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How to Write a Resume That Stands Out

You finally found it! The perfect job for you. Now, all you have to do to get the process started is to submit your resume. The problem is that hundreds of your peers are probably thinking exactly the same thing. How do you stand out?

You finally found it! The perfect job for you. Now, all you have to do to get the process started is to submit your resume. The problem is that hundreds or even thousands of your peers are probably thinking exactly the same thing about exactly the same job. So how do you create a one-page document that will make you and your accomplishments stand out from the crowd?

Your resume is a key part of the job application process: it is the first document that an employer reviews to determine whether they will interview and eventually employ you. Remember that employers often have very limited time to perform this duty. Crafting a strong resume really matters!

Resumes communicate who you are and what you have accomplished. They may be the only document an employer sees to evaluate your record before making a decision to move forward with your application, or they may be used in conjunction with resources like LinkedIn or professional networking profiles and/or a cover letter. A resume that “stands out” in a positive way is one that has been written thoughtfully, clearly and concisely, effectively communicating your abilities and strengths in a very brief space.

Six basic tips will help you build an outstanding professional resume. Note that resumes may vary by professional field (e.g. engineering vs. non-engineering), by location or by other factors such as professional degree. These tips are designed around some of the most common sections and most useful points for resumes across different types.

Tip 1: How to Write an Education Section that Stands Out

The education section demonstrates that you have the academic qualifications for the position. The key questions you should ask yourself while writing this section is, “Have I clearly communicated the strongest and most relevant aspects of my educational experience?” The next question is, “Is this section organized in a way that is easily readable by the employer?”

The education section is important for all applicants but may be weighted differently depending on how long it has been since you graduated from a degree program. For instance, an employer may have a different level of interest in the educational history of a college senior, compared to someone who has been professionally working for several years after college. Understanding this fact may influence where you choose to place this section on your resume.

In general, you should include all of the higher education that you may have had, including undergraduate, graduate, or professional schooling.  You may also consider including online courses, certificates, and completed programs through companies like Coursera. Most people list their experiences in an order called reverse chronological, meaning that they list the most recent experience first, and work backwards down the page.

For each listed school, provide the full name of the school or online program, the years of your attendance, your major or majors, if applicable, as well as a minor if applicable. Include the type of degree received (e.g. a Bachelor of Arts or Master of Science) and the year of graduation. If you are graduating soon, include the month and year of graduation so employers know when you will be available to work. If you have studied abroad, include the institution, program of study, and any relevant coursework.

You may want to include which semesters you qualified for special academic recognition, if any.  Other special awards, scholarships, or competitive grants can also be listed in this section. If you have non-academic awards, such as for sports or community service, you may choose to create a separate section of your resume for honors and awards.

Tip 2: How to Make the Experience Section Stand Out

Along with education, your experience is one of the most important ways to show that you are qualified for a position. Use this section to clearly convey your strongest professional experiences, whether paid or unpaid. Be sure to give detailed aspects of your roles and responsibilities for each listed position. Emphasize any relationships or similarities between your past experiences and the job you want. You should also include the start and end dates of your involvement with each organization, and any key accomplishments from the role. Don’t forget to include where the company is located, including city and state/province, or even country if different from your home country.

Ask yourself: while involved with the company, did I win any awards, get any special recognition, make new discoveries, start a new program? If so, what happened and what were the results? Quantify your experiences when you can! As the expression goes, “Show don’t tell.” In other words, you can more effectively convey a point by giving concrete examples, rather than through vague descriptions. Consider the following examples.

Instead of:

Improved worker productivity significantly, leading to recognition from upper management.

(A resume reader may ask: What does ‘improved’ mean? What does recognition mean? How much have you improved it by?)

Improved quarter returns by 25%, exceeding projections and leading to the Top Manager Award, given to only one manager in the company per year.

When it comes to language, be honest about your job functions while thinking of professional ways to present your experiences.

Sometimes people fall into a trap of thinking that their job or internship experience won’t sound impressive enough to list. The job may have felt like “sitting at a desk, answering the phone.” True, but you may have been performing other responsibilities or developing useful job-related skills without realizing that you were!

