based on a variety of use cases. Once you determine if you need a CV or a resume, we often encourage students to create a "master" document that captures all of their experiences and accomplishments. Then, tailor your document to highlight key skills necessary for the opportunity you are applying to.
Below, you will find potential sections for your resume/CV as well as guides on what to highlight for various majors/industries.
Regardless of your major or career path, keep these key considerations for most U.S.-based searches:
- Design a resume/CV that is both compatible with Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) and easy to read for a human reviewer.
- Keep the design and formatting simple, clear, and consistent - avoid colors, icons, photos, columns, or tables.
- The bullet points are the most important part of your resume. Include enough details to demonstrate not just what you did, but how you did it, the results, and the impact. Use the following formula as your foundation: Action Verb + Core Content + Result, Purpose, or Impact.
- Focus on the skills you demonstrated instead of the daily tasks you completed.
What Type of Document Do I Need?
A resume for an undergraduate finance major is going to look very different from the CV of a mid-career neuroscience researcher. Before starting your document, determine if you are building a one-page resume that highlights key skills/accomplishments or if your industry expects a multi-page resume or CV.
- Undergraduate Resume
- Curriculum Vitae (CV)
- Graduate Student/Alumni Resumes
- Federal Government Resume
Resume Sections
A resume is not just your work history. Consider including paid and unpaid internships, campus/community involvement, academic projects, volunteer experience, trainings, and any other experiences represented by the sections listed below.
Effectively arranging and categorizing your experiences within sections helps draw the reader's attention to key skills. Keep the design and formatting simple, clear, and consistent - avoid colors, icons, photos, columns, or tables.
Your resume won't have all of these sections, and there may be sections you want to add based on your field. If you are unsure of what you should include, refer to our Resume Writing Guides & Samples.
Contact Information
Including clear contact information is critical to employers knowing how to reach you. Your resume is an advertisement for you, so make your name big and bold.
Key Considerations:
- If you want to include your LinkedIn URL, be sure your profile is up to date and you have a photo. It is also important to edit your profile URL to make it cleaner and shorter.
- Depending on your industry, you might include a link to your GitHub, portfolio, or personal website instead of LinkedIn.
- If the position you are applying to is based in your hometown, use that city and state instead of Baltimore, MD.
- Only include one email address and phone number.
Education
As a student, your Education should be at the top of your resume. List the degree you are working towards (Bachelor of Science, Chemistry), even if you are just beginning. If you transferred to Loyola from another institution, it is not necessary to include the other school unless you earned an Associate's degree. High School should be removed from your resume by your sophomore year.
There are numerous things that you might want to include as a bullet point in this section, but none are required.
- Minor (or Concentration)
- GPA (if above a 3.5)
- Awards or Honors if you are the recipient of an academic scholarship, a member of an honors society, or a recipient of an academic award
- Campus Involvement could be a list of clubs and organizations you were a part of, but did not hold a leadership role (those where you did have a leadership role will go in the Campus Leadership section)
- Relevant Coursework could list the names of some courses (not numbers) that are related to the position you are applying to. You don't need to include basics for your major; instead, focus on electives or higher-level courses with a more specific focus.
- Study Abroad can be listed here with the name of the School, City, Country, and dates. If you are trying to highlight your international experience (such as for a global studies or international relations role), you can list it as a separate institution in this section.
Relevant Experience
You will likely want to have several "Experience" sections on your resume. The headings will vary based on your specific experiences and what you want to highlight (with the most relevant topics near the top). The headings might change for different applications and roles. You can group experiences based on a particular skill, industry, or titles based on your major or the specific role you are applying to. Some potential headings include:
- Relevant Experience
- Work Experience
- Professional Experience
- Research Experience
- Clinical Experience
- Teaching Experience
- Non-profit Experience
- Programming Experience
- Event Planning Experience
- Financial Experience
- Marketing Experience
Using multiple section headings to showcase your experience lets you put the most relevant at the top of your resume. And by staying away from "Work Experience" as the heading, you can include unpaid, volunteer, leadership, or on-campus experiences in the same section.
Leadership & Campus Experience
Leadership is one of the skills employers value most. Write bullet points the same way you would for any other experience. Don't just describe the goals and purpose of the organization - focus on your specific actions.
Consideration:
If your leadership role is related to your career goals, you may choose to group it
with other experiences in a different section that highlights key skills. For example,
if you were the Social Media Chair of a club and are applying for jobs in that field,
you might include that under Public Relations Experience or Social Media Experience.
