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Indian Resume Format: How to Write an Indian Resume (2026)

The Indian Resume Format is the first impression you make on Indian employers. Getting the details right, from the photo rule to the date format, signals that you understand the local market and its expectations.

Length is a key signal in India: 1–2 pages; 1 page for freshers and junior roles, up to 2 for experienced professionals..

Indian recruiters and ATS systems prefer concise, keyword-rich resumes.. The photo rule is Not expected. Indian resumes do not include a photo (unlike the traditional biodata format)..

Personal details are limited to name, contact info, city, and LinkedIn.. Dates follow Day / Month / Year (DD/MM/YYYY, e.g. 12/06/2025) or written as “June 2025”. Month-year precision is enough for most roles.. These are the details recruiters notice first, so they anchor this guide.

Personal details follow a clear local standard: Name, phone (with +91 from abroad), professional email, city, and LinkedIn URL. Never include your Aadhaar number, PAN (tax ID), date of birth (optional and increasingly dropped), marital status, religion, or photo...

Section order matters too: Contact details → Professional summary (3–4 lines with ATS keywords) → Work experience (reverse-chronological) → Education → Skills (technical + soft) → Certifications → Projects → References (“Available on request” is accepted). Freshers put Education and Projects before Work experience.. Each section below explains the reasoning behind the rule, not just the rule itself.

This guide covers the Indian Resume Format end to end, with example content for software engineer at every career level. Use it to write a resume that passes the first screening.

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Indian Resume Format at a Glance

Document type
resume: “resume” is the standard term in India; “CV” is sometimes used for academic roles and “biodata” for traditional government or arranged-marriage contexts. The reverse-chronological resume is the norm; functional formats are no longer recommended.
Typical length
1–2 pages; 1 page for freshers and junior roles, up to 2 for experienced professionals. Indian recruiters and ATS systems prefer concise, keyword-rich resumes.
Photo
Not expected. Indian resumes do not include a photo (unlike the traditional biodata format). Personal details are limited to name, contact info, city, and LinkedIn.
Date format
Day / Month / Year (DD/MM/YYYY, e.g. 12/06/2025) or written as “June 2025”. Month-year precision is enough for most roles.
Paper size
Letter for US-facing roles; A4 is equally accepted and common.
Personal details
Name, phone (with +91 from abroad), professional email, city, and LinkedIn URL. Never include your Aadhaar number, PAN (tax ID), date of birth (optional and increasingly dropped), marital status, religion, or photo.
Section order
Contact details → Professional summary (3–4 lines with ATS keywords) → Work experience (reverse-chronological) → Education → Skills (technical + soft) → Certifications → Projects → References (“Available on request” is accepted). Freshers put Education and Projects before Work experience.
ATS friendliness
High; Indian IT companies (TCS, Infosys, Wipro, HCL, Cognizant) and product firms (Flipkart, Swiggy, Zomato, Razorpay) all screen with ATS. Use standard headings, a clean single column, no tables or graphics, and PDF export. Mirror keywords from the job description exactly.

Indian Resume Examples

Real Indian Resumes written to these conventions across three experience levels. Switch tabs to review each, then load it straight into the builder to make it your own.

R

Rahul Sharma

Software Engineer (Fresher)

Entry Level [email protected] Bangalore, India

Professional Summary

Entry Level software engineer (fresher) with experience at TCS (Mumbai) and Infosys (Bangalore) in Bangalore, India. Skilled in Go, TypeScript and React, with a focus on reliability and clean architecture. Following the standard Indian Resume Format.

Work Experience

Software Engineer (Fresher)
07/2025 – Present

TCS (Mumbai) · Bangalore, India

  • Ship customer-facing features in the search using Go, TypeScript and React, following team code review and CI/CD practice.
  • Reduced API response time by 22% by introducing response caching in a search endpoint.
  • Fixed 40+ production issues across two quarters, maintaining a 99.9% service uptime record.
  • Pair with senior engineers on system design and observability, contributing to the team's on-call rota.
Software Engineering Intern
01/2025 – 06/2025

Infosys (Bangalore) · Bangalore, India

  • Built a reporting dashboard in React and Python that cut weekly report generation from 3 hours to 20 minutes.
  • Wrote 60+ unit and integration tests, raising feature coverage on the module to 92%.
  • Presented the project to 150+ staff at the local office; offer extended.

