You’ve probably heard that the Harvard resume format is one of the best templates for recent graduates. After all, it was created and is continually recommended by Harvard recruiters and counselors.
The Harvard resume is clean and professional and highlights education over work experience. Considering the minimal work experience most recent graduates bring, it can be an excellent framework for building your resume.
But how do you use it to create your resume? Below, you'll learn how to use the Harvard University resume format, including examples.
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The Harvard Offices of Career Services, in conjunction with the Career and Academic Resource Center, created the Harvard resume format.
The aim was to help both Harvard students and graduates of other universities create resumes that highlight their education and land them jobs.
Because of its more significant focus on education, leadership, and activities over job experience, this resume format works best for those just entering the job market.
Here’s an overview of the format:
Let's examine each resume section and how they differ from traditional resumes.
Typically, the education section of a resume is at the bottom rather than the top. The Harvard-style resume flips this on its head, listing education just after the resume header.
It’s acceptable for job seekers without experience in the job market to put education details at the top of a resume. Education also tends to carry more weight if you apply for internships or master's programs.
If you’ve gained experience within your projected career path and it’s been a few years since you graduated, move your education details to the bottom of your resume.
Your work history and experiences should make up the bulk of your resume. But if you’re a recent graduate, you might not have as much to show, as you can see in the Harvard resume example.
This is where you see more similarities with the typical resume format. The Harvard resume template holds a standard of four bullet points for each position held. Each bullet point should only be one sentence long.
Follow these rules when formatting each bullet point:
This advice is standard across the recruitment and resume writing industries, but it’s still pertinent.
The leadership and activities section on a resume is acceptable to feature if you’re fresh out of college and the activities are relevant to the position. However, on most resumes, there is little room or need to feature this section.
It can be a great way to highlight skills, certain responsibilities you’ve held, or outcomes you’ve achieved to supplement a lack of work history. Most potential employers don’t need this information unless those activities can supplement work experience.
The Harvard resume template does something unique with the skills section—breaking the skills down into four categories:
The technical and laboratory skills bullet points are the most nuanced. Technical skills should list any computer skills or coding languages you’ve learned, while the laboratory line asks you to list any specific tools or techniques you’ve used.
Resist the urge to explain every skill. In some cases, you may need to specify your proficiency. However, if you are fluent in languages, list each language you know. You can write them in one line separated by commas, like this:
Teal’s AI-powered Resume Builder allows you to add all of your technical skills in one easy form and then select and de-select the skills you’d like to feature on your resume.
How you lay out your resume will greatly depend on how much experience you have in your field, your skills, and which university you attended (including your grades and accolades).
But the four sections in the Harvard resume format generally benefit any new grad or student resume.
When you don’t have much experience on your resume, highlighting your education is a safe bet.
The Harvard format gives you a good launch pad for emphasizing the benefits of your education. If you understand each section and tailor it to the position, you’re much more likely to stand out in a candidate pool.
Your final resume isn’t going to look like a perfect replica of the template. That’s because the position you’re applying for will call for different highlights on your resume.
For instance, you might apply for a competitive internship that values GPA more heavily than other internships. In some cases, GPA isn’t just a qualification for admittance. An organization might also have a minimum acceptable standard. Still, it might also be a metric for whether or not you maintain your internship.
In such a case, you’ll need to feature your GPA on your resume and any other accolades within your education that might give you a competitive advantage.
In the previous section, you saw the differences between traditional and Harvard resumes. Here, we’re breaking down how to fill out your resume with those differences in mind.
Filling out the top of your resume is straightforward. Your resume header should contain contact details such as your name, address, and email. You don’t have to include your entire email. Your city and state are enough.
If you’re keeping the Harvard format, your education section is at the top, just under your details. Again, this is beneficial if you’re applying to further educational programs, such as a master’s program, an internship, or an entry-level position.
The template offers three possible rows of information within the education section—college, study abroad, and your high school.
Unless the position specifically requests high school information or it's required to enter the program, including it on your resume is unnecessary. This also applies to your study abroad program. While it’s advantageous in an educational program application, it’s not often necessary for employment.
The work experience section of the Harvard resume includes slots for just two places of employment. This is because it’s essentially a student resume.
To fill out this section, start with the company name, position, and period you worked there.
Add three to four bullet points under your organizational header. The typical job seeker might add their responsibilities within those roles, but this won’t help you stand out among other candidates.
Instead, focus on outcomes you’ve produced, contributions you’ve made, and skills you’ve developed. Here’s what that advice looks like on the resume of an applicant who’s only held a few entry-level roles:
You might not have a lot of experience, and it’s unlikely you were able to have a massive impact on the company in an entry-level or internship position. But you likely gained hard and soft skills by working on something for some time.