Volunteer Experience
Including your volunteer experience and service demonstrates your care for the community and can give a more holistic view of you as a person. If the experience was related to your career goals, this is a great time to show the application of your skills (particularly if you don't have a lot of related work experience). Most community service can help build transferable skills like communication, collaboration, organization, and time management. It also demonstrates initiative by choosing to get involved.
Don't feel like you have to come up with multiple bullets for one day or short-term volunteering. If that is the only kind of service you have, you could consider just a bulleted list (with dates) instead of formatting it the same as other experiences. For more in-depth or long-term experiences, treat them like any other experience and write detailed bullet points.
Skills
This section refers to hard skills and tangible knowledge (programs, languages, equipment, etc.). Avoid soft skills like organization or time management. Recruiters want to see those skills demonstrated through the actions in your bullet points - not just asserted.
- See the Resume Guides by Field for specific skills to highlight
- You can group similar skills together in subsections such as Technical Skills, Language Skills, and Laboratory Skills
- Unless a job description mentions explicitly Word, Excel, or other Microsoft Office programs, you typically don't need to include them
- AI skills are increasingly important in hiring decisions, so be sure to highlight any advanced expertise you have in industry-relevant applications.
- A Skills section is often the last section in a resume, if the role specifically names a coding language, laboratory techniques or computer software that is a mandatory requirement, it may be beneficial to place your Skills section directly under your Education section.
Additional Sections
Based on your experiences, you may have additional sections that round out your skills as a candidate.
These sections should be used to highlight specialized experiences related to the position you are applying to.
Project Experience
Consider any long-term academic projects you completed throughout your coursework. Typically, these are semester-long projects done individually or as a group that require individual research and sustained application of knowledge and skills gained in the course.
You can format this section similarly to any other work or internship experience with 2-3 bullet points highlighting the skills you demonstrated, the strategies/tools you used, and the outcome of the project.
The project title would be formatted similarly to a job title, and a course name would be formatted in the same style as an employer.
Collegiate Athlete Experience
If you are an athlete, you know the time, skill, and commitment that are required to be a Greyhound. There are multiple ways you can include your collegiate athlete experience on your resume/CV. It can be woven into your Education section or be listed in a stand-alone section like the one shown in Humanities Sample #1
If you are unsure how to describe your experience as an athlete on your resume, read through our Loyola Student Athlete Transferable Skills worksheet.
Trainings & Certifications
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Technology & Software training (Excel, Tableau, Adobe, etc.)
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Safety & Compliance Trainings (working with minors, OSHA compliance training, Red Cross CPR Certification)
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Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Training
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Mental Health & Referral Skills
Building Strong Resume Bullets
The bullet points are the most important part of your resume. It is not just that you had a particular role or performed specific duties – bullet points demonstrate the value of those duties to a potential employer. Help them see why your past experiences matter and connect the dots to the specific role you are applying for to show how you can benefit their organization.
Include enough specific details that someone can understand what you did, the skills you used, and the outcomes of your work. Use the following formula as your foundation: Action Verb + Core Content + Result, Purpose, or Impact.
Just like the rest of your resume, your bullet points should be tailored and tweaked for different job applications. Use the specific keywords and descriptions they are using (this can also help get through Applican Tracking Systems). Maybe you want to add more detail to one aspect of a role and remove parts that are less relevant or put the bullets in a different order.
Bullet points that get you hired always start with an action verb in the correct tense (present if ongoing or past if the experience has ended). A strong action verb can emphasize the skills you want to highlight. Avoid starting with "responsible for..." and instead be specific about the details of what you did. Refer to this list of common action verbs to get inspiration and see the variety of ways to communicate similar skills.
This is your chance to help the employer see how your past experiences connect to the potential role and could benefit their organization. Bullet points should be action-oriented with enough detail that someone can understand your skills and abilities.
A good way to start brainstorming the content of your bullet points is to answer the following questions:
- Who? Who were your clients/customers? Who did you interact with? Did you present or share results with an audience?
- What? What specific tasks did you perform? What did you contribute/accomplish? What were the results of your work?
- When? How often did you perform this task?
- Where? Were you in the office or off-site? Did you complete remote work?
- Why? Why were you performing this task? What was the goal? Was there a problem you were trying to solve?