Education

B.Tech Computer Science
2021 – 2025

Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay · Bangalore

Focused on computer science fundamentals, distributed systems, and software engineering.

Skills

TypeScript & JavaScript (Experienced) React & Node.js (Experienced) Python (Skillful) SQL (PostgreSQL) (Skillful) AWS (S3, Lambda) (Skillful) Git & CI/CD (GitHub Actions) (Experienced)

Certifications & Links

  • AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials
  • GitHub portfolio with 25+ public repositories
  • LinkedIn profile linked in the header
Use This Example

How to Write an Indian Resume: Step-by-Step

1

Open With Contact Details and a Keyword-Rich Professional Summary

Start with your name, phone (use +91 from abroad), a professional email address, city, and LinkedIn URL.

Indian resumes do not include a photo;

never include your Aadhaar number, PAN, marital status, religion, or date of birth.

Follow with a 3–4 line professional summary that mirrors the job description keywords:

your years of experience, stack, and the outcomes you deliver.

Example

"Software Engineer with 3 years' experience building payments platforms at scale. Skilled in Java, Kotlin, and AWS, with a focus on reliability and clean architecture. Seeking a full-time role in a Bangalore product company."

Entry Level

Keep the summary to 2–3 lines: your degree, internships, projects, and core languages.

Mid Level

Lead with years of experience, your stack, and the products or teams you have shipped for.

Senior Level

Summarise scope: systems owned, team size led, architecture decisions, and business impact.

2

List Work Experience Reverse-Chronological With Quantified Achievements

List roles most recent first with job title, company, city, and dates in DD/MM/YYYY or month-year format.

Write 3–5 achievement-led bullets per role;

"cut API response time by 40% by introducing caching" beats "responsible for backend development".

Indian recruiters and ATS systems both reward quantified impact, so put numbers in every bullet.

Example

"Software Engineer. Flipkart, Bangalore, 06/2022 – Present. Migrated a payments service to Kubernetes, cutting deployment time from 40 to 8 minutes and improving on-call resolution by 30%."

Entry Level

Detail internships, academic projects, and open-source contributions with measurable outcomes.

Mid Level

Quantify features shipped, systems owned, uptime or latency improvements, and team collaboration.

Senior Level

Highlight architecture decisions, team leadership, mentoring, and business impact in revenue or efficiency.

3

Place Education With Indian Institutions Prominently

Indian employers recognise the IITs, NITs, BITS Pilani, and top state universities.

List your degree, institution, dates, and CGPA where strong (8.0+).

Freshers place education and projects before work experience;

experienced engineers keep them after.

Mention certifications (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Kubernetes) in a separate line;

they carry real weight in the Indian market.

Example

"B.Tech Computer Science, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, 2019–2023. CGPA: 9.1/10. Thesis project: 'Fault-tolerant consensus for payments'."

Entry Level

Lead with your degree, CGPA, and projects; include coursework relevant to the role.

Mid Level

Add professional certifications and continued education alongside the degree.

Senior Level

Keep education brief; lead with certifications and leadership training.

4

Show Key Skills and a Projects Section

Use a skills section with 8–12 competencies mirroring the job description:

languages (Java, Kotlin, Go, Python, JavaScript), frameworks (React, Spring Boot), and platforms (AWS, GCP, Kubernetes).

A short projects section (2–3 entries with links) is common for Indian resumes, especially for freshers and mid-level candidates, and strengthens the ATS keyword match.

Example

"Java · Kotlin · Go · Python · React · Spring Boot · AWS (S3, Lambda, ECS) · Kubernetes · Terraform · CI/CD (GitHub Actions) · SQL (PostgreSQL) · System Design."

Entry Level

List languages and frameworks from coursework and projects; include GitHub links.