When you were at a desk, were you at the FRONT desk? Were you the only person or the main person in this position? Were you overseeing anything while you were sitting there? Were you the sole person responsible for any tasks? Did you have to learn how to deal calmly and confidently with any customer issues? Did people occasionally ask you to take on additional responsibilities, even for a short time?

It is fair to say that a person sitting at a front desk, may have been MANAGING the front desk, or even managing the desk when the person’s boss was away. Time during which an individual is placed in charge of a business or an office, even if for a limited time, can convey responsibility to a prospective employer.

Look at your accomplishment bullet and ask yourself:

• What did I do in the job?
• Using what?
• To what extent or impact?

Sometimes you may need to pare down your list in order to avoid making your resume too lengthy. Try to select the accomplishments based partly on how impressive they are and partly on how well they relate to the position you want. To describe your experience, always use more than one sentence or bullet. That said, word economy in your bulleted descriptions is also important. Try to keep each bulleted description or sentence to one or two lines at most. You can often rephrase a description, eliminating words while keeping the meaning. The more information you can present clearly and concisely within the short resume format, the more the employer will understand what you can do for them.

Remember that by providing relevant details in each statement of your experience, you will give the employer enough information to evaluate you and also provide them with ideas of what they might want to discuss with you in an interview.

Tip 3: How to Create a Leadership and Activities Section that Stands Out

For many people, especially students and recent graduates, a Leadership & Activities section can be a fantastic differentiator for your resume. If you have not been in the workforce for long, or if you have only worked summers and part-time, then you may not have much relevant content to add to your Experience section. A strong Leadership & Activities section can help you fill that gap while also telling an employer something about you as a person.

When creating the section, you should first consider what student organizations and activities you would want to include. Then, you should consider what you would want to write about each one. In general, this section is much like the Experience section, except that it is about what you have done in a personal, rather than professional, setting.

Of course, because student organizations and activities are personal, you should be careful about which ones you choose to list; they should be appropriate to a professional setting. For example, you should probably not choose to share that you were chosen “Top Drinker” of your college’s “Beer Keg of the Day” club. On the other hand, if you volunteered at a food bank, wrote for a school publication, or had a membership in an honor society, those accomplishments would be worth sharing.

Most importantly, you should include student organizations and activities where you have made significant contributions or held leadership positions. Just as you did in the Experience section, you should think about what you did in the organization, any responsibilities you had, any skills you used, and any knowledge you gained. If you made improvements to the student organization or activity, definitely include concrete examples. Make sure to consider if any of your experiences with student organizations and activities could be related to the position you are applying for. Could any of the skills you have learned be useful in the job?

Because student organizations and activities can offer students leadership opportunities and experiences that are often limited to experienced professionals in companies, this section is your chance to show not only that you are qualified for the position but that you have even greater potential. Make the most of this opportunity to show the employer what you can do!

Tip 4: How to Highlight Your Skills

Another important component of what defines an attractive candidate in the modern economy is their skill set. Because employers want people who can quickly start being productive, they care about what skills a job prospect has, particularly in certain technical fields. In most cases, skills are incorporated into the Experience section, if you acquired skills as part of your internship or job, and in the Education section, if you obtained the skills through coursework, research, or projects. Sometimes people with additional skills, such as technical skills, foreign language, or certifications obtained outside of university, will place them into a separate section at the end of the resume. Whichever format you choose, you still need to emphasize the skills you have, so that an employer can easily see how you can help them.

You should ask yourself a few important questions. What skills do I have? What skills are my target employers looking for? Are my skills hard skills (i.e. technical, like computer programming) or soft skills, such as the ability to listen?

Make a list! Separate the skills into hard skills and soft skills. What skills are most in demand (on both lists) for the position you are interested in (One good way to decide this is to look at job listings for many similar positions and note how often a particular skill is listed.)? How can you highlight your proficiency in these skills?

Lead with your strongest skills and/or the ones that seem the most marketable. Let’s say you know the programming language Python. How well do you know it? How many years have you used it? Do you have any specialized knowledge and ability that may set you apart from a competing applicant? Do you have demonstrations of your work anywhere for a prospective employer to see?

