Checked 25 October 2026. Format and content rules from OPM’s applicant and agency guidance on the two-page limit and the USAJOBS Help Center articles on writing a resume (edited 21 October 2026), years of experience and application documents, read on 25 October 2026; the 1102 education requirement from OPM’s qualification standard for that series. The three resumes are fictional and written by us.
Since 27 September 2025 a resume for most federal jobs can be at most two pages, and USAJOBS will not let you upload or build a longer one; a longer document goes in only where the announcement asks for it as an “other document”. The Merit Hiring Plan memo said it would prohibit the long-form federal resume structure, so the practical question is what a complete two-page version looks like. Below are three, written by us for fictional applicants at three grades: a GS-7 program support assistant, a GS-11 IT specialist and a GS-12 contract specialist. Each shows the core details the OPM and USAJOBS pages list for each relevant job, each fits on two US Letter pages or fewer at the recommended settings, and each is available as a PDF. Your announcement may ask for more, such as a license; check it. The rule itself, with its exceptions, is in our two-page rule guide.
What every sample shows, from OPM’s and USAJOBS’s lists
For each job: title and employer, pay plan, series and grade if federal, start and end month and year, hours per week, and short lines showing the work at the level the announcement asks for.
Plus name, email and phone at the top. OPM asks for education (school, completion date, degree type, GPA) when relevant or required; all three samples show it. Include everything else the announcement requires, such as a license. Our advice: add optional details when they are relevant to the position.
Format settings follow the USAJOBS Help Center recommendations, read 25 October 2026.
- Paste one USAJOBS announcement and your work history
- Pulls out the specialized-experience lines and the grade
- Shows which words of each line your history already uses
- Lists the job details USAJOBS asks for that we could not find
- Writes each relevant job against the specialized experience
- Writes from the facts you give; a check removes lines with a number, acronym or known tool name not in your text
Before you read the samples: how each one was built
Each sample was written against a fictional announcement, stated above the sample. That matters, because OPM’s guidance says work experience descriptions should be “aligned with the job announcement and address all required qualifications”. Our advice: tailor your resume to each announcement. The samples show the pattern, not lines to copy.
| What the sample shows | Where it is | Official source |
|---|---|---|
| Title and employer, with pay plan, series and grade for federal jobs | First two lines of each job | OPM applicant guidance (series and grade); USAJOBS documents article (pay plan); USAJOBS example “Program Analyst GS-343-11” |
| Start and end month and year | Third line of each job, e.g. 08/2023 – Present | OPM (example 05/2019 – 08/2022); USAJOBS |
| Hours per week | Same line as the dates | OPM; USAJOBS |
| Brief descriptions at the required level | Bullets under each job | OPM; USAJOBS pattern “Accomplished [X] as measured by [Y], by doing [Z]” |
| Education: school, completion date, degree type, GPA | Education section | OPM and USAJOBS, when relevant or required |
| Certifications and licenses, when relevant or required | Certification section (GS-11, GS-12 samples) | OPM; USAJOBS (include them when the announcement requires them) |
| Optional details when relevant | Clearance, training, volunteer work | OPM optional details; USAJOBS on volunteer work |
Sample 1: GS-7 Program Support Assistant
This sample answers a fictional announcement that asks for one year of specialized experience equivalent to GS-5. For a real job, the announcement says what level of experience counts and whether education can count instead. This applicant qualifies through experience: a federal GS-5 job and earlier private-sector office work. The GS-5 job is listed first and given the most lines because it is the one that carries the qualifying year; the clinic and college jobs support it and are kept short.
Sample: GS-7 Program Support Assistant (0303) · fictional
Written for: A fictional GS-0303-07 Program Support Assistant announcement whose specialized experience asks for one year at the GS-5 level: scheduling, travel and time records, and correspondence for a program office.
Jordan Ellis
jordan.ellis@example.com | (555) 010-0147 | Denver, CO
U.S. citizen
SUMMARY
Program support assistant with two years of federal office support at the GS-5 level and three years of front-office work in a busy clinic. Schedules meetings, enters travel and time records, tracks correspondence to deadlines, and keeps shared files in order.