Mid Level

Add depth: cloud certifications, distributed systems, observability, and testing practice.

Senior Level

Focus on architecture, scaling, security, and leadership skills (system design, incident command, mentoring).

5

Close With Certifications and References Available on Request

Indian convention is to write "References available on request" (or list 2 references with consent);

never list referee contact details without permission.

For international applications, add a right-to-work line:

"Eligible to work in [country]" or visa status where relevant.

For Indian domestic roles, no right-to-work line is needed.

Example

"References available on request. Open to relocation and remote work."

Entry Level

Use your college placement cell, a professor, or an internship mentor as referees.

Mid Level

Prefer two professional referees: a current engineering manager and a senior colleague.

Senior Level

List a director of engineering and a peer tech lead who can verify leadership outcomes.

6

Use English, a Clean Single Column, and ATS-Safe Formatting

English is the working language of Indian tech.

Use a clean 10–11pt font, standard headings (Professional Summary, Work Experience, Education, Skills), and a single column.

Avoid tables, graphics, and headers or footers that confuse parsers.

Save as a PDF named FirstName_LastName_Resume.pdf.

Mirror the exact wording of the job description for the best ATS match.

Proofread carefully.

Example

"Save as Rahul_Sharma_Resume.pdf and mention relevant keywords from the job description."

Entry Level

Have your college placement cell review the resume before applying.

Mid Level

Check every date and certification is exact; gaps read as hiding something.

Senior Level

Verify all certifications have current dates; keep it to two pages.

What Makes the Indian Resume Different

The Indian Resume Format stands apart from its neighbours in a few concrete ways.

The length rule (1–2 pages;

1 page for freshers and junior roles, up to 2 for experienced professionals.

Indian recruiters and ATS systems prefer concise, keyword-rich resumes.), the photo stance (Not expected.

Indian resumes do not include a photo (unlike the traditional biodata format).

Personal details are limited to name, contact info, city, and LinkedIn.), and the date convention (Day / Month / Year (DD/MM/YYYY, e.g.

12/06/2025) or written as “June 2025”.

Month-year precision is enough for most roles.) all signal local awareness.

Write every experience bullet with numbers.

Indian recruiters compare candidates on measurable outcomes:

latency reduced, revenue grown, costs cut.

Each bullet should start with a strong action verb and end with a quantified result.

Finally, tailor the document to the specific job ad.

Identify the top three requirements and mirror them in your summary, skills, and experience bullets.

Generic CVs are screened out quickly in this market.

Bangalore software engineer salaries in 2026 run roughly INR 4–8 lakhs for freshers, INR 15–30 lakhs for mid-level, and INR 35–45+ lakhs for senior roles (Simpliaxis, 2026), and Bangalore hosts Infosys, Wipro, Flipkart, Razorpay, and Google and Amazon engineering offices.

Key Skills Valued in India

Technical Skills

Programming languages relevant to the roleCloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure)Container orchestration (Kubernetes, Docker)CI/CD and IaC (GitHub Actions, Terraform)Databases and data pipelines (PostgreSQL, Kafka)Observability (Prometheus, Grafana)

Soft Skills

Clear written and verbal communicationTeam collaboration and code reviewProblem-solving under pressureTime management and delivery focusStakeholder communicationContinuous learning

Keywords and Terminology for Indian Resumes

Using the right keywords is the only way to pass an ATS screen and reach a human recruiter.

Extract them from the job description and mirror the exact wording:

job title, required skills, and tools.

Job-ad keywords (mirror the wording exactly)Languages and frameworks the team usesPlatforms and tools (cloud, CI/CD, databases)Practice terms (agile, testing, observability)Local qualification and certification terms

How Experience Is Presented in a Indian Resume

Experience is the core of the document, written reverse-chronologically with the most recent role first.

Each role shows the job title, company, city, and dates, followed by achievement-led bullets with numbers.

Entry Level

Focus on internships, projects, and transferable skills; show reliability and a fast learning curve.

Mid Level

Show ownership: features shipped, systems run, and improvements measured in numbers.

