How to write and save a master resume template


It’s 10 pm on a Monday and you see the job offer of your dreams advertised online. The job offers all the benefits you’ve ever wanted and the company culture is to die for. The only bad side? The deadline is two hours away!

Creating a customized resume that turns heads is no easy feat. Especially when you are in a race against time. This is where a master resume would come in handy.

Your master resume is a personalized resume template. It will have everything you’ve ever wanted from a resume and the best part is that no one in the world will have a resume that looks the same as yours! It is a time-consuming task to create a master resume from scratch. You can invest a weekend afternoon in your master resume.

What is a master resume?

A tailored resume is a resume that only contains your best experiences and skills relevant to a particular job description. When you write a tailored resume, you frame your expertise using keywords directly related to the job description.

But a master resume is different from a tailored resume. Your master resume is a professional document that makes it easier for you to write a customized resume. The master resume is a single document that lists all your experience, skills, and achievements.

What should your master resume look like?

The master resume is just a longer version of your tailored resume. It should look the exact same as your customized resume. The layout and formatting will be consistent in both documents. Your master resume will be a lot longer than a real resume since it contains your entire career history.

Writing a master resume

The first thing you must do before starting to type is to get everything in one place. This includes all your past resumes, any ongoing career history documents you have, and a blank document. We will discuss the process in three steps:

1.Deciding on the resume layout

The first step is creating your resume layout in the blank document you opened. You should figure out things like the appearance of your name and contact details, font types, font sizes, section heading formatting, margins, etc.

After you’ve planned out the basics, it’s time to start copy-pasting stuff. Just copy and paste all your qualifications, skills, education, work experience, awards, languages, interests, and everything else from all your past resumes under each section of your new resume. The experience you include does not need to be relevant to a given job title. Everything in your career history goes here.

2.Organizing your master resume

The next step is where we organize all the stuff. Unlike your actual resume, we will categorize your experience in the master resume. Sort out your experience under a few broad categories such as “Business Experience,” “Sales Experience,” and “Research,” depending on your career history. Don’t exclude anything from your master resume. Remember, the only person who will ever see it is you.

3.Writing the bullet points

This step will take you the most time to complete. Your actual resume mentions only 3 to 6 bullet points for each work experience. But you should create more bullets for your master resume. Ensure that the bullet points are diverse in nature and cover several types of achievements. That way, you won’t have to write totally new bullet points when you write a tailored resume.

Saving your master resume template

You can use MS Word or Google Docs to save your master resume template. Here’s how each one works:

MS Word
  • Open your master resume and click File -> Save as
  • Use the file format drop-down menu to change it from word doc to word template
  • Save it as your master resume template
  • When creating a new tailored resume, all you have to do is quickly use “New,” browse the templates page, select “Personal,” and select your master resume template!
Google Docs

There’s one drawback to this method- all Google templates are public. But there’s a workaround.

  • Save your master resume template to your drive with “[TEMPLATE COPY ONLY]” in the file name
  • Creating a new resume in a rush? Visit your drive, right-click on the file name, and select “Make a copy.”

By Resume Mansion



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