The Resume Build Kit

Most resume advice tells you what a good resume looks like. Almost none of it tells you what to type.

This is a fillable template plus the guide that walks you through every section of it — written by a career transition coach who builds these for clients every week.

What's in the template

A Word document you open, replace the brackets in, and delete what you don't need. It's built to survive applicant tracking systems: no tables, no columns, no text boxes, no graphics — the four things that most often turn a well-written resume into a scrambled parse.

Header built for the roles you're targeting, not the one you currently hold. Professional summary. Core competencies. Technical skills. Career highlights. Professional experience with prompts inside every bullet. Additional experience. Education. Certifications.

What's in the 12-page guide

The header — how to handle credentials, why "Dr. Jane Smith, PhD" is wrong, and how to pick your three target titles from actual job postings.

The summary — a four-part structure, with a weak example and a strong one side by side so you can see the difference.

Core competencies — how to choose them from the postings you're chasing, plus a starting bank across five target functions.

Experience bullets — the formula for turning a duty into a result, a verb list worth using, and six questions that surface the numbers you think you don't have.

What to cut — and the formatting rules you shouldn't break, with the reason behind each one.

The 15-minute tailoring method — how to adjust for a specific posting without rewriting from scratch.

A 14-point final checklist — run it before every send.

Who this is for

Anyone building their own resume who's tired of guessing. Career changers who know what they did but not what to call it in the new field. People who want the structure a professional would use without the price of done-for-you writing.