Here’s an example of a skills entry that might be included into the Experience section:

Programming: 8 years of experience with Python and similar scripting languages, wrote MyFirstPythonProject software available on GitHub

Useful tip: Artists may have portfolios for their artistic work. Examples of appropriate work, such as for coding, may not be a bad idea to have available in addition to a resume!

Even if your field is not technical, you may still have important hard skills. Do you have experience with popular office software, such as Excel, PowerPoint, or Access? Do you know any foreign languages, even at a basic level? Think about not only what might be required in the day-to-day performance of the job, but what other skills could potentially be useful to the employer.

You will want to include all the relevant skills to demonstrate your qualifications, without including too much less-relevant information which could distract from your message. Think carefully about which skills you want to include, and which could be left out. Remember to choose your words economically to maximize content in a minimum of space. With a little effort, your skills details can transform your resume from a simple list of accomplishments to a document that gets an employer thinking about all the great ways you could contribute!

Tip 5: Formatting and Making the Resume Look Professional

Believe it or not, the appearance and organization of a resume can greatly affect the response. The first hurdle for any resume is to get the employer to read it. An attractively presented, concise resume is easy for a recruiter to pick up. On the other hand, if a resume is 5 pages, written in 6-point font, a prospective employer may not think that it is worth the time to find a magnifying glass and read it. In most cases, a resume should not exceed one page (sometimes two pages, mostly for more experienced candidates, or in scientific and technical fields where publication lists can be lengthy), which has a few key sections that are separated from one another or clearly delineated.

Here are some suggestions to make the format stand out positively:

• Use 10-12-point font or larger. (10 point may even sometimes be too small, and the choice can depend on the chosen font.) Your audience should easily be able to read the size of the writing. Often prospective employers may not have perfect vision, so readability may create problems if the text is too small.
• Use a clean, professional-looking font. Don’t use fonts that are overly artistic and hinder the ability for the reader to understand them. Some find fonts like Times New Roman most clearly readable; others find competing fonts better. The font is just an aspect of the writing; don’t let it overpower the words themselves.
• Use respectable margins. Don’t try to deviate too much from 0.5 margins at either side. Also, don’t make the margins too large, beyond 0.75 or 1 unit on either side. Around 1 unit on the top and bottom should be acceptable.
• Use adequate spacing.
• Abbreviate months of employment.
• Include proper contact information. Most people include full name, address, email address and at least one phone number at the top of the document.

Tip 6: Revision and Review 

One of the most important steps to writing a good resume is having others you trust look it over. A small spelling or grammar error on a resume could cause problems by making it seem like you lack attention to detail.

You can start with standard spelling and grammar checking programs. However, while these programs are very helpful, they are not enough by themselves. For example, the programs may not flag errors with homophones (e.g. hair and hare). They also have difficulty with uncommon, technical, or foreign words that may not be in their dictionaries. In addition, they are not looking for formatting inconsistencies or at the overall appearance of the resume. While computer programs can help with many issues, there is still no substitute for the human eye.

Start by printing a copy of your resume and looking for errors and inconsistencies yourself. Then, present copies to others along with a description of the job or educational opportunity that you are applying for. When presenting your resume to others, consider at least two kinds of people: a peer, and an experienced professional or teacher. Each may identify different issues with the resume.

Ask the reviewers to provide two types of notes: technical revisions and feedback on the writing, organization and effectiveness of the resume.

Once you get feedback, discuss it with them for a few minutes. Remember, don’t take constructive criticism personally! They are trying to help you, and their points of view may be similar to that of the employer. Your goal is to create a resume that most people will appreciate.

Once you obtain proper feedback, you can work on improving your resume. Try to incorporate your reviewers’ suggestions. Their ideas may even make you think of other ways to improve your resume! Most importantly, always remember that once you have made your revisions, review your resume again before you send it out!

The stronger your resume, the better your chance of getting an interview and landing a meaningful job. Just by following these simple tips, you will be well on your way to resume success, creating a clear, detailed, and concise document designed to impress employers. So, get writing and get yourself noticed!

