Recruiter Resume: Tips & Example for Success

Use these Recruiter resume tips and examples to craft a job-winning resume. 

Recruiters oversee recruitment, selection, and hiring activities for organizations. You might work internally for a company to find candidates or work as an external Recruiter to place candidates with clients. 

If you’re in the market for a Recruiter position, you’ll need a resume that showcases your skills and abilities. Below, we offer resume writing tips with a Recruiter resume example.

How to write a Recruiter resume

Your recruiter resume is essential for highlighting your abilities to find and secure talent to help an organization thrive. Whether you’re new to the field or an experienced pro, our writing guide is sure to help you create an interview-winning resume that grabs the attention of hiring managers. 

Let’s take a look at the requirements to create such a resume. 

Match your skills to the job description

A great place to start coming up with ideas for your resume is to closely review the job description for a Recruiter position you’re interested in. Go through the description and highlight the skills and experience you have. You’ll want to be sure to incorporate these elements into your resume for two reasons:

1. To grab the attention of employers

2. To bypass an employer’s ATS

Achievements for your Recruiter resume 

The goal of your resume is to prove to the hiring team that you have what it takes to get the job done and then some. To do this, show the employer the value you bring to the table by highlighting key achievements.

When listing your achievements, you want to show the employer what you’re capable of by emphasizing the results you achieved. A great way to do this is through the use of quantifiable data. 

Since resumes are mostly text, using numbers can be an easy and powerful way to make your accomplishments stand out. Adding metrics, percentages, and quantities to your resume will help translate your past experience into future value for your employers!

The best places to include numbers are within your Resume Summary and Work Experience sections. This is especially true when talking about groups of people, things, or results. You can specify how many people you worked with, how many tasks you completed, or even how long it took to finish something. Even more powerful is to include the level of results you achieved. 

Also, look for words like "several" or "some" and see if you can use a number there instead. If you don’t know the exact number, you can use estimates and notate them with the word “approximately” before the statistic.  

Hard skills for your Recruiter resume 

Hard skills are the technical skills you must have to do your job. Hard skills are tangible, measurable skills learned through education and training. As you consider the technical know-how required as a recruiter, you should be able to come up with a list of hard skills for yourself. Some of those hard skills might include: 

• Applicant tracking software

• Employment law

• Interviewing

• Video conferencing

• Sourcing

• Data analytics

• Reporting

• Negotiating

• Recruitment processes

• Scheduling

• I-9 employment verification

• Microsoft Excel

• Human Resources Information Systems (HRIS)

• Human resources

• Talent management

Soft skills for your Recruiter resume

When working with candidates and hiring teams, you’ll have to pull from the soft skills you’ve honed over the years. Here are some examples:

• Critical thinking

• Active listening

• Communication

• Empathy

• Compassion

• Problem solving

• Stress management

• Agility 

• Adaptability

• Creativity

• Cultural competence

• Flexible

• Personable

• Time management

• Organization

• Collaboration

• Emotional intelligence

Strong job applicants should have a mix of hard skills and soft skills. This will show the employer you have a good balance of technical know-how and the ability to work well with others.

Pick the right format, and add your information

Selecting the correct format is one of the most important steps in designing your resume. The three resume formats you have to choose from include the following:

• Reverse-chronological format

• Functional format

• Hybrid format

In most instances, a reverse-chronological format, also called a chronological format, is best. This format includes your most recent work history at the top, with the rest listed backward in reverse order. By highlighting your most recent experiences first, you’re making the most relevant information to hiring managers easy to locate. Also, it’s the most easily read format by applicant tracking systems. 

The functional format emphasizes your skills and is sometimes used when you have gaps in employment or are changing careers. In these types of situations, you want your skills to stand out vs. a lack of relevant work history. A functional resume is rarely recommended, though a hybrid resume, which combines elements of a functional and chronological resume, can be a solid choice for some. 

Once you’ve chosen your format, it’s time to include the necessary information. The information and sections you’ll want to include are your:

• Contact information

• Title or headline

• Profile summary

• Core competencies

• Work History

• Education and credentials

Optional sections you could include are:

• Affiliations, publications, and research

• Volunteer work

• Hobbies & interests

• Special projects

• Technical skills

Contact information

Your contact information sits at the very top of your resume, where it’s the first thing the reader sees. It should include your name, cell phone number, email address, and location. You can also include your LinkedIn URL. 

Title or headline

Your resume title or headline sits immediately below your contact information, making it the first impression hiring managers see related to your career history. Your resume headline should make a strong initial impact as a brief statement that encapsulates who you are as a professional. 