Senior Level

Show scale: teams led, architectures owned, budgets or revenue impact, and mentoring outcomes.

Tailoring Your Resume to Indian Employers

Tailoring means adjusting the lens, not rewriting your history.

Identify the top three priorities in the job ad and make sure they appear in your summary and your first skills.

Match the ad's language exactly.

Common Indian Resume Mistakes to Avoid

Avoid these errors that regularly get applications rejected in India:

1. Getting the length wrong: 1–2 pages; 1 page for freshers and junior roles, up to 2 for experienced professionals. Indian recruiters and ATS systems prefer concise, keyword-rich resumes. is the local standard.

2. Ignoring the photo rule: Not expected. Indian resumes do not include a photo (unlike the traditional biodata format). Personal details are limited to name, contact info, city, and LinkedIn.

3. Using the wrong date format: use Day / Month / Year (DD/MM/YYYY, e.g. 12/06/2025) or written as “June 2025”. Month-year precision is enough for most roles. consistently.

4. Including personal details that local practice excludes: Name, phone (with +91 from abroad), professional email, city, and LinkedIn URL. Never include your Aadhaar number, PAN (tax ID), date of birth (optional and increasingly dropped), marital status, religion, or photo.

5. Listing duties instead of achievements; quantified results win every time.

India Job Market and Salary Outlook

The India job market in 2026 remains active for software engineers, with demand concentrated in the major cities.

Understanding the typical salary brackets for your level helps you calibrate your examples and negotiate with confidence.

LevelTypical annual salary (INR)Typical resume length
Entry LevelINR 4–8 lakhs1 page
Mid LevelINR 15–30 lakhs1–2 pages
Senior LevelINR 35–45+ lakhs2 pages

Source: Simpliaxis + Instahyre Indian software engineer salary data, 2026 (approximate gross ranges, see sources)

Key Tips for Writing an Indian Resume

  • Tip 1: Save as a clean, selectable PDF named FirstName_LastName_Role_Resume.pdf.
  • Tip 2: Use a professional email address; never a personal-sounding handle.
  • Tip 3: Include the correct international dialling code on your phone number.
  • Tip 4: Keep the length to the local standard: 1–2 pages; 1 page for freshers and junior roles, up to 2 for experienced professionals. Indian recruiters and ATS systems prefer concise, keyword-rich resumes..
  • Tip 5: Mirror the job ad's keywords verbatim for ATS screens.
  • Tip 6: Have a careers service or a trusted colleague proofread before sending.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need a photo on my Indian resume?

No. Indian resumes do not include a photo, unlike the traditional biodata format used in some older or government contexts. Keep the header to name, contact details, city, and LinkedIn.

Should I include my Aadhaar number, PAN, or date of birth on an Indian resume?

No. Never include your Aadhaar number or PAN (tax ID) on a resume, as they are sensitive personal data. Date of birth, marital status, and religion are optional and increasingly dropped. Keep the header clean and professional.

How long should an Indian resume be?

One to two pages: one page for freshers and junior roles, up to two for experienced professionals. Indian recruiters and ATS systems prefer concise, keyword-rich resumes, so every line must earn its place.

What is the difference between a resume, CV, and biodata in India?

A resume is the standard one-to-two page document for most jobs. A CV is longer and used mainly for academic, research, and international roles. Biodata is the traditional format (photo, age, marital status) used mainly for government or arranged-marriage contexts and is not appropriate for tech roles.

What does a software engineer resume look like in India?

A 1–2 page, ATS-clean single column: contact details, a keyword-rich professional summary, work experience reverse-chronological with quantified achievements, education (IITs, NITs, BITS), a skills and projects section, and "References available on request".

Bangalore tech salaries run roughly INR 4–8 lakhs for freshers, INR 15–30 lakhs mid, and INR 35–45+ lakhs for senior roles, so tailor your examples to the level you are applying for.

Conventions verified for 2026 and based on well-established Indian recruitment practice.

Sources

Facts on this page are checked against the following authoritative sources.

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