A good resume can help you land an interview, but even minor errors can take you out of the running.  Schedule an appointment with a counselor  to ensure it will be effective.

Quick Resume Tips:

• Use the position description to decide what to include.
• Pick a standard and consistent format.
• Describe your experiences with specificity and strong action verbs.
• Record accomplishments and contributions, not just responsibilities.
• Revise carefully!
• Don’t include personal information about your age, religion, health or marital status.
• Photos are generally not preferred for U.S. resumes.
• Typically, you will not be expected to share past salary information on a resume.
• Employers assume that “references will be available upon request,” so you don’t need to include them on your resume unless asked.
• Employers may use keyword scanning on resumes, so know what words are relevant to the industry and position and ensure they appear in your resume.

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Undergraduate Science Education at Harvard

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• Resume Template & Proposal Tips

SCIENCE RESUME TEMPLATES

Resume is the first document that will portray you before professors. Please follow detailed instructions and template below, so that your science resume would showcase your education and research/work/volunteer experiences. Note, that science resume  format is different from the industry resume formats available through the Harvard Office of Career Services.

Freshman Resume

Sophomore Resume

FELLOWSHIP PROPOSALS

Ideally you should have confirmed a lab position far enough ahead (end of Fall term-January) of the summer fellowship deadlines to allow time to meet with your principal investigator and lab mentor to discuss a project. This will help enormously as you prepare to write the research proposal for your fellowship applications (note, that research proposal requires several drafts before final document can be submitted). The more time you have to prepare drafts of your proposal and get feedback from your mentor, the stronger your application is likely to be. You may find it helpful to set up a timeline for submitting drafts to your mentor to ensure that they will have enough time to read and return them to you with comments before the deadline.  DO NOT LEAVE THIS UNTIL THE LAST MINUTE . Your mentor may not have time to review your proposal if you send it to them the day before it is due.

Fellowship proposals have to be tailored to each specific fellowship application. Students are encouraged to read application instructions and include all required information in the specific format that each application requires, including word limit. Two common fellowship proposal guidelines are listed below. 

Harvard College Research Program (HCRP):  The HCRP application requires a 3-5 page detailed research proposal (see application instructions and make sure to include section headers and each item required for the proposal as well as  proposal tips ) and a letter of support from the lab principal investigator.

PRISE (Program for Research in Science and Engineering):   PRISE fellows are expected to find their own research positions. However, students may apply to the program before having secured a lab position. PRISE research proposal limit is 500 words. Obviously, students who have not found a lab placement by the application deadline will not be in a position to write a specific project proposal; however, they are expected to submit an essay that broadly outlines their research interests. The selection committee allows some leeway in these instances as long as the essay has some scientific merit and makes a connection between the applicant’s research interests and academic goals. The selection committee expects a more detailed research proposal from students who already have found research positions. Your lab mentor can provide you with background material and work with you on your project proposal. Be sure to phrase the proposal in your own words and not use wording taken directly from lab publications or their web site. You also are required to submit a second essay that describes how you plan to engage in and contribute to the PRISE community.

• Harvard-affiliated Labs
• Research Opportunities and Funding
• Transportation for Researchers
• Undergraduate Research Opportunities (HUROS) Fair
• Undergraduate Research Spotlight
• Lab Citizenship
• Research Ethics and Lab Safety
• Conference Presentation Grants
• Research Advising - Contact Us!

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HLEP Resume Workshop

April 8, 2024

12:15 pm - 1:15 pm

WCC; B010 Singer Classroom

HLEP will be hosting a resume workshop on Monday, April 8, from 12:30-1:15 PM. This will be a great chance for 1Ls to get some tips on your resume as you prepare for EIP and EIP Preview. We will discuss the “Harvard Resume Format,” adding your 2024 summer internship experience to your resume, along with some other general resume and interview advice.

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Harvard Resume Template

If you’ve been looking up resume templates online, then you’ve heard of the Harvard Resume Template.

It’s an effective template that’s based off three key fundamental frameworks:

• Action words

Technical Skills

Quantitative results and accomplishments.

