A Resume That Just Works – How to Make a Resume in 2025 | Beginner’s Guide

Step 1: Watch the Video Guide below:

Step 2: Download the kit here: https://buymeacoffee.com/thewanderingpro/e/337611

And if you fancy written format, here is the full guide for you.

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I can’t tell you how many times this gets requested. Fresh graduates, people transitioning after 1-2 years at a job, even mid-career professionals who haven’t updated their resume since 2019. The question is always the same: “How do I make a resume?”

The common response is usually “go to Google, search resume template, follow that.” And sure, that works to an extent. But there are a couple of issues with that approach that nobody talks about, and those issues are the difference between your resume landing in front of a human or getting silently rejected by a machine.

This workshop covers everything you need to know about building an ATS-optimized resume and a cover letter that actually gets read. The template I’m sharing is intentionally simple. I’ve left room for you to add your own sauce, because the person who copies a template word for word is the same person who wonders why 200 applications led to zero callbacks.

Let’s get into it.

Why most resume templates hurt you

If you go to Google right now and search “resume templates,” you’ll find thousands of options. Canva is somehow always on page one. Then there are the companies trying to charge you $50 because apparently they know the secret formula to getting hired.

Here’s the number one issue I see people falling for: custom designed resumes. Fancy layouts, creative PDF formats, photos, icons, colored sidebars. They look great on screen. They are terrible for getting you a job.

The reason is ATS, which stands for Applicant Tracking System. Every company, from startups to Fortune 500s, uses some form of ATS software. Before your resume reaches a human, it gets parsed by a machine. And these machines, despite all the AI hype, are still remarkably bad at reading custom designs.

What happens is your carefully designed two-column layout with a sidebar and custom fonts gets fed into the ATS, the software can’t parse the formatting, and your resume either gets garbled or rejected outright. You never hear back. You assume the market is bad. The market might be bad, but your resume format made it worse.

The fix is simple: use a plain, text-based format. Word documents (.docx) over PDFs. Standard fonts. No columns. No images. No fancy tables. If you can highlight everything on your resume, copy it, and paste it into a plain text editor without anything breaking, you’re in good shape.

It’s boring. It’s not sexy. But ATS likes boring. And your resume is basically SEO for job applications. Optimize for the machine first, impress the human second.

Don’t put your photo on your resume

This comes up constantly, especially with people applying to American companies. Do not include a photograph on your resume.

In the US, there are strict anti-discrimination laws around hiring. If your photo is on your resume and a hiring decision is influenced by it (consciously or not), that’s a legal liability for the company. Most US-based companies explicitly advise against photos for this reason.

Even if you’re applying to companies in Pakistan or the Middle East where photos are more common, I’d still recommend leaving it off. It adds no value to your application and takes up space that could be used for actual content.

The template walkthrough

Here’s the structure of the resume template included in the kit. I’m going to walk through each section, explain why it matters, and share what most people get wrong.

Header: Name, Location, Links

Your name should be the most prominent thing on the page. Below it: your city (not full address), a link to your personal website or portfolio, your phone number, and your LinkedIn profile URL.

Two things people mess up here. First, if you have a personal website listed, make sure it actually works. I can’t tell you how many resumes I’ve reviewed where the portfolio link leads to a dead page or a domain that expired. If it doesn’t work, don’t list it. Second, your LinkedIn profile matters more than ever. Hiring managers and recruiters will cross-reference your resume against your LinkedIn. If the information doesn’t match, that’s a red flag. If you’ve been honest on your resume, put LinkedIn on there. If you haven’t, well, fix that first.

Summary Section: The 4-5 lines that matter most

This is the section that needs the most effort per job application, and it’s also the section most people set once and never touch again.

Here’s the reality: if you’re applying to 100 jobs, you can’t realistically customize your entire resume for each one. But you can customize the summary. This is your trade-off. Keep the rest of your resume consistent, but tailor the summary to match the type of role you’re applying for.

Applying for a front-end developer role? Make the summary about your front-end experience. Applying for a product management position? Shift the emphasis to product work. Same person, same experience, different framing.

