Resume format for experienced professionals

Once you have a year or more of work, recruiters read your resume for one thing first: what you did in your latest roles and what changed because of it. The reverse-chronological format puts that at the top.

The format, section by section

1
Header
Name, phone, email, current city and LinkedIn. Add “Open to relocate” or preferred cities if it matters for the role.
2
Headline
Your role and the skills or domain you’re hired for — e.g. “Data Analyst · SQL, Power BI · E-commerce”.
3
Professional summary
Three lines: total years of experience, your specialisation and your best result. This is what recruiters read on Naukri and LinkedIn previews.
4
Work experience
Latest job first. For each role: title, company, dates (month and year) and three to five bullets that start with what you achieved, with numbers.
5
Skills
Tools, technologies and domain skills, in the posting’s words. Put the ones the job asks for first.
6
Education
Degree, college and year. Drop Class X and XII percentages after a few years of experience unless the employer asks.
7
Certifications
Only the ones relevant to the role, with the year.

Sample

Farah Siddiqui

Data Analyst · SQL, Power BI, Python

Hyderabad · name@email.com · +91 98xxx xxxxx

Summary

Data analyst with 3 years in e-commerce, turning sales and customer data into dashboards and recommendations that leadership acts on.

Experience

Data Analyst · An online grocery company

Mar 2024 – Present

Built a Power BI sales dashboard used weekly by 25 category managers, replacing 10 manual Excel reports
Found through cohort analysis that late deliveries drove 30% of churn; the resulting fix cut churn by 8%
Wrote SQL models in BigQuery that cut monthly reporting time from 3 days to 4 hours

MIS Executive · A consumer finance company

Jun 2022 – Feb 2024

Automated daily collections reports with Excel VBA and Python, saving 2 hours a day

Education

B.Sc. Statistics · A university in Hyderabad

2022

Skills

SQL · Power BI · Excel (Pivot tables, Power Query) · Python (pandas) · BigQuery · A/B testing · Statistics

From our data analyst resume example.

Do

✓Write bullets as results: “Cut reporting time from 3 days to 4 hours” beats “Responsible for reports”.
✓Keep it to one page under about 5 years of experience, two pages beyond that.
✓Give the most space to your last two roles; older jobs need a line or two each.
✓Put current CTC, expected CTC and notice period in the job portal or application form, not on the resume, unless the employer asks.

Don’t

✗Don’t list duties copied from your job description — recruiters want what you did differently.
✗Don’t leave unexplained gaps of more than six months; one line (“Career break — family care”) is enough.
✗Don’t include references, a photo or personal details like marital status.
✗Don’t use tables, text boxes or two columns if you apply through company career sites — many screening tools misread them.

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Questions

How do I show total experience?: State it in the summary — “4 years in backend development” — and make sure your job dates add up to it. Recruiters filter on years of experience.
Should I mention my notice period on the resume?: It’s optional. If you can join quickly or are serving notice, a line in the header (“Notice period: 30 days”) can help; otherwise give it in the application form.
How far back should I go?: About 10 to 15 years. Older roles can be grouped as one line: “Earlier: sales roles at two FMCG distributors, 2008–2012”.