Profile summary

The profile summary, or resume summary, is a concise paragraph below your headline. It should be written to leave a lasting impression and make the reader want to learn more. The elements of a summary include:

• Your top title and experience level

• A minimum of three to five skills showcasing your expertise

• At least one quantifiable accomplishment

• A sense about your excitement for the role

• Keywords and language from the job description

Core competencies

A core competencies list is a great place to include your technical skills. You can also include some vital soft skills, though, as mentioned previously, it’s generally best to show you have soft skills through accomplishments rather than merely listing them. Limit your core competencies list to between 9 and 12 competencies to avoid keyword stuffing. 

Work history

Your work history typically makes up most of your resume. You’ll shine here by listing your past work experience and those results-driven accomplishments mentioned earlier.  

Education and credentials

Typically last, though by far not least, you have your education and credentials to include on your resume. Unless you choose to include optional sections, the Education section will be the last section of your resume, where you’ll include the degrees you’ve obtained and any credentials or certifications you’ve received. 

Additional sections

Sometimes, individuals choose to include optional sections on their resume, like volunteer experience, publications, special projects, and affiliations. If the additional sections add value, without causing your resume to spill over onto another page, they can be worth adding. 

Volunteer work, for example, can help to fill in employment gaps or skills gaps you might have, publications might increase your credibility as a thought leader, and special projects can build upon your highlighted skills and expertise. 

Copyable text version of a Recruiter resume example

At this point, you likely have a decent idea of how to craft a Recruiter resume. However, we have one more thing to support you in perfecting your work of art. Review the expertly written resume example below and follow the same structure included in each section. You can even copy and paste it into your own document and use it as a template to create your own. 

Recruiter Resume example (text version)

Name

phone number| email | city, zip | www.linkedin.com/in/ 

Expert Recruiter and Talent Acquisition Business Partner

Accomplished, integrity-driven Recruiter highly regarded for managing large-scale corporate initiatives to maximize revenue for industry leaders. A proven leader with strengths in communication, team leadership, and cultivating business partnerships to successfully develop and execute effective strategies that achieve organizational goals. Proven ability to partner with management to improve employee productivity and retention rates. Strategic thinker, self-motivated professional able to manage several tasks and perform under pressure in fast-paced, deadline-focused environments.

CORE COMPETENCIES

• Human Resources

• Strategic Recruiting

• Screening

• Onboarding

• Project Management

• Social Networking

• Offer Negotiations

• Relationship Building

• Talent Management

WORK EXPERIENCE

Recruiter
ZipJob | New York City, NY
Year – Present

• Developed, executed and continuously managed innovative sourcing strategies to create and maintain a steady pipeline of passive candidates for hard to fill positions

• Utilized Social Networking / Social Media Recruiting, database mining, and advanced Internet search techniques to discover a hidden candidate pool

• Developed and implemented over 15 recruiting strategies and sourcing techniques to target and hire candidates, drive traffic to company careers page, advertise openings, evangelize company culture, and broadcast corporate message 

• Identified potential candidates through the use of Boolean searches, user groups, social networking, candidate referrals, networking, web sourcing, and utilizing our ATS  

• Collaborated with dozens of recruiting professionals and managers to schedule phone interviews, in-person meetings, and implement new employee orientations

• Developed low-cost recruiting techniques to save thousands annually and fill very hard to find positions: achieved a 100% retention rate over a 2-year time period

• Screened, interviewed and negotiated offers with potential employees:  able to source independently and find outstanding candidates for each open position

• Partnered with company managers in numerous departments to develop ways to improve client satisfaction and customer service, which resulted in an increase of re-signing contracts and retention by over 45%

EDUCATION

Bachelor of Science in Human Resources| New York University

SHRM-CP Certification | Society of Human Resource Management

While it might seem like a lot of work to write your Recruiter resume, it’s also possible to have fun with it. Allow your creative juices to flow to help you find the perfect mix of content to ensure prospective employers appreciate the value you bring to the table. When written properly - with the right relevant experience, education, and skills - your resume will open doors to help you land your next Recruiter job. Use the above Recruiter resume example as a guide to what kind of skills and experience employers are looking for in this field.

Still unsure? We can write your Recruiter resume for you.

If you’d like an extra set of eyes on your resume to make sure it covers all the bases, or you simply don’t have time to write your own, our team can help with one of our several resume writing service options. Zipjob has over 100 professional resume writers with experience in more than 65 industries, including the fields of human resources and recruiting. 

Having written over a combined 30K resumes for satisfied candidates, you can trust our team knows what they’re doing to ensure you have an ATS-friendly resume that grabs the attention of prospective employers. Our team is ready to help you create a Recruiter resume you can feel confident about submitting every time! 

Still feel like you need more assistance than our Recruiter resume example can provide? Why not get a free resume review from our team of experts today, and get the help you need to supercharge your job search?

Recommended reading:

• How To Make Your Resume Stand Out in 2024

• How to Get Your Resume Past the ATS Scans (2024 Updated)

• Beginner's Guide to How to Write a Resume