The format I recommend for the summary is straightforward: [X years of experience] + [types of roles held] + [types of companies worked at] + [what you’re known for]. That’s it. Four to five lines max.

If you’re a fresh graduate and the “years of experience” part makes you uncomfortable, get creative. Instead of “2 years of experience,” write “5,000+ hours of hands-on project work.” It’s the same thing framed differently, and it sounds more substantial. This isn’t lying. It’s positioning. Learn the difference early.

Career Accomplishments: Numbers or nothing

Right below the summary, you should have 3-4 career accomplishments. These are your highlight reel. The flex section.

The rule here is simple: if there’s no number, it’s not an accomplishment. It’s an opinion.

“Improved team efficiency” is an opinion. “Reduced ticket resolution time by 30% by automating manual processes” is an accomplishment. ATS systems scan for quantifiable metrics. Hiring managers scan for them too. Everyone is looking for numbers.

And here’s something most people miss: don’t just tie your accomplishments to revenue. Cost reduction is equally powerful. Companies care about two things: making money and saving money. If you helped reduce costs, that’s margin improvement, which is effectively the same as revenue. Mention both.

Examples from the template:

• Revamped the lead-to-launch process for 2 Development Agencies, resulting in a 30% increase in revenue.
• Reduced ticket resolution time by 30% by automating manual processes on the IT help desk.
• Boosted the company’s local presence by earning over 300 5-star reviews on Google Maps in 2 years.

See how each one has a verb, a task, and a measurable result? That’s the format. Learn it, use it everywhere.

Professional Experience: Praise your past employers

This is where most of the resume lives. And the number one mistake I see here is that people don’t contextualize the company they worked at.

Think about it. There are 8 billion people on the planet and companies are opening and closing every day. The person reading your resume might have no idea what your previous company does. If you worked at a solid company, show it off. Include a one-line description: what the company does, how many employees (especially if 100+), and revenue figures if publicly available.

This isn’t bragging. It’s giving the reader context. “Worked at XYZ Company” means nothing. “Worked at XYZ Company, a B2B SaaS platform serving 500+ enterprise clients with 200 employees” means a lot. It makes your experience more credible without you having to say a word about yourself.

For the bullet points under each role, follow this structure:

Action Verb + Task Description + Result/Impact

“Managed a cross-functional team of 8 to deliver a healthcare platform, resulting in a 25% reduction in patient onboarding time.”

First bullet point should cover your team size and scope. Second should cover your role and unique contributions. Everything after should be metric-driven. ATS loves this format because it’s easy to parse. Humans love it because it’s easy to skim.

One more thing: always speak positively about past employers. Even if you left on bad terms, even if the company was a disaster. Your resume is not the place for that. Speaking well of your past employers reflects well on you.

Skills Section: Technical over generic

“Strategic planning” is not a skill. “Leadership” is not a skill. At least not one that belongs on your resume skills section.

What hiring managers and ATS systems are looking for are specific, technical, searchable skills. Figma. Python. Google Analytics. Jira. Salesforce. HIPAA compliance. These are skills that can be matched against job descriptions.

Research what’s in demand for the roles you’re targeting. Look at 10-15 job descriptions in your field and note which skills appear repeatedly. Those are the ones that go on your resume. Everything else is noise.

Education: It matters less than you think

Unless you’re in medicine, law, or a field where specific credentials are legally required, your education section is the least important part of your resume. Especially if you’re targeting startups or tech companies.

I’m not saying leave it off. I’m saying don’t lead with it, and don’t expect it to carry your application. No startup founder has ever said “we hired them because they went to a great university.” They hired them because they could do the work. Your projects, experience, and accomplishments matter infinitely more.

Project Portfolio: For those without formal experience

This section is specifically for fresh graduates and career changers who don’t have traditional work experience to show.

Here’s what I tell everyone in our community: work on personal projects. Build things. Write things. Design things. It doesn’t matter if nobody asked you to. What matters is that you can show the work, explain what you learned, and describe the outcome.