WORK EXPERIENCE
Office Assistant, GS-0303-05
U.S. Department of Agriculture, Farm Service Agency, Lakewood, CO
08/2023 – Present | 40 hours per week
- Scheduled 30 to 40 meetings a month for a five-person program office, booking rooms and video links, and sent agendas two working days ahead.
- Entered travel authorizations and vouchers for 14 staff in the agency travel system; checked receipts against the travel policy before each submission.
- Entered and checked biweekly time records for 22 employees and resolved missing entries with supervisors before each pay period closed.
- Logged incoming correspondence in a tracking spreadsheet, assigned each item to a staff member and sent reminders three days before each due date.
- Drafted routine letters and memos for the branch chief’s signature from templates, checking names, dates and figures against the case file.
- Reorganized the office’s shared drive into folders by program year and wrote a one-page guide so new staff could find records.
- Ordered office supplies through the purchase card holder, keeping a monthly log that matched every order to a receipt.
- Greeted visitors, checked them in under the building’s visitor procedure and directed program questions to the right specialist.
- Prepared monthly reports of open correspondence for the branch chief, listing each item, its owner and its due date.
- Covered the front desk and phones for a second office of eight staff during their assistant’s two-month leave.
Front Office Coordinator
Riverside Family Dental, Aurora, CO
05/2020 – 07/2023 | 40 hours per week
- Booked and confirmed about 60 patient appointments a day across three providers, using the clinic’s scheduling software.
- Answered phones and emails from patients and insurers and routed billing questions to the office manager the same day.
- Kept the supply log in Excel and placed reorders when stock reached the minimum level set by the office manager.
- Trained two new front-desk staff on check-in, scheduling and privacy procedures.
- Collected payments and balanced the cash drawer at the end of each day, reporting differences to the office manager.
- Scanned and filed patient forms in the records system within one working day of each visit.
Student Assistant, Registrar’s Office
Community College of Denver, Denver, CO
09/2018 – 05/2020 | 20 hours per week
- Filed and retrieved student records, answered walk-in questions about forms and deadlines, and entered address changes into the student records system.
EDUCATION
Community College of Denver, Denver, CO
Associate of Applied Science, Business Administration, 05/2020, GPA 3.3
VOLUNTEER EXPERIENCE
Volunteer Shift Coordinator, Denver Community Food Bank, Denver, CO | 03/2019 – Present | 4 hours per week
Schedule 12 to 15 volunteers for each Saturday shift and keep the sign-in records the food bank uses for its grant reports.
TRAINING
Records Management for Federal Employees, 11/2023 | Travel Card Program Training, 09/2023 | Plain Writing for Federal Staff, 02/2024
SKILLS
Microsoft Word, Excel, Outlook and Teams; agency travel and timekeeping systems; typing 60 words per minute.
Download this sample as a PDF (two pages or fewer, US Letter, 0.5 inch margins, Helvetica, 10 point text, 14 point name)
Every person, phone number (555-01xx) and email address here is invented. Do not copy these lines into your own resume: the duties have to be yours.
- Paste one USAJOBS announcement and your work history
- Pulls out the specialized-experience lines and the grade
- Shows which words of each line your history already uses
- Lists the job details USAJOBS asks for that we could not find
- Writes each relevant job against the specialized experience
- Writes from the facts you give; a check removes lines with a number, acronym or known tool name not in your text
Sample 2: GS-11 IT Specialist (INFOSEC)
This sample’s fictional GS-2210-11 announcement asks for one year of specialized experience equivalent to GS-9, which this applicant holds; check the actual announcement for the job you want. The bullets name the tools, the systems and the counts because the announcement names tasks such as monitoring logs and remediating findings, and the USAJOBS article’s advice is to use the announcement’s own terms: “if the qualifications section says you need experience with MS Project, you need to use the words MS Project in your resume”. The earlier part-time help desk job stays, shortened, because it shows the hours honestly as 20 per week.
