A federal resume template you can fill in, laid out the way USAJOBS expects on two pages, with notes on how each field reads when your experience comes from military service.
A blank page is the hardest part of a federal resume. Once the structure is sitting in front of you, the job turns into filling in fields, and fields are a lot easier to face than an empty document.
Below is a federal resume template built from the recommended federal layout. After it come notes on each part, with extra attention on the spots where a military career needs some translation.
The template
Everything in brackets is a placeholder. The order runs top to bottom, the same way a hiring agency reads it, and the whole thing fits on two pages.
Contact information
- [Full name]
- [Email address] | [Phone number]
Work experience (most recent and most relevant first)
- [Job title], [Employer], [MM/YYYY] to [MM/YYYY or Present], [Hours per week]
- Accomplished [result], as measured by [number or scope], by doing [what you did].
- Accomplished [result], as measured by [number or scope], by doing [what you did].
- Accomplished [result], as measured by [number or scope], by doing [what you did].
(Repeat the block for each relevant job. Federal civilian jobs add [Series and grade] after the title.)
Education
- [School or institution], [Degree type], [Completion date], [Cumulative GPA]
Certifications and licenses
- [Certification or license type], [Date]
Optional details (only what relates to the job)
- [Job-related training]
- [Language skills]
- [Organizations and affiliations]
- [Professional publications]
- [Eligibility for special hiring programs]
Contact information
Full name, email and phone number cover most applications. Some announcements ask for more, so each one is worth a quick read to see what it requires.
A few things never belong here or anywhere else on the page: your Social Security number, a photo, and personal details like age, sex or religious affiliation.
The job header line
Each job opens with a single header line. A typical one reads like this: Program Analyst GS-343-11, January 2009 to present, 40 hours per week.
For a military role, the same line holds your duty title, your branch as the employer, the month and year you started and finished, and your hours per week. Series and grade belong only to federal civilian jobs, so a military entry leaves that piece out.
Duty titles are where translation starts. A title that only makes sense inside your unit gives a reviewer nothing to work with, and the agency won't guess at what it means. A plain title that describes the work, written in words an outsider would know, does the explaining before the bullets even begin.
Hours per week is easy to miss, and it goes on every entry, including older ones.
The accomplishment lines
The bullets under each header are where you show you can do the job at the level the announcement asks for. The template uses one pattern for all of them: "Accomplished X, as measured by Y, by doing Z." It packs the result, the proof and the method into one sentence, which matters a lot on two pages.
Here's a fictional example of how one line can read: "Cut aircraft parts wait times by a third over 18 months, as tracked in monthly backlog reports, by rebuilding the reorder process for a 12-person supply team."
Numbers, percentages and dollar amounts make these lines stronger when you know they're accurate. When you don't, a plain description of the scope still works and reads better than a guess.
The announcement's own words belong in these lines too. If the qualifications name a specific skill or tool, the resume needs those exact words. A reviewer is checking your page against a list, and matching language makes their check quick.
Acronyms are the other thing to watch. Federal resumes are meant to be in plain language, so terms that only make sense in uniform get spelled out or swapped for everyday words. Classified or sensitive information stays off the page completely, and a strong line can show scale and results without it.
Which jobs get a block
Two pages means not every assignment earns a full entry. The most recent and relevant work gets the detail. Older or unrelated work can shrink to a header line with one bullet, or come off for that version.
Relevance is measured against the announcement in front of you, which is why one template can turn into several resumes. A training version and a logistics version can pull from the same career and look quite different, each one shaped by a different set of duties and qualifications.
Volunteer work and roles in community organizations can take a block too, when they show you meet a qualification.
Education, certifications and optional details
Education and certifications go in when the job calls for them. Some announcements also ask for transcripts or copies of certificates, and the Required documents section of the announcement lists what to attach.
The optional section is for anything else that relates to the job, like job-related training, language skills or eligibility for a special hiring program. Military spouses and people with disabilities are two of the groups those programs cover. Anything that doesn't speak to the announcement can stay off and give the space back to your work experience.
Page setup for the template
The recommended setup gives the template more room than most people expect. That means 8.5 by 11 inch pages, half-inch margins, a sans-serif font like Lato, Calibri or Arial, 14-point titles and 10-point body text.
USAJOBS caps the file at 5 MB, and PDF is the recommended format because it holds your layout and page count steady. Its resume builder is another route, since it starts from your profile and lays everything out to fit these recommendations.
Hiring agencies can get dozens or even hundreds of resumes for some jobs. A good final read asks whether your main credentials show up within 10 to 15 seconds and whether the top quarter of the first page makes your case, so the header lines and first bullets on page one carry the most weight.
Where Loona One fits
The template goes faster when your whole career is already written down. Loona One is an AI assistant that works for you through your transition, and its Career Record keeps your assignments, dates, your rate, MOS or AFSC, and the work you did in one place, ready to pull from for each version you build. The Career Record is in private testing.
Loona One works alongside TAP, your transition office and the nonprofits that help service members, on your own time and between appointments. It's Free for the Founding 100, and you can join the waitlist at loona-one.com.
Keep your transition organized in one place.
Loona One works alongside TAP, your transition office and veteran nonprofits so you can plan between appointments and on your own time.
Loona One is an independent product of Loona LLC and is not affiliated with or endorsed by the DoD, the VA or any military branch.