Each project entry should include a brief summary of what the project was, a link to where it can be viewed (this can be a Google Drive folder with a presentation, it doesn’t need to be a deployed website), what you did specifically, what challenges you faced, and what the outcome was.

If you can fill out 6-7 lines per project with genuine content, that’s a successful portfolio entry. Do 2-3 of these and you have a competitive edge over every other fresh graduate who shows up with nothing but a degree and a GPA.

And the link part is non-negotiable. If there’s no link, it wasn’t a project. It was a thought. Thoughts don’t get you hired.

The cover letter: two versions, not twenty

There’s an endless debate online about whether cover letters matter. Some people say send one with every application. Others say nobody reads them.

Here’s my take, and it’s practical: make two cover letters. One generic, one customized.

The generic cover letter is tailored to your general field. If you’re a front-end developer, it talks about front-end development in broad terms. Your experience, your approach, your strengths. You send this with 90% of your applications. It takes no extra effort per application because it’s already written.

The customized cover letter is for the 10% of jobs you really want. The ones where you’d be genuinely excited to work. For these, you take your generic letter and adjust two sections: your core principles/strengths and your achievements. Make them specific to the company, the role, and the industry. If it’s a fintech company, mention fintech experience. If they have a specific pain point in the job description, address it directly.

This approach prevents burnout while still giving you maximum impact on the applications that matter most.

Cover letter structure

Unlike resumes, cover letters are where you can be creative. This is your chance to show personality, writing ability, and the kind of thinking you bring to work. The ATS rules that constrain your resume don’t apply here.

That said, a structure helps. Here’s what I recommend based on years of writing freelancing proposals (which are basically cover letters for contract work):

1. Salutation and a quick hook. Not “Dear Hiring Manager, I am writing to express my interest in…” That’s dead on arrival. Start with something that grabs attention. A relevant observation about the company, a specific challenge in their industry, something that shows you did your homework.
2. Professional experience summary. Two to three sentences. Not your life story. Just enough to establish credibility.
3. Three core principles. The rule of three works because our brains are wired for it. Three things you stand for, three strengths, three values. Whatever resonates with the role.
4. Your unique ability. One sentence about what sets you apart. Not “I’m a hard worker.” Something specific. “I’m the person who builds the process that makes the team 2x faster.”
5. Three to four relevant achievements. Pulled from your career accomplishments, tailored to the role.
6. Closing. Email, call booking link (if you have one), and a thank you. End with a clear call to action: “I’d love to discuss how I can contribute. Here’s my calendar link.”

When customizing for specific jobs, you’ll mostly be adjusting sections 3 and 5. The rest stays consistent.

Stop blaming the market

One last thing before we close.

It’s very easy to say “I applied to 200 jobs and got nothing.” And in some cases that’s genuinely a market issue. But in most cases, when I ask those people to send me their resume, it hasn’t been updated in 6 months. The cover letter is nonexistent. The portfolio link is broken.

There are always improvements you can make. The job market has good times and bad times. But in both, the people who put in the work tend to come out ahead. High performers take a hit during downturns, sure. But they recover fast because their fundamentals are solid. Low performers struggle in good times and bad.

The resume and cover letter aren’t magic bullets. They’re the bare minimum. But doing the bare minimum well, consistently, is what separates people who get interviews from people who don’t.

Update your resume. Write the cover letter. Fix the broken link. And then apply with intention, not volume.

Common resume mistakes I keep seeing

After reviewing hundreds of resumes through our community workshops and Office Hours sessions, there are patterns that keep showing up. These aren’t edge cases. These are the mistakes the majority of people make, and fixing even one of them can meaningfully improve your callback rate.

Sending the same resume to every job. I understand the temptation. You have 50 jobs to apply to and customizing each one feels impossible. But at minimum, update the summary section. That’s the easiest win. The rest of your resume can stay the same, but if your summary says “experienced front-end developer” and you’re applying to a product role, you’ve lost the reader in the first 5 seconds.

