General Contractor Sample

A General Contractor oversees construction projects from idea to delivery with a focus on budgets, specifications, and requirements. Contractors are team leaders who must maintain a competitive edge over other Contractors to win projects and assignments. You also have to balance competing priorities on multiple, concurrent, and often complex projects. Plus, there’s the whole dealing-with-subcontractors-and-vendors-thing. Basically speaking, as a Contractor, you wear a lot of hats! 

You need a place to put all of this information – experiences, skills, qualifications, and achievements – so that you can establish a track record of success. Enter your resume! A compelling Contractor resume is critical for winning new projects or getting an interview for an in-house position. It can be difficult, time-consuming, and even overwhelming to write a comprehensive Contractor resume, though. 

Don’t worry, though, we’re here to help with a Contractor resume example and some tips and tricks you need to know about to build a resume that will help you stand out from the crowd. Let’s dive in!

How to write a resume

When you sit down to write your resume, it’s a good idea to know some of the basics. For example, besides your contact information (name, location, telephone number, and email address), the first thing on your resume should be a title and summary paragraph. 

Title

A lot of Contractors think the title is a reflection of what they’ve done in the past. This isn’t the case. The title of your resume is meant to be future-facing – meaning it needs to tell employers what you want to do next. The best way to formulate the title of your resume is to make it match the title on the job description. 

Of course, you can spruce it up a bit. 

• Simply putting “Contractor” at the top of your resume is boring. 

• Instead, put something that will help you stand out from the crowd a bit, like “Licensed General Contractor Specializing in Commercial Construction.” 

Not only is that more compelling than the alternative, but it actually has some keywords that will help you get past the ATS.

Summary paragraph

Right after the title will be your profile summary – a three to five-sentence paragraph that tells employers what you bring to the table. It highlights your skills, areas of expertise, and career achievements. 

Don’t make the mistake of putting an outdated resume objective at the top of your resume. The practice of telling future employers that you are “Seeking a job where you can utilize your skills” is dead. In fact, using this type of statement on your resume is the quickest way to end up in the reject pile. 

Formatting

After your profile summary and skills list, you’ll jump into the meat of your resume – the professional experience section. This is where resume formatting becomes extremely important. The most popular format for resumes, and the style that hiring managers expect to see, is the reverse-chronological format. 

Simply put, you list your most recent job and the achievements you had there. Then, work backward through your job history for about 10 years. There is no need to put every job you’ve ever had. By the time the hiring manager has read 10 years' worth of experience, they get the main idea of what you bring to the table. 

Education and other

The rest of your Contractor resume should be about what you know. List any degrees you have, licenses, certifications, and professional development courses you’ve taken. You can also include relevant volunteer work and technical skills that you possess. Other sections for you to consider include foreign language skills, awards and honors, certifications, and speaking engagements. These could all be relevant sections for your resume.

Contractor resume example 

How confident are you feeling about your resume? If you need more help, you can always refer to the following resume sample for inspiration.

Try to maintain the integrity of this template as much as you can because it has been written to get you past the applicant tracking systems (ATS) that companies use and impress a hiring manager. Even when you send your resume directly to a human being as an email, the company’s ATS can be programmed to flag that email and scan the resume before it’s released to the person you’re emailing. 

Key hard & soft skills for Contractor

Even though the “Skills” section of your resume takes up the least amount of space, it is one of the more critical parts of the document. Done correctly, this tiny section can make or break your resume in getting past the ATS. Each ATS is programmed with keywords from the job description so those phrases must appear in your resume. There will be instances when you can’t wordsmith a particular keyword into the text of your document for grammatical reasons or because you’re trying to minimize repetition. This is where the “Skills” section comes in.

While it doesn’t matter if you title it Skills, Areas of Emphasis, or Core Competencies, the idea is that this section of your resume contains 9-12 (15 max) keywords or phrases that are customized for each job that you want to apply to. It’s also important that the list has a good mix of hard and soft skills.

• Hard skills are things you know how to do because of education and experience

• Soft skills are the interpersonal abilities you possess that allow you to get along with others to get the job done

Examples of hard skills for a Contractor:

• Construction skills

• Project management

• Safety and compliance

• Blueprint reading

• Estimating and budgeting

• Quality control

• Permitting

• Computer software – AutoCAD, Primavera

Examples of soft skills for a Contractor:

• Communication

• Leadership

• Problem-solving

• Time management

• Adaptability

• Client relations

• Attention to detail

• Teamwork or team leadership

Summary & last words

Your standout Contractor resume should include a resume summary, a traditional reverse-chronological layout, and the skills and experience relevant to your job target. When you use the resume example in this article, along with the tips and tricks about things like mixing hard and soft skills, you’ll be able to effectively include all the important elements from your career on a page or two that will impress hiring managers. Ultimately, when you use this template, all you have to do is fill in the blanks. 

Introduction to ZipJob: Professional resume writers

On the other hand, the ZipJob team of professional resume writers can do it for you. They are passionate about matching your unique skills, qualifications, and career goals to target jobs in a way that compels hiring managers to extend interview offers. On top of that, ZipJob’s team of writers are experts at formatting and writing resumes in a way that gets you past the ATS every time. 

Why you should make use of our resume writing services to land your next job as Contractor

Sometimes, it can be challenging to objectively evaluate your own qualifications and experiences. Our resume writing services provide an outsider’s perspective to help you identify and emphasize the right strengths and achievements from your career. Potentially the best part about using our resume writing services is the time and effort that you’ll save. This is especially true if you need help with more than just a resume. Cover letters have become more important in recent years and you can’t forget about updating your LinkedIn profile. 

Resume writing service for Contractor: Let us write your resume

When you have a resume that’s written by a professional resume writer, you walk into your job search knowing that your career history is being properly represented. The confidence you will feel increases your ability to effectively convey your message and leaves a positive impression on prospective employers. Being confident in your resume also helps you if you want to do some networking activities. By reducing stress and anxiety, you can stay focused and better cope with the uncertainties of the ever-changing job market.