What Is the Purpose of a Resume?
The purpose of a resume is to align your skills and experience with requirements for jobs, internships, or other career opportunities.
You submit a resume with a job application to concisely summarize which of your skills, employment history, and education are most relevant to the job requirements. Your goal is to show recruiters that you’re a great match so that they’ll select you for an interview.
Employers request resumes with job applications so that they can efficiently choose which applicants to interview. Your resume helps them evaluate your qualifications and prepare interview questions that are uniquely tailored to your background.
Understanding the purpose of a resume—as outlined below—will help you make a resume that’s relevant and focused.
What is a resume?
A resume is a 1–2 page formal document that summarizes your skills, employment history, education, and other qualifications. The most common resume format has separate sections for these categories.
- Contact information: Your name, phone number, email address, etc.
- Professional Summary: A 2–4 line overview of your background
- Skills: A list of the relevant hard skills and soft skills in which you’re proficient
- Work Experience: The present and past jobs that are relevant to the role you’re hoping to land with a bulleted list of your main achievements for each
- Education: Your degrees and the institutions where you earned them
Some job seekers also include sections for certifications, volunteer work, awards, and extracurricular activities—if they’re relevant to the job requirements.
Purpose of a resume for applicants
Your main purpose for writing a resume is to qualify for a screening call or interview. With hundreds of applicants for every opening in today’s market, your resume needs to show that you’re uniquely qualified to succeed in a particular role at a specific company.
Therefore, even if you’re applying for multiple openings for the same type of work, you should always customize the main version of your resume to align with the job requirements, the company culture, and the products or services that you’d be providing.
You can achieve this purpose in three main ways:
- Highlighting skills and experience
- Showcasing unique value
- Demonstrating professional growth
Highlighting skills and experience
Of all your skills and experiences, highlight the ones that are the most relevant to each particular opening. Your resume should have evidence in both the skills and work history sections for most if not every requirement in the job posting. Keep details about other qualifications to a minimum so that the most important information stands out.
Adela creates a customized version of her resume that highlights her most relevant skills and experience but omits others.
- Veeva CRM
- The psychiatry and psychotherapy conferences where Adela has exceeded sales goals
- Success selling mental health medications at hospitals and private practices
- Other CRMs Adela has also used—Spotio and RxPulse.
- Experience selling heart medications
Showcasing unique value
Another way to maximize your resume’s potential is by showcasing your unique value in the work history section of your resume.
For each job in the work history section, include a bulleted list of your unique achievements at each job rather than duties (which would look too similar to other qualified applicants). When possible, include numbers and percentages to substantiate your claims.
Technical Support Specialist | ABC Learning | 2023 – 2024
Provided proactive help ticket support for K–12 educators, parents, and students using a 1:1 synchronous tutoring platform.
- Resolved 100+ technical issues weekly, achieving 98% customer satisfaction ratings through effective problem-solving and personalized support.
- Implemented a knowledge base system that reduced recurring customer queries by 40%, streamlining internal workflows and improving team efficiency.
- Trained and mentored 10 new support agents in advanced Zendesk and Document360 features, contributing to a 20% reduction in average resolution time.
Demonstrating professional growth
You can also achieve the goal of standing out among other applicants by demonstrating your growth over time. In the work history section, where you include a subsection of your past jobs in reverse chronological order, demonstrate a progression of increasingly successful experiences.
When you demonstrate steady professional growth, your readers will infer that you’ll be even more successful at your next job.
You can also use the functional resume format to demonstrate growth in various skills.
Whichever format you choose, the QuillBot functional resume template or chronological resume template can help you get started.
Purpose of a resume for employers
The purpose of a resume for employers is to choose which applicants they want to interview (based on your resume’s keywords, skills, and professionalism) and to plan interview questions.
Screening for keywords
At the beginning of the onboarding process, Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) and human recruiters narrow the pool of applicants to the top matches, who they contact for the first interview.
The ATS instantly assesses how well the skills on a resume match the job requirements. In order to pass that initial screening, your resume needs to have the same keywords as the job posting (aka ATS optimization).