Notice the action verbs in two of the three lines in the above example? Words like increased, improved, and boosted are “active” words to quickly demonstrate that you’ve had impact in your role.
Leadership and activities are optional on a resume and should only be included if they directly relate to the responsibilities listed in the job description.
If you add your leadership projects and activities, be sure to include any outcomes that came from those activities.
You don’t need to include all of this detail. One or two lines should be enough to showcase the project unless you’re compensating for lower work experience.
Skills and interests are another optional section on your resume. While Harvard offers four opportunities to include such information, you could include one or two and eliminate the rest if they’re pertinent or might increase your chances of getting hired.
For instance, language skills are in demand across most industries. They may also be a necessary qualification for some roles or may position you in a higher pay grade upon acceptance for a role. In such cases, adding that information to your resume is essential.
Technical skills are vital for roles in software, IT, or engineering. Laboratory skills will matter if you’re applying for a role in a STEM profession, such as a geneticist or food scientist.
Certain resume red flags automatically take you out of the candidate pool. These red flags include:
While recruiters and hiring managers aren’t going to examine your resume with a fine-toothed comb, obvious spelling and grammar errors stand out. As does an abundance of those errors. Always check your work before sending it.
Here’s an example of the Harvard resume in action.
You see education at the top followed by professional experience and technical skills. The example also shows active and powerful language for the bullet points of each position held. It’s a clear and professional demonstration of this resume format.
If you want to use the Harvard resume template recommended by Harvard recruiters, here’s a template of the sections they use:
Job title 1/ Employer 1 (your most recent employer)(month/ year-month/year)
(Action verb) (Accomplishment with quantification)
(Action verb) (Accomplishment with quantification)
(Action verb) (Accomplishment with quantification)
Job title 1/ Employer 1 (month/ year-month/year)
(Action verb) (Accomplishment with quantification)
(Action verb) (Accomplishment with quantification)
(Action verb) (Accomplishment with quantification)
Leadership and activities
Your resume should always highlight your most vital assets and qualifications. You'll be in great shape if you focus on outcomes and key skills.
However, you want to avoid a few common mistakes if you hope to get shortlisted for the position.
It’s easy to misspell a word here and there, but on a resume, it can be the difference between getting shortlisted or being cut from the candidate pool.
There are a few ways to avoid the latter:
This isn’t a huge misstep, but if you send in your application without contact information, a hiring manager won’t be able to reach you if they’re interested.
Similarly, the position you’re applying for could be dependent on location. You might face instant rejection if you’re missing, or misspelled, your location.
Most job seekers make the mistake of using passive voice on their resume. But sentences like "sales targets were consistently met" will not grab anyone's attention.
Always use active voice on your resume. Active voice requires the use of “I” as a pronoun and the use of power words like “boosted” and “improved”.
So instead of saying, "Sales targets were consistently met," you'd say, "Exceeded annual sales targets by an average of 15%. ". The goal is always to get as specific as possible with your real achievements within a role.
Resume personalization isn’t about including information about the company or the hiring manager. It’s about thoroughly understanding the job description and tailoring your resume to match it within reason.
Teal’s AI-powered Resume Builder analyzes job descriptions to identify the keywords and most important details to include in your resume.
For more tips on creating an effective resume, check out this post on the best resume format.
Harvard has made it easy to follow their resume format by opening their template in Google Docs or Word. However, if you plan to tailor your resume to multiple job applications, using Teal’s AI Resume Builder might be beneficial.
With Teal, you can add variations of responsibilities, activities, achievements, and more while selecting and deselecting certain details to adapt your resume to the job description.
Maintaining the Harvard format in Teal is also easy. You can choose from a resume template library and customize your whatever template you choose to mimic Harvard’s.
Because you're likely creating a dozen tailored resumes to match various job descriptions, use Teal's AI achievement writer to help you create powerful descriptions. Once you've covered everything, select the achievements most relevant to the job listing.
Consider the keywords and complex asks of the company. Take a look at the responsibilities section of this job description for a marketing position:
From this job description, you can pull out a few important details:
If you use Teal’s keyword matching tool, you can see which keywords are most important to include in your resume.
This will help you determine the most important keywords and relevant information to include on your resume.
Whether you use Harvard's resume template or the more traditional reverse-chronological order, make sure the final format is compatible with application tracker systems (ATS). Teal offers free and paid templates designed to satisfy ATS requirements and impress hiring managers. Sign up for Teal for free to build a better resume.