Sample: GS-11 IT Specialist (INFOSEC) (2210) · fictional
Written for: A fictional GS-2210-11 IT Specialist (INFOSEC) announcement whose specialized experience asks for one year at the GS-9 level: monitoring security logs, vulnerability scanning and remediation, and security documentation.
Maria Oliver
maria.oliver@example.com | (555) 010-0162 | Arlington, VA
U.S. citizen | Security clearance: Secret (current)
SUMMARY
Information security specialist with two years at the GS-9 level and three years in a health-care contractor’s security team. Monitors logs, runs vulnerability scans and tracks findings to closure, and writes security plan documentation under the NIST Risk Management Framework.
WORK EXPERIENCE
IT Specialist (INFOSEC), GS-2210-09
Department of Veterans Affairs, Office of Information and Technology, Washington, DC
07/2023 – Present | 40 hours per week
- Reviewed firewall and Windows event logs in Splunk every working day and reported suspected incidents to the security operations center within the one-hour reporting window.
- Ran monthly Tenable Nessus scans across 420 servers and tracked each finding to closure with system owners in a plan of action and milestones (POA&M).
- Reduced open high-severity findings from 61 to 18 in nine months by sending owners a weekly list sorted by age and agreeing fix dates with each one.
- Drafted and updated control descriptions in the system security plans for three systems under the NIST Risk Management Framework.
- Prepared test results, diagrams and evidence for two Assessment and Authorization (A&A) packages that received an authorization to operate.
- Wrote two standard operating procedures for patch verification and trained two new analysts to follow them.
- Checked weekly that patches were applied on 420 servers and raised a ticket with the owner of each server that missed the patch window.
- Reviewed new user access requests against the access policy and returned incomplete requests to supervisors with the missing approval named.
- Took part in two incident response exercises, recording each step in the incident log and drafting the after-action notes.
Information Security Analyst
Cardinal Health Partners, Washington, DC
06/2020 – 06/2023 | 40 hours per week
- Monitored security alerts for 1,800 user accounts and closed or escalated each alert under the company’s incident procedure.
- Updated access control lists after staff transfers and documented each change for the quarterly access review.
- Answered questions from users and system owners about account access rules and closed 95% of tickets within the two-day service target.
- Ran quarterly phishing-awareness reports for 1,800 users and sent each department head a list of staff who had not completed training.
- Configured endpoint protection policies for 600 laptops and documented each policy change for the change board.
Help Desk Technician (part-time)
George Mason University, Information Technology Services, Fairfax, VA
09/2017 – 05/2020 | 20 hours per week
- Reset passwords, unlocked accounts and set up laptops for students and staff, logging each request in the ticket system.
- Wrote short how-to guides for the three most common requests, which the help desk added to its self-service page.
EDUCATION
George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
Bachelor of Science, Information Technology, 05/2020, GPA 3.4
CERTIFICATIONS
CompTIA Security+, 10/2021
TRAINING
Splunk Fundamentals 1, 04/2022 | Federal Information Security Awareness, annual, latest 10/2025
TOOLS
Splunk, Tenable Nessus, Microsoft Defender, ServiceNow, PowerShell
Download this sample as a PDF (two pages or fewer, US Letter, 0.5 inch margins, Helvetica, 10 point text, 14 point name)
Every person, phone number (555-01xx) and email address here is invented. Do not copy these lines into your own resume: the duties have to be yours.
Where the two pages go in our three samples
Sample 3: GS-12 Contract Specialist (1102)
Contracting has a basic education requirement in its qualification standard; check each job’s announcement and standard for the other two. OPM’s qualification standard for the 1102 series sets basic requirements for GS-5 through GS-12: a four-year course of study leading to a bachelor’s degree with a major in any field, or at least 24 semester hours in fields such as accounting, business, finance, law, contracts, purchasing or economics. The standard says it “does not apply to Department of Defense positions”. It also has exceptions for employees who were in GS-1102 positions on 1 January 2000: they are treated as meeting the standard for the positions they held then, and those at grades 5 through 12 as meeting the basic requirements for other 1102 positions up to GS-12, but they must meet the specialized experience requirements when seeking another position. For GS-12 it also asks for one year of specialized experience equivalent to the next lower grade, GS-11. So this sample shows the degree clearly in the education section and puts the GS-11 job first.
