Resume Examples: What Makes a Great Resume?

The best resume examples are those that help you understand why certain choices are made to create each section: why a professional summary opens with that specific statement, why work experience bullets use those exact metrics, or why the skills section lists those very competencies. This guide provides three examples of good resumes written for a student, a career changer, and an experienced engineer, and shows their strengths, trade-offs, and improvements you can make when you start working on yours. Choose the most appropriate resume example for your job, focus on understanding the strategy behind every detail, and apply it in creating your own.

What Makes a Good Resume? Five Things to Look For

Before we examine the three examples in detail, the table below presents a checklist used to evaluate each and ensure they represent good resume examples, as a recruiter would when reading your resume.

You can also run any resume example through a resume checker to verify that it checks all the boxes listed above. Toptal Resume's ATS resume checker provides a comprehensive analysis that covers not only formatting but also language, achievements, skills, and role fit.

Three Strong Resume Examples, Explained

Now that we've defined the criteria for determining whether a resume example is strong and more likely to perform well, we'll apply them to analyze three great resume examples written for three different job search scenarios:

1. A job seeker who starts without much work experience
2. A career changer transitioning to a new field
3. An experienced professional who wants to advance further in their career

All the examples examined use Toptal Resume's professional resume templates, adapted for these specific job-search situations.

Entry-level Resume Example

The first resume example, shown in the image below, is an entry-level resume written for a hospitality student applying for an event coordinator role.

Here's what works well in this resume example:

• Although the candidate doesn't have direct, paid professional experience, their academic projects and volunteering are structured as if they were real job experience. Note how even volunteering can be described with achievement-based bullets, and with actual metrics:

• The relevance to the target role is clearly demonstrated by the results of their college event and Red Cross engagements, along with relevant skills. All backed by specific numbers (number of events, 300 guests, 150-person charity event).
• Education and certifications are strong assets for entry-level candidates, and the ServSafe certification and Dean's List recognition are prominently placed.

One trade-off: Although the professional summary leads with the experience context and mentions the skills acquired through academic and volunteering roles, it's expanded with adjectives such as "reliability", "warm communication", and "genuine enthusiasm." It might not be very useful in a standard resume, but it's acceptable in entry-level resumes, especially for client-facing roles.

Career Changer Resume Example

The second resume example, shown in the image below, is a career-change resume, written for a candidate transitioning from teaching into corporate learning & development.

Here's what works well in this resume example:

• The career transition is addressed right away in the professional summary, which sets the right context for the entire resume. The new direction is then confirmed with specific, transferable skills and achievements:

• All achievements are backed by measurable outcomes from the teaching experience (number of students/learners, percentage of performance improvement, and team management).
• The new direction is also strengthened by listing the talent development certification, even though the candidate most likely has a teaching license as well.
• All the skills in the skills section can be connected to the actual work described in the work experience.

One trade-off: All role titles listed in the work experience are English teacher roles, but almost no classroom language is used, which might make the candidate's background seem confusing. That said, the goal of a career-change resume is to make it instantly clear that the applicant is the right fit for the job, and adding irrelevant details would dilute the entire document.

Experienced Professional Resume Example

The third resume example is a software engineer resume written for a full-stack software engineer targeting senior and lead roles.

Here's what works well in this resume example:

• As in any strong senior resume example, every bullet in the most relevant work experience is packed with clear impact and concrete, measurable business results (user adoption increase, operational overhead cut, project and team leadership, and so on).
• The professional summary opens with the candidate's specialty, then lists their strongest skills, and includes specific results:

• The skills list reflects what's demonstrated in the work experience bullet points (TypeScript, Angular, Laravel, React, Next.js, Docker, Kubernetes).
• Career progression is clearly visible, as the scope of work increases in each job entry.

One trade-off: For tech roles, it's common to group skills and place them near the top, because stack matters. That said, it can take up more space than placing them in the sidebar, as in this example. Also, senior candidates should rely more on work impact than on listing tools alone.

To see more strong resume examples, explore Toptal Resume's gallery of expert-written resume examples that cover many different jobs and industries.