For each required skill that you have, use the exact spelling and wording as the job posting. Pay attention to common spelling variations as ATSs and other AI-based screening tools aren’t always prompted to recognize “MS 365” as a synonym for “Microsoft 365.” Also look for words that the job posting uses frequently and incorporate these into your resume.
Confirming required skills
Recruiters also use your resume to confirm that you have the required skills. Using the right keywords puts your resume on the recruiter’s radar, but proving you’ve been successful with those skills is what gets you an interview. Specifically, they’re looking for repeated achievements with each skill at your previous jobs (or volunteer positions).
The candidates who have the most firsthand experience and success with each skill are more likely to get interviews.
Assessing professionalism
Your resume provides recruiters with valuable information about your professional writing skills and the level of professionalism you’ll bring to the role. They look for details such as grammar, punctuation, formatting, wording, and consistency to assess your professionalism and attention-to-detail.
| What recruiters see | What your resume implies |
|---|---|
| Correct punctuation and grammar | Initiative to avoid or learn from mistakes |
| Consistent formatting for headings and subheadings | Consistent and predictable work habits |
| Attractive, organized layout | Ability to organize information for clients and coworkers |
| Concise wording | Respect for other people’s time |
Planning interview questions
Once a recruiter or hiring manager has decided you’re eligible for an interview, they will use your resume to personalize interview questions. They’ll probably have the same base questions for all of the interviewees but add follow-up questions about parts of your resume they want to know more about.
- Exceeded quarterly performance evaluation deadlines for the 200+ team of medical assistants, ensuring a culture of growth and accountability
The hiring manager who is interviewing him has decided to ask all of the candidates this question:
- How do you handle stress in the workplace?
For Samir’s interview, the hiring manager plans to include this follow-up question:
- I see that you delivered 200 performance evaluations four times per year. That’s quite impressive. What were some of your favorite strategies for managing stress during those deadlines?
Consider which parts of your resume are relevant to common interview questions (e.g., “What is your greatest strength?”), and brainstorm ways to highlight your most relevant accomplishments.
Frequently asked questions about what is the purpose of a resume
- How do you tailor your resume for different job applications?
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To tailor your resume for different job applications, focus on customizing your skills and experience to match the specific job description. Use relevant action verbs for your resume to demonstrate your qualifications. Highlight the most important skills and achievements that align with the position. For each role, it may be helpful to adjust your resume format (e.g., the summary or objective section) slightly to emphasize the aspects most relevant to the employer’s needs.
In your cover letter or letter of interest, express how your background uniquely fits the role. This will show that you’ve done your research and are genuinely interested in the position, making your application stand out.
QuillBot’s Paraphraser can help you rewrite sentences to effectively tailor your resume for different job applications.
- What are some beginner skills for a resume?
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Some beginner skills for a resume include the kind of skills you develop through education, extracurricular activities, and hobbies, such as:
- Social media content creation
- Teamwork and collaboration
- Self-discipline
- Presentation skills
- Critical thinking
Resume format for entry-level positions suggests placing your skills below or next to your education and work experience.
QuillBot’s free Grammar Checker will help you to produce an error-free resume.
- What is a resume for a job?
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A resume for a job is a one- or two-page formal document that you create for job applications. It provides hiring teams, managers, and recruiters with your contact information, work history, skills, education, and other professional details.
A job resume has headings and bulleted lists that readers can quickly scan to learn about your qualifications.
For some jobs, you may need to use a CV instead of a resume.
Have you tried QuillBot’s free Grammar Checker extension for job applications? It can help you automatically find and fix errors because after all, what is a resume without impeccable grammar?
- Should a resume be one page?
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A resume can be one page when you’re in the beginning or early stages of your career. A resume can also be up to two pages when you have a lot of experience (e.g., 5 or more years) or when the role requires a wide range of projects, achievements, and/or skills.
If the job posting is asking for a lot of specific information, you may need to send a CV instead. One of the main differences between a CV and resume is the length.
Have you tried QuillBot’s free Paraphraser for your career writing materials? It can help you achieve a concise resume length.