The frameworks of the Harvard resume template align with the ones we present whenever we talk about resumes or write resumes for our clients.

Click to buy the premium version of our Harvard Resume Template to 10X Job Interviews and Offers.

Table of Contents

What is the Harvard Resume Template?

The Harvard Resume Template is a Resume template written in frameworks that emphasize using action words, technical skills, and quantitative results and accomplishments.

Resumes used for jobs should encompass the Harvard Resume Template along with the necessary frameworks.

Check out: Resume Bullet Point Formula

Harvard Resume Template Example

Below, you’ll see an example of the Harvard Resume Template done in Word Doc.

See our homepage for a free download of our Harvard Resume Template: ULTMECHE Homepage

The education section of the Harvard resume template will consist of:

• College or university name
• Degree title
• GPA (if above 3.5+)
• Relevant coursework (if lacking material to full up on resume)
• Harvard University
• Major in Computer Science
• GPA: 3.58/4.0
• Cambridge, MA
• Relevant Coursework: Software Engineering, Operating Systems, Algorithms, Artificial Intelligence

Work Experience

The work experience section of the Harvard Resume Template will consist of:

• Employer name
• Position title
• Location of Employer
• Dates of Employment
• Bulletpoints consisting of action words, technical skills, and quantitative results and accomplishments
• Employer name – Some Engineering Company
• Position title – Mechanical Engineering Intern
• Location of Employer – Los Angeles, CA
• Dates of Employment – JUN 2019 – SEP 2021

Bulletpoints:

• Coordinated hydraulic testing of pumps to verify performance parameters such as total dynamic head, volumetric flow rate, and efficiency; directed post-test work instructions, increasing efficiency by 1-3%
• Created pump quotation software using Excel VBA to configure and price vertical circulating water pumps; reducing the lead time of pump quotations by 80%
• Analyzed $10M of pricing data from domestic or overseas suppliers and determined supply chain decision making for pump components such as discharge heads, columns, casings, impellers, shafting, and bearings
• Designed $3M in pumps from concept to production with CAD software such as Creo / ProEngineer

When coming up with bullet points in your resume, make sure you include action words in your resume.

See: 69 Action Words on Resume

The activities section of the resume template will consist of any memberships or organizations done in college.

Note that if you’re fairly experienced, you can disregard this entire section.

Work experience will be most important than any other section so as a result, if you are lacking space, remove unnecessary section such as activities and university projects.

Activities and University Projects sections on resume are more geared towards college students.

The activities section of the resume will consist of:

• Membership or organization name
• Position in membership or organization
• Location of membership
• Dates in the membership or organization
• Membership or organization name – Formula SAE
• Position in membership or organization – Chassis Design
• Location of membership – Cambridge, MA
• Dates in the membership or organization – SEP 2018 – Present
• Founded the first ever engineering membership to design, build, and fabricate automotives for 500 students
• Organized and advertised 10+ quarterly networking events with 300+ participants in 3 universities in Boston
• Membership or organization name – Engineering Honor Society
• Position in membership or organization – Committee Member
• Dates in the membership or organization – JAN 2017 – Present
• Acted as general member of engineering honor society regarding top 10% in GPA; attended networking events, performed community service, and collaborate with other top performing engineering students
• Participated in 10+ quarterly networking events with 300+ participants in 3 cities in California

University Projects

Adding University Projects it the best way for students with no experience to get entry level jobs or internships.

The University Projects section of the resume will consist of:

• Project name
• Date of project completion
• Project name – Tennis Racket
• Date of project completion – Feb 2020
• Designed a $200 tennis racket into 3D CAD using SolidWorks through reverse engineering
• Performed Finite Element Analysis (FEA) on racket using operating conditions; resulted in an 98.7% accurate representation of the force being dissipated throughout the racket
• Project name – Traffic Signal
• Date of project completion – Jan 2019
• Designed and implemented optimal traffic stop light based on traffic data utilizing MATLAB 
• Used various programming techniques to achieve completion of the project such as if/when statements and for/while loops to support city-wide intersection of 10,000+ vehicles daily

Check out: 7 Things to Put on Resume With No Work Experience

The additional section will be written in the bottom of the Harvard Resume Template

The additional section of your resume will consist of:

Programming Skills

Certification & training.

