In this article
- How Do You Write a Strong Resume? The Short Answer
- What Does Harvard Career Services Say About a Strong Resume?
- How Do You Find the Right ATS Keywords?
- Does an ATS Reject Resumes That Are Missing Keywords?
- How Do You Quantify Accomplishments on a Resume?
- Which Action Verbs Does Harvard Recommend?
- What Should You Check Before You Apply?
- Which Resume Should You Start From?
- Frequently Asked Questions
How Do You Write a Strong Resume? The Short Answer
Write it for one job at a time. Copy the skills, tools and titles the posting repeats into your resume wherever they are true of you, begin each bullet with an action verb, and end it with a result. Harvard’s career center asks for language that is specific, active, fact-based and easy to scan, and it names failing to tailor the resume and not demonstrating results as common mistakes.
This post covers what makes the content strong. For section order, contact details and the basic layout, start with how to create a resume.
What Does Harvard Career Services Say About a Strong Resume?
The most useful public source is the Harvard FAS Mignone Center for Career Success guide for Harvard Extension School students, whose page metadata shows a last edit in May 2026. It is written for Harvard students and alumni, but nothing in it depends on a Harvard degree. The table turns its advice into actions. It is career-center guidance, not ATS vendor documentation, so treat it as advice from advisers who read many resumes.
| What Harvard’s guide says | What to do |
|---|---|
| Tailor the resume to each position. Not every experience has to relate directly, but the resume should show skills, experience and impact the employer values. | Keep a master resume and cut it down for each posting. |
| Use action verbs, not passive language. | Open every bullet with a verb. |
| Be fact-based, and quantify and qualify when possible. | Add a number, or the scope of the work. |
| Convey impact and achievements. Not demonstrating results is on its mistakes list. | End bullets with an outcome, not a duty. |
| Keep it easy to scan, with white space and consistent formatting. | Use one font, one bullet style and one date format. |
| Order headings by importance for the role, and list items newest first. | Put the section the employer cares about most at the top. |
| Skip personal pronouns, slang, photos, age or gender, and references unless requested. | Delete them. |
| Consider both human readers and applicant tracking systems. | Check keywords and file layout, covered below. |
Its mistakes list is headed “top five” but contains six items: not tailoring, spelling and grammar errors, missing contact information, passive language, poor organization or skimmability, and not demonstrating results. Spelling and contact details cost nothing to fix, so check them last, right before you submit.
How Do You Find the Right ATS Keywords?
Take them from the job posting, not from a generic list. The posting tells you the exact terms the employer, and the recruiter searching for candidates, will use. This is our method, based on that logic, not a documented ATS rule:
- Paste the posting into a blank document.
- Highlight job titles, tools, certifications, methods and domain terms, especially any that appear more than once or sit in the requirements section.
- Cross out everything you cannot honestly claim.
- Use the remaining terms in the posting’s wording, in your summary, skills line and bullets. If the posting says “Google Analytics 4,” write that, not “web analytics.” If a term has a common acronym, include both forms once, such as “search engine optimization (SEO).”
- Put each keyword inside a bullet that shows you used it, instead of dropping a block of terms at the bottom.
| Posting says | Weak resume line | Stronger resume line |
|---|---|---|
| “SQL and Tableau dashboards” | Made reports for the team | Built Tableau dashboards on SQL data for a 12-person sales team |
| “Stakeholder management” | Worked with different departments | Managed stakeholders across finance, legal and operations on a six-month rollout |
| “Agile sprint planning” | Helped plan work | Ran two-week sprint planning for a team of eight |
The examples are made-up illustrations of the pattern, not real results. Harvard’s guidance on AI points the same way: generative tools can help you work keywords from a job description into your bullets, but they should not write the resume, because the output tends to be generic.
Does an ATS Reject Resumes That Are Missing Keywords?
Not in Greenhouse, according to Greenhouse. Its own candidate guide says the platform never uses AI to rate candidates or auto-reject applications, and that recruiters often search and filter applications for in-demand roles, with AI suggesting role-relevant search terms. For that system, keywords decide whether a recruiter finds you, not whether software discards you.