- How? How did you go about performing this task? Did you work alone or with others? What technologies did you use?
- You don’t have to answer all of these questions for each experience; they are just a tool to help you dig deeper. Think broadly about each of your experiences – consider special projects and things outside your general role, times you took initiative or were given an extra responsibility, anything that helps demonstrate what is listed in the description of the job you are interested in.
Showcase outcomes and accomplishments to demonstrate that you didn’t just perform a required task but did it well. Some results will be quantifiable numbers or percentages, but even without exact data, you can still demonstrate the impact of your work.
On-Campus Student Assistant BEFORE:
- Help students and visitors
- Assist faculty and staff with various projects
- Make flyers for events and post on social media
On-Campus Student Assistant AFTER:
- Communicate with students and visitors to answer questions, determine their needs, and direct them to appropriate resources
- Collaborate with the Office Manager to organize departmental events such as lectures and workshops, including reserving space, creating room diagrams for setup, and coordinating catering
- Promote departmental events and information on social media, resulting in a 7% increase in followers
Marketing Class Project BEFORE:
- Worked on a team to create a marketing plan for a local company
- Created a presentation about the plan
Marketing Class Project AFTER:
- Collaborated with a team of three other students to create a detailed plan to launch a new product for a local jewelry business
- Designed the launch within budget and all parameters set by the company to outline the merchandising, communication plan, and retailing strategy
- Presented project plan to executives of the company and fellow students
Formatting Tips
It is tempting to make a unique resume that "stands out," but your first priority should be that it is clear and easy to read. While many of our resume templates below "look the same," they are formatted in a way that succinctly and directly communicates key information to recruiters. Our templates are also formatted with Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) in mind.
Whether you are using one of our templates or creating one yourself, keep these formatting tips in mind:
- Name should be 14-point font or larger, font otherwise should be 10.5-12
- Margins can be as small as 0.5”
- List experiences in reverse-chronological order (most recent experiences at the top)
- Strive for perfect grammar, perfect spelling, and consistent format
- Do not use colors for business resumes; use discretion with color for creative industries
- Avoid columns, tables, or special characters within your resume as they may not be read accurately by Applicant Tracking Systems.
- Do not include a headshot if applying for positions in the U.S.
- Do not include an “Objective” section. For most undergraduate students, we discourage a “Summary” section. There may be benefits to a summary section for mid-career job seekers, especially those making a career change.
- If you found a template online or through design software, visit the Career Center so one of our staff members can provide guidance.
Resume Writing Guide with Formatting Examples
Resume Guides & Samples by Field
Our resume samples are broken out by field to better provide relevant examples of resume content. But, review all of the samples to find a formatting style that matches your preference.
First-Year Students & General Template
Business
Natural & Applied Sciences
Social Sciences
Humanities
Elementary Education
Curriculum Vitae (CVs)
These documents are primarily used in academia, research, and graduate school applications. A key difference is that a CV doesn't have a length limitation. While a resume demonstrates qualifications for one particular job, a CV provides a more holistic look at your experiences. During your college career, there is not very much of a difference between a resume and CV in terms of the content to include so don't feel the need to start from scratch. The difference is often in the order of experiences and level of detail included. Some possible sections on a CV include: Research/Laboratory Experience, Publications & Presentations, Clinical Experience, Projects, Community Involvement/Volunteer Experience, Teaching Experience, and Professional Affiliations. The Rizzo Career Center can help you transform one into the other and review anything you have created.
Graduate Student and Alumni Resume Samples
In addition to the guidance listed above for creating a clear, concise, and thorough resume, graduate students and those with more substantial professional experience may benefit from 2-page resumes, professional summary statements, or section headers that more accurately reflect highlighted experiences. Given the nuanced nature of post-graduate work or mid-career searches, consider scheduling an appointment with one of our team members. If you need assistance accessing Handshake in order to make an appointment, please email thecareercenter@loyola.edu.
Federal Resumes
If you are applying for a job with the federal government, your resume will look pretty different than those for jobs in the private sector.
- For each experience, include the mailing address of the company, the hours worked per week, the salary or wage earned, as well as your supervisor's name, phone number, and whether they may be contacted.
- Volunteer experiences, extra-curricular activities, and even academic projects should be included.
- Bullet points must include accomplishments.
We recommend using the resume builder on USAJobs as it prompts you for all the required information. Once you enter your information, download the document, and then clean up the formatting before submitting to any roles.
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