Resume Samples Before and After: Weak vs. Strong

The table below explores resume examples in greater detail and presents "before and after" versions of the same candidate facts using fragmented resume excerpts. It explains how to phrase specific bullet points, summaries, or skills, and how to avoid common resume-writing mistakes. Resume samples shown relate to the same job-search situations: entry-level candidates, career changers, and experienced professionals. No facts are changed, but are reframed to make a weak draft more credible and more specific.

Resumes need to be targeted and tailored for the role you're applying for. Their main job is to prove your fit for the job, and every line should aim to strengthen your application. If you need help creating the most appropriate content for your resume, Toptal's AI resume builder guides you through every section and offers tailored suggestions for your target role.

How to Adapt a Resume Example to Your Job

A resume example becomes really useful when you adapt it to a specific job posting, and that's what you'll learn in this chapter. Below is a walk-through of adapting Sophia's entry-level resume example for a job application.

The scenario: Sophia is a hospitality management student, and she now wants to apply for an event coordinator position at a hotel. The job description mentions the following requirements:

• coordinating event logistics
• managing guest-facing communication
• maintaining service standards during high-volume periods

Tailoring your resume for a job application is essential to achieving strong performance. Let's examine what needs to be adjusted in Sophia's to best match the posting.

Step 1: Match the Requirements to Your Experience

Sophia doesn't need to invent anything, as her facts already include relevant experience for all the posting's priorities:

• The posting requires event logistics, and that's confirmed by her on-campus events, with specific numbers.
• The guest communication requirement is evident in her experience at the Red Cross Gala.
• Evidence of the high-volume service requirement is shown by "food and beverage stations during formal faculty dinners."

Step 2: Reorder the Sections by Relevance

Regarding the volunteering section of Sophia's resume, the two entries are correctly ordered. Besides following the logical chronological order, the first entry demonstrates the most important requirement: event logistics.

What could be improved is switching the order of the sections by placing Volunteering before Projects, as that's a more relevant, hands-on experience than school projects. If you use Toptal Resume's AI resume builder, it includes a section reordering feature, which allows you to adapt the resume's layout by placing more relevant information first.

Step 3: Update the Professional Summary to Name the Role

Sophia's summary already mentions the target job as "event coordination roles," which is good practice. For entry-level resumes, it's common to be unsure about how to weave in a role that you never had, as your experience is limited. In such cases, you can name the role you're targeting, but always back it up with your relevant skills that confirm you're a strong fit.

Step 4: Edit the Skills List to Include the Most Relevant Ones

Always include in your skills section the skills that are mentioned in the job posting and make them easy to find. In Sophia's case, the most relevant ones are already there ("Event Setup & Coordination" and "Guest Communication"). A good strategy would be to place them at the top of the skills section. Of course, never list a skill that you don't have, as it can backfire during the interview phase.

Common Mistakes When Using Resume Examples

Good resume examples can still lead to bad results if not handled properly and carefully, and here are the most common mistakes when using them to create your resume:

• Copying claims that don't exist in your experience. Using the example candidate's responsibilities and scope and presenting them as your own isn't a good idea, as an interviewer may go through every line of your resume.
• Inventing metrics to match the example. You don't have to use the same details as in the resume example if they don't reflect your work. Use real figures, even if they are approximate.
• Copying irrelevant skills. A resume example wasn't written for the exact same job you're applying for. Using the same skills as in the example will likely lead to copying those that aren't relevant to your case.
• Keeping the same summary. Similar to the skills, use the summary in the resume example as a starting point, but always adapt it to your situation.
• Not checking ATS compatibility. Many resume examples found online are designed to look good, but make sure the template you use for your resume is compatible with applicant tracking systems (ATS).

Conclusion

A useful resume example shows you how to present strong evidence of job fit for a specific role. Explore Toptal Resume's full resume examples gallery and apply all the steps presented in this guide to any of them to learn what makes a strong resume. As a next step, use the AI resume builder to create your own version through a guided process with tailored content suggestions for your role.