A general resume can be a great starting point for every resume you create. Here’s how to write a generic resume that doesn’t come off as generic in your application.
How to Write a Great Unique General Resume
What Is A General Resume?
If you have a specific job title you’re pursuing, and you know you’ll be writing many different resumes, then you might want to consider writing a general resume first. A general resume, sometimes also called a generic resume, is a resume that you build using a resume builder as a stepping-stone to the resume that you’ll actually submit to a hiring manager. It features your professional experience and targets a specific career, like a graphic designer or engineering resume. Once you’ve written it, you can go back and personalize it for each job application you turn in.
Elements To Update On Your Resume For Every Application
Every time you apply for a new job, you need to rewrite portions of the resume to suit the new job; that’s the point of a general resume. These are the elements you’ll typically update.
- Resume summary or objective
- Specific skills from the job description
- How you describe past job duties
Updating these components of the resume not only makes your resume look personalized, but also can help you get past an applicant tracking system (ATS). That makes it more likely that a hiring manager will actually see your resume and be able to respond.
General Resume Example
How To Create Your General Resume
Your first step needs to be choosing a resume format. The chronological resume format is the most common, focusing largely on work experience. The functional resume format, is beneficial to job seekers who don’t have a lot of work experience. Either way, you will still include the following resume sections on any professional resume.
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Resume Header
This is technically part of the resume design. It includes your full name and contact information, including your phone number, location, email address and professional job networking profile links, such as your LinkedIn profile.
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Resume Summary Or Objective
Next is the resume summary or resume objective. This is a two or three sentence paragraph that generally summarizes your work experience and skills. It’s intended to give a recruiter a basic snapshot of your experience and what sets you apart from other job seekers. The resume objective focuses less on work experience but instead includes a sentence indicating your career objective and goals.
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Skills
Your skills section will be highly personalized to your industry and your job title. For example, healthcare and software engineering will have vastly different skills. It’s important that you include both soft skills and hard skills in this section. This section will typically take the form of bullet points and you can source specific skills from the job description.
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Work Experience
In your experience section, you’ll list up to ten years of experience. You can include both part-time and full-time experience. This section’s format will typically be impacted by your resume format. You’ll need to do more resume writing here if you’re using the chronological format, which relies more heavily on it. Always list your work experience in reverse-chronological order. This puts the most recent and most relevant experience first.
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Education
Your education section may include anything from a high school diploma to a bachelor’s degree and beyond. Look at resume samples from your industry to learn more about what type of education people are typically included in your industry. This way, you’ll be able to list the resume components that make sense for you.