Writing 150-word cover letters. Or worse, not sending one at all. I get it, cover letters feel pointless when you’re mass applying. But for the jobs that matter, a 300-400 word cover letter that shows genuine understanding of the role will put you ahead of 90% of applicants who either skip it or send a three-line afterthought.

No quantifiable metrics anywhere. This is the big one. Your resume should read like a scorecard, not a job description. “Responsible for managing client accounts” tells me nothing. “Managed 12 client accounts generating $400K in quarterly revenue” tells me everything. If you don’t have exact numbers, estimate responsibly. If your team didn’t track metrics, think about what you can reasonably infer from the work you did.

Listing every technology you’ve ever touched. Your skills section should be curated, not comprehensive. If you used a tool once in 2019 and haven’t touched it since, it doesn’t belong on your resume. Hiring managers will ask about anything you list. If you can’t speak confidently about it in an interview, leave it off.

Not having a personal website. I know this sounds like it belongs in a different guide, but your resume exists as part of a system. Resume, LinkedIn, portfolio site. They work together. A personal website doesn’t need to be fancy. A single page with your intro, your best work, and a way to contact you. That’s it. But when a hiring manager Googles your name and finds a clean, professional page, it validates everything on your resume. When they find nothing, or worse, a dead link, it does the opposite.

Ignoring the “Additional Information” section. Most people either leave this blank or fill it with hobbies. Neither is useful. This section is for things that add credibility but don’t fit neatly elsewhere. Community contributions, open source work, certifications, notable projects, speaking engagements, bug bounty profiles if you’re in cybersecurity. If you’ve done something worth mentioning, mention it here.

Not updating after every major project or role change. Your resume should be a living document. Every time you complete a significant project, land a new role, or achieve a measurable result, update the resume. Don’t wait until you need a job to frantically reconstruct 2 years of work from memory. Keep it current. The best time to update your resume is when you don’t need it.

The job application mindset

I want to end on something that’s less tactical and more philosophical, because I think it matters.

Most people treat job applications as a numbers game. Apply to 100 jobs, hear back from 5, interview with 2, get 1 offer. And while volume does matter, the quality of each application matters more.

Think of it this way. If you send 100 mediocre applications, you might get 2 callbacks. If you send 30 well-researched, well-tailored applications, you might get 8. Same amount of time invested, dramatically different results.

Here’s what “well-researched” looks like in practice:

Before you apply, read the job description carefully. Not skim. Read. Understand what the company actually needs. Look at the company’s website, their product, their LinkedIn page. Get a sense of their stage, their culture, their challenges.

Then ask yourself: can I genuinely help this company? If the answer is yes, apply with conviction. Customize the summary. Write the cover letter. Attach relevant portfolio items. If the answer is “maybe, but I’m not sure,” apply with the generic cover letter and move on. If the answer is no, skip it entirely. Don’t waste connects, don’t waste stamps, don’t waste time.

The other mindset shift that matters: your resume is not about you. It’s about the person reading it. Every line should answer the question “why should I care?” from the hiring manager’s perspective. Your degree doesn’t matter to them. What matters is what you can do, what you’ve done, and whether you can do it for them.

Once you internalize that, everything about how you write your resume changes.

What’s in the kit

The downloadable kit includes:

• A blank resume template in .docx format, fully ATS-friendly
• A filled-out example resume (with some intentional errors, so you actually customize it)
• A cover letter template with the structure outlined above
• A filled-out example cover letter

Everything is designed to give you a strong starting point while forcing you to put in the work of making it yours. Because at the end of the day, the resume that gets you hired won’t be mine. It’ll be yours.

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Why are you ‘selling’ this on BuyMeACoffee?

I’m not. These kits and resources are absolutely free, unless you decide to leave a tip.

The reason I do them this way is because it makes file management easy, and ensures that you get the latest version of the tools at the time of downloading. Also since you are required to submit your email address to unlock the kit, this ensures that if down the road I update the resource, you get notified with the latest version.

Download the kit here: https://buymeacoffee.com/thewanderingpro/e/337611

With or without my help – I wish you the best.

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