Top 10 Resume Tips for Australian Job Seekers

A strong resume is the single highest-leverage thing you can do to improve your job search outcomes. Yet most Australian job seekers send out resumes full of avoidable mistakes. Here are the ten most impactful changes you can make right now.

1. Keep it to two pages

Australian hiring managers and recruiters expect a concise resume. Two pages is the standard for most roles; three is acceptable for senior or technical positions with extensive relevant experience. More than that signals poor editing and a lack of awareness of the reader's time.

2. Put your strongest content first

Hiring managers spend an average of six seconds on an initial resume scan. Put your Professional Summary and most relevant experience at the top. If your most impressive credential is your education, lead with that. Every section should be ordered by relevance to the role, not by convention.

3. Use Australian English spelling

This one is routinely overlooked. Australian English uses "-ise" not "-ize" (optimise, not optimize), "-our" not "-or" (behaviour, not behavior), and "-re" not "-er" (centre, not center). A resume with American spelling signals carelessness — or that it was written by an AI tool trained on US data without review.

4. Write results-focused bullet points

The biggest weakness in most resumes is bullet points that describe job duties rather than achievements. Compare these two versions: "Responsible for managing the social media accounts" versus "Grew Instagram following from 2,400 to 18,000 in 12 months, driving a 40% increase in web traffic." The second version tells the hiring manager what value you actually delivered.

5. Quantify wherever you can

Numbers stand out in a wall of text and they make your achievements concrete and credible. Revenue figures, team sizes, percentage improvements, project budgets, customer satisfaction scores, processing times — if there's a number attached to your work, use it.

6. Tailor your resume for each application

A generic resume performs generically. Read the job description carefully and adjust your Professional Summary, skills list, and bullet points to reflect the language and priorities of that specific role. This is not dishonest — it's effective communication. You're selecting which of your genuine experiences to emphasise.

7. Avoid photos, age, and marital status

Unlike some other countries, Australian resume conventions explicitly exclude personal information like photos, date of birth, marital status, and nationality. Including these details does not help your application and may introduce unconscious bias. Keep your personal section to: name, phone number, email, suburb/city, and LinkedIn URL.

8. Use a clean, ATS-friendly format

Avoid tables, text boxes, columns, graphics, and unusual fonts. These elements look impressive in a PDF viewer but are often garbled or ignored by Applicant Tracking Systems. Use a clean single-column layout with standard section headings (Work Experience, Education, Skills) and a professional font like Calibri, Arial, or Georgia at 10–12pt.

9. Write a tailored Professional Summary

A well-written Professional Summary (3–4 sentences at the top of your resume) immediately tells the reader who you are, what you specialise in, and what value you bring. It should directly reflect the role you're applying for. Skip the objective statement — "Looking for a challenging role where I can grow" — and replace it with evidence: "Senior project manager with 8 years' experience delivering infrastructure projects across WA, with a track record of on-time delivery within budget."

10. Proofread — then proofread again

Typos, inconsistent formatting, and grammatical errors are the fastest way to get your resume discarded. Read it aloud to catch awkward phrasing. Use spell-check with Australian English settings. Have someone else read it. Then read it again after a break. A single spelling error in a Professional Summary has ended many applications before they began.

Next steps

Implementing all ten of these changes significantly improves your chances of getting past ATS filtering and impressing a hiring manager. If you'd like AI-powered help applying these tips, ProfessionalResume.au's Resume Rewriter can analyse your resume against a specific job description and rewrite your bullet points to be ATS-optimised and results-focused — in under a minute.