The short answer
A good resume makes your relevant work easy to find: clear contact information, familiar section headings, understandable dates, and evidence behind the skills the job needs.
A layout that gives the reader a clear route
Start with your name and contact details, then order the remaining sections around your strongest relevant evidence. An experienced applicant may lead with work history. A student may put education and projects earlier. There is no need to make every career stage use the same order.
Use familiar headings such as Experience, Education, Skills, and Projects. Consistent spacing and date formats help a reader compare entries. A decorative layout is less useful if someone has to hunt for your latest role.
Example structure for an early-career applicant
Name and contact details Education — degree, institution, graduation date Relevant project — what you built and your contribution Experience or volunteering — role, organization, dates, evidence Skills — relevant tools and methods you can explain
Show the work rather than describing yourself
A useful bullet identifies an action, the context or scope, and an outcome where you know it. Numbers help when they are real; a clear description of a difficult problem can be valuable without a percentage.
The following is a fictional illustration. Replace the facts with your own; do not borrow a metric just because it sounds stronger.
Vague
Responsible for reports and working with the team.
Specific
Combined weekly order exports into one exception report so the operations team could review missing shipments in a single place.
Make relevance visible without stuffing keywords
Read the posting and identify the responsibilities that matter most. Move supporting experience earlier and use the employer's terminology when it accurately describes your work. Expanding an abbreviation once can help a reader understand it.
Avoid hidden text, lists of tools you have never used, and claims that one template guarantees an ATS pass. Different employers use different systems and criteria. Your goal is an accurate document that is easy to understand.
Check the file the employer will receive
Export in the accepted format, open that actual file, and inspect the page breaks, links, text size, and contact details. Copy its text into a plain text editor to look for missing or badly ordered content. If a form parses the resume, review every populated field before submitting.
Keep a copy of the version used for each application. When you receive a question later, you should be able to see exactly which experience and dates the employer was given.
Sources and further reading
Provider and employer requirements can change. Follow the instructions for the particular application or integration.