American resumes follow the correct American resume format, not what's standard elsewhere — one page, no photo, reverse-chronological. Build an ATS resume for USA employers that's optimized to pass Workday, Taleo, and iCIMS.
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US resumes follow conventions that surprise a lot of job seekers coming from other markets. First: no photo, and no date of birth, marital status, or nationality. American employers actively avoid personal identifiers to stay compliant with EEOC anti-discrimination guidance — including them can make a resume look like a liability rather than a strength, and some corporate ATS platforms will reject image-embedded files outright.
Second: it's a resume, not a CV. In the US, "CV" is reserved almost entirely for academic, medical, and research positions where a long, publication-heavy document is the norm. For every corporate, tech, and business role, employers expect a tight one-page resume if you have under 10 years of experience — two pages is acceptable only for senior or executive candidates.
Third: content is reverse-chronological and achievement-driven. Lead each bullet with a strong action verb ("Led," "Reduced," "Built") and quantify the result wherever possible — "Reduced deployment time by 40%" reads far stronger than a duty-list description. The old "Objective" statement at the top has fallen out of favor in the US in favor of a 2–3 line "Professional Summary" that states your target role and top qualifications up front.
The overwhelming majority of US mid-size and large employers filter every application through an applicant tracking system before a human ever sees it. The most common platforms are Workday, Taleo (Oracle), iCIMS, Greenhouse, Lever, and SuccessFactors — each parses your resume into structured fields (name, dates, titles, skills) and scores it against the job description's keywords before a recruiter sees a ranked list.
The formatting rule that matters most: keep it single-column, with standard section headers ("Experience," "Education," "Skills") and no tables, text boxes, or headers/footers — all of these can scramble how an ATS reads your resume, sometimes dropping entire sections. Every template on ResumeOrbitz is built this way by default.
Match the language recruiters and ATS software actually search for in these common US job categories.
Agile, CI/CD, REST APIs, unit testing, cross-functional collaboration, system design
Patient care, EHR/EMR (Epic, Cerner), HIPAA compliance, clinical assessment, care coordination
Stakeholder management, Scrum/Kanban, risk mitigation, budget ownership, PMP
Pipeline management, quota attainment, CRM (Salesforce), consultative selling, closed-won revenue
Campaign strategy, SEO/SEM, marketing analytics, brand positioning, A/B testing
Single-column, no photos, no graphics — every one of these parses cleanly through a corporate ATS.
The most widely used single-column format among US job seekers — a clean accent header over a structured body.
Bullet-point format modeled on Harvard's own career services guide — a safe default for finance, consulting, and corporate roles.
A LaTeX-inspired monospace layout that's become the unofficial standard in US software engineering job searches.
Traditional centered header, timeless typography — works for virtually any US industry, from healthcare to law.
Pure typography, zero decoration — built to parse perfectly through Workday, Taleo, and iCIMS.
Single-column formats built to pass Workday, Taleo, and iCIMS without dropping a section.
Generate quantified, action-verb-led bullet points from your job title and experience in seconds.
Paste any US job posting and see your keyword match score with specific fixes.
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One page if you have under 10 years of experience. Two pages is acceptable for senior professionals, executives, or academic/research roles with publications. US recruiters rarely read past page one for early-career candidates, so cut anything that isn't directly relevant to the role.
No — leave it off. Including a photo, date of birth, marital status, or a headshot is unusual on American resumes and can actually work against you: many US employers avoid resumes with personal identifiers to stay compliant with EEOC anti-discrimination guidelines, and some ATS platforms will flag or reject image-embedded files entirely.
It depends on the employer, but including one rarely hurts and is expected for many corporate and government roles. If the job posting says "cover letter optional," a short, tailored one still signals genuine interest. Our free AI cover letter generator can draft one from your resume and the job description in seconds.
No — drop that line entirely. It's considered outdated in the US and wastes valuable space. Employers assume you'll provide references when asked, typically later in the interview process, not on the resume itself.
Use "Resume." In the US, "CV" (curriculum vitae) is reserved almost exclusively for academic, medical, and research positions where a longer, publication-heavy document is expected. For virtually every corporate, tech, and business role, American employers expect a resume.
The formatting rules — single column, no tables, no photo — are similar worldwide, but US-specific ATS platforms like Workday, Taleo, and iCIMS are strict about US date formats (MM/YYYY), US phone formatting, and state abbreviations. They also weight keyword-to-job-description matching heavily, so mirroring the exact terms from the posting matters more than in some other markets.