Most resume advice online is written for the US market, and several of its rules do not hold in India. It will tell you never to mention notice period, when Indian recruiters screen on it constantly. It will tell you to omit your degree percentage, when campus and IT service companies filter on it. It will tell you one page, when two is entirely normal for an experienced Indian professional.
It is also right about the important things — no photo for most roles, no date of birth, no marital status, quantify everything — and those are precisely the conventions still lingering on many Indian resume templates.
What Indian recruiters look for that Western guides omit
- Notice period — routinely the first screening question in IT and services. Include it in your contact block or summary if you are actively looking.
- Current and expected CTC — do not put it on the resume, but expect it in the first call and in most application forms. Have a range ready.
- Total years of experience, stated explicitly in the summary. Portal filters and recruiters both key off it.
- Degree percentage or CGPA — filtered on by campus recruiters, IT services companies and many graduate schemes.
- Location and willingness to relocate — genuinely important given how concentrated hiring is across Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune, NCR, Chennai and Mumbai.
What to remove from an Indian resume in 2026
These appear on a large share of Indian resume templates and all of them are outdated. Several are actively harmful, because they consume space that could carry an achievement.
- Photograph — not expected for corporate roles and can trigger bias-avoidance handling at multinationals
- Date of birth, age, gender, marital status, father's name — none are required and all invite discrimination
- Nationality and passport number — only relevant when a role explicitly requires them
- 'Declaration: I hereby declare that the above information is true' with a signature — a formality with no function on a modern resume
- 'Career Objective' — replace with a professional summary
- Full residential address — city and state is sufficient
- Hobbies with no substance
- 'References available on request'
Format that works for Indian hiring
- One page for freshers and under three years; two pages beyond that
- Reverse-chronological, single column, standard headings
- Name, phone with +91, professional email, city, LinkedIn in the contact block
- Professional summary stating role, total experience and specialism
- Skills grouped as technical, tools and domain
- Experience with complete month-and-year dates and quantified bullets
- Education with degree, institution, year and percentage or CGPA
- Certifications, and projects if your experience is short
Quantifying in the Indian context
Use lakh and crore where you would naturally, but add the international figure in brackets for multinationals and roles where the reader may be overseas — '₹4.2 crore (~$500k)'. Team sizes, transaction volumes, ticket counts, SLA attainment and client names carry weight, particularly in IT services where scope is otherwise hard for a reader to infer.
IT services vs product companies
Applying to TCS, Infosys, Wipro, Cognizant, Accenture or Capgemini: the screen is heavily keyword-driven and structured. Foreground technology stack, certifications, client and project names, team size and delivery model.
Applying to product companies and startups: depth beats breadth. One system you owned end to end, with real scale numbers, outperforms a list of eight projects. Skip the project-code naming conventions that mean nothing outside services.
Frequently asked questions
- Should I include a photo on my resume in India?
- No, for the large majority of corporate and IT roles. It is not expected, it takes space better used for content, and at multinationals it can trigger bias-avoidance handling. Exceptions are limited to roles where appearance is genuinely job-relevant.
- Should I mention my notice period?
- Yes if you are actively looking. It is one of the first things Indian recruiters screen on, especially in IT, and stating it up front saves a round of messages. One line in the contact block or summary.
- Should I put my current CTC on the resume?
- No. Expect the question in the first call and on most application forms, and answer it there with a considered range. It does not belong on the document.
- Is a two-page resume acceptable in India?
- Yes, from about three years of experience onward. Freshers should stay on one page.
- Should I include my Class 10 and 12 percentages?
- Include them as a fresher or when applying through campus placement, where they are routinely filtered on. Once you have two or three years of professional experience, drop them and keep only your degree.
- Do Indian companies use ATS?
- Widely. Large IT services firms, GCCs and multinationals all run applicant tracking systems, and Naukri applies its own parsing to every uploaded resume. Single column, standard headings, complete dates.