It’s very important to specify the correct technical skills on your resume.

Technical skills on your resume will consist of those such as:

• Calculation methods
• Coding Languages and frameworks

If your industry requires programming such as software engineering, data science, cloud computing, etc. then you’ll need to specify those as a line underneath the additional section.

Recruiters and hiring managers will quickly be scanning this to make sure you have knowledge in the programming frameworks they require.

Examples of programming skills and languages to put on your resume include:

If the job that you’re applying for will require professional competency in any language, make sure to specify it in the additional section.

List any and all certifications & training that you’ve obtained throughout the course of your career to help with your job search.

Determine whether or not the certifications are relevant and add them in the “Certification & Training” section of your resume.

Awards will be consisting of the accomplishments you’ve had throughout your career.

The awards section of your resume will consist of relevant accomplishments such as:

• Dean’s Lists
• Scholarships
• Employee Spot Awards
• Industry Competitions
• Hackathon Awards
• Volunteering Awards

Harvard Resume Template Frameworks

The Harvard Resume Template works because it utilizes three fundamental frameworks in resume writing:

Action Words

Action words will be phrases you put in your resume that demonstrate your on the job competence.

The action words on your resume will consist of those in areas such as ( LINK )

• Communication
• Quantitative
• Organizational

Recruiters and hiring managers will be comparing these to the job description and ensure that you have the appropriate experience in these sections.

Technical skills will be the specific hard skills that the job requires you to do.

This consists of those such as software, tools, or calculation methods that you will need to do on the job.

Identify what specific software and calculations that you’ll need to be doing in the job that you’re applying for and make sure that they’re on your resume.

Quantitative results and accomplishments will be how you showcase your business impact.

Companies are very metric driven.

To determine success in a company, there are factors such as metrics and key performance indicators that are tracked.

As a result, you need to be putting quantitative results and accomplishments in your resume to showcase your business impact.

Check out: Companies LOVE When You Know How To Say You Save Money On Resume!

Why you should use the Harvard Resume Template

The Harvard Resume Template is the best resume template to use when applying for jobs.

It’s clear and concise, broken up into sections such as education, experience, skills, and ATS compliant.

This is exactly the format that recruiters and hiring managers are looking for job seekers.

Check out: Best Resume Format 2023

Should I put a summary on the Harvard Resume Template?

Although many career coaches and website will suggest to add a summary on a resume, we do not.

Through our experience and our clients, we find that a professional summary or a professional profile on a resume is redundant.

Recruiters spend about 6-7 seconds on each resume.

They’re not going to spend the entire time reading the summary.

Instead they’re going to do a quick scan of the following:

• Where a candidate went to school
• What major a candidate studied in college
• Previous employers of a job seeking candidate
• Technical skills of the job seeking candidate
• Quantitative results and accomplishments to review metrics and KPIs

Closing Thoughts on the Harvard Resume Template

There’s a lot of controversy over which resume template is the best format to use, but we recommend the Harvard Resume Template.

It’s a very clear and concise, professional, and business metric oriented which is perfect for recruiters and hiring managers to evaluate the potential for the job seeking candidate.

The format works, especially for high paying jobs in industries such as engineering, finance, healthcare, business, tech, etc.

Positions such as engineering, design, product, management, finance, can all use this format.

About the author

Kazuyoshi Fujimoto, PE Founder | Engineering Career Coach | Principal Mechanical Engineer

Kazu oversees all of ultmeche’s engineering services. He provides consulting such as resume reviews, rewrites, mock interviews, and all services career related. Additionally, Kazu performs consulting work regarding Oil & Gas, Automotive, and Aerospace & Defense. Kazu is licensed as a professional engineer in the state of California and has 9+ years of experience in Oil & Gas, Automotive, and Aerospace & Defense.

5 thoughts on “Harvard Resume Template”

please give me the copy of this resume

sign up for it through the homepage

Can you please give me a copy of this template

Where’s the template?

See the home page to have it emailed to you

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