Other systems and employer settings vary, and no vendor page reviewed publishes how often a keyword mismatch costs a candidate an interview. Coursera, citing a 2021 Harvard Business School study, reports that 88% of surveyed employers believed their automated systems screened out qualified high-skill candidates for not matching the exact job description. That is a finding about what employers believe, reported secondhand, and it is separate from Harvard’s career center.
Keywords only work if the parser can read your file. For how that works, see how an ATS resume parser reads your resume.
How Do You Quantify Accomplishments on a Resume?
Use this pattern: action verb, what you did, the scale or metric, and the result. A bullet that follows it answers “so what?” before a reader asks.
| Metric type | What to look for |
|---|---|
| Money | Budget managed, revenue, savings, cost per unit |
| Time | Turnaround time, hours saved, days to launch |
| Volume | Tickets per day, accounts handled, orders processed |
| Change | Percent or absolute increase or decrease |
| Scope | Team size, number of locations, users served |
| Frequency | Daily, weekly or quarterly responsibilities |
The made-up examples below show the change:
| Before | After |
|---|---|
| Responsible for weekly reports | Built a weekly sales report in Excel for 12 regional managers, cutting preparation time from four hours to one |
| Helped customers with problems | Resolved about 40 customer tickets a day while keeping satisfaction at 95% |
| Managed social media | Grew an Instagram account from 2,000 to 5,500 followers in six months by posting four times a week |
Harvard’s sample cover letter in the same guide follows this shape: it describes leading a cross-functional team and attaches a 75% process-efficiency gain to it. It is a sample with placeholder names, so copy the structure, not the number.
If your job has no metrics, do what Harvard’s wording allows and qualify. State the scope, the audience or the frequency, for example “for a 30-person department” or “every quarter.” Never invent a figure. If you estimate, write “about,” and keep a record you could walk an interviewer through.
Which Action Verbs Does Harvard Recommend?
Harvard publishes a verb list grouped by skill area: leadership, communication, research, technical, teaching, quantitative, creative, helping and organizational. It includes verbs such as Spearheaded, Streamlined, Optimized, Forecasted, Audited and Facilitated. Pick the group that matches the job. An analyst role leans on the quantitative list, an engineering role on the technical one.
Do not repeat the same verb through a whole section. A varied list reads faster, and a verb like “Audited” tells a reader more than “Worked on.”
What Should You Check Before You Apply?
- The title and skills match the posting’s wording, and every claim is true.
- Every bullet starts with an action verb and ends with a result or scope.
- No pronouns, slang, photo, age or gender, and no references unless requested.
- Spelling, grammar and contact details are correct.
- The layout is one column with no tables, which Greenhouse and other sources flag for ATS parsing.
- The file format suits the application, per our guide to PDF or DOCX for an ATS resume.
- Copying all the text into a plain text editor gives a readable order.
Which Resume Should You Start From?
Start from a single-column, text-based resume and tailor it per posting. The 7resume resume builder produces ATS-friendly, text-based output, and its role pages give you a starting point for software engineers, data analysts, marketing managers, project managers and financial analysts.
Frequently Asked Questions
What makes a resume strong?
A strong resume is tailored to one job, uses the posting’s own wording for skills and titles, starts each bullet with an action verb and ends it with a result. Harvard’s career center also asks for language that is specific, fact-based and easy to scan.
Does Harvard career services recommend quantifying accomplishments?
Yes. Its resume guidance says language should be fact-based and tells writers to quantify and qualify when possible. It also lists not demonstrating results among common resume mistakes.
How many keywords should I put on my resume?
No source reviewed gives a target number. Use the skills, tools and titles the posting repeats, only where they are true of you, and place each one inside a bullet that shows how you used it.
What if my job has no numbers to report?
Qualify instead of quantifying. State the scope (team size, number of customers, how often you did the task) or the audience, and never invent a figure. If you estimate, say “about” and keep records you can explain.
Should I write a different resume for every job?
Harvard’s guidance says to tailor content to each position. Keep one master resume with everything in it, then copy it and keep the parts that match the posting. For academic or international applications, check whether the employer wants a CV, and see CV vs resume.
Can I use AI to write my resume?
Harvard’s career center says generative AI can help you brainstorm bullet revisions and work in keywords from a job description, but should not be the main author because its output tends to be generic.
For more resume guides, browse the resume writing category, the ATS optimization category, the career advice category or the full 7resume blog.