Sample: GS-12 Contract Specialist (1102) · fictional
Written for: A fictional GS-1102-12 Contract Specialist announcement whose specialized experience asks for one year at the GS-11 level: pre-award and post-award work on contracts, from acquisition planning to contract closeout.
Daniel Reyes
daniel.reyes@example.com | (555) 010-0188 | Kansas City, MO
U.S. citizen
SUMMARY
Contract specialist with three years at the GS-11 level and two years at GS-9, handling pre-award and post-award work for supplies and services contracts. Plans acquisitions, prepares solicitations, evaluates price, and administers contracts to closeout.
WORK EXPERIENCE
Contract Specialist, GS-1102-11
General Services Administration, Federal Acquisition Service, Kansas City, MO
09/2023 – Present | 40 hours per week
- Managed a workload of 25 to 30 open contract actions at a time, from acquisition planning to award, for facility services contracts valued up to $4.2 million.
- Wrote acquisition plans, solicitations and evaluation criteria with program offices, and answered vendor questions through amendments before the closing date.
- Prepared price analyses and negotiation memoranda for 14 awards in fiscal year 2025, comparing proposals with the independent government cost estimate.
- Administered 40 active contracts after award: processed modifications and options, reviewed invoices against deliverables, and closed out 22 completed contracts.
- Resolved a late-delivery dispute with a vendor by documenting the delays, agreeing a revised schedule and recording the consideration in a bilateral modification.
- Conducted market research for each new requirement, including searches of existing contract vehicles and sources-sought notices, and recorded the results in the file.
- Reviewed past performance records and responsibility information for every apparent awardee before award.
- Briefed program managers on acquisition timelines and the documents each stage needs, cutting the number of files returned as incomplete.
Contract Specialist, GS-1102-09
General Services Administration, Federal Acquisition Service, Kansas City, MO
08/2021 – 08/2023 | 40 hours per week
- Awarded 60 simplified acquisitions and task orders under existing contract vehicles, checking each vendor’s registration and responsibility before award.
- Drafted statements of work with program staff and prepared files for the contracting officer’s review.
- Processed 45 contract modifications for funding, administrative changes and option exercises, checking each against the contract terms.
- Maintained contract files in the agency’s electronic contract writing system so each file passed the quarterly file review.
- Evaluated quotes for 18 competitive orders against the stated evaluation factors and wrote the award decision for the contracting officer’s signature.
- Reviewed contractor invoices each month against delivery records for 12 service contracts and returned those that did not match.
- Answered vendor and program office questions about ordering procedures, open solicitations and required forms.
Purchasing Assistant
Midland Building Supply, Overland Park, KS
06/2019 – 07/2021 | 40 hours per week
- Placed purchase orders with 35 suppliers and compared three quotes for every order over $10,000.
- Tracked open orders against promised delivery dates and contacted suppliers about late shipments each week.
- Reconciled supplier invoices with receiving records and purchase orders before passing them to accounts payable.
EDUCATION
University of Missouri–Kansas City, Kansas City, MO
Bachelor of Business Administration, Finance, 05/2019, GPA 3.5
CERTIFICATION
Federal Acquisition Certification in Contracting (FAC-C) Professional, 03/2024
TRAINING
Contract Pricing and Cost Analysis, 05/2022 | Contract Administration, 10/2022 | Source Selection, 03/2023
Government Contract Law, 09/2024 | Market Research for Acquisition, 02/2025
VOLUNTEER EXPERIENCE
Treasurer, Westport Neighborhood Association, Kansas City, MO | 01/2022 – Present | 3 hours per week
Keep the accounts, prepare the yearly budget and obtain three quotes for each park maintenance contract.
SKILLS
Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Parts 8, 13, 15 and 16 | price and cost analysis | market research | contract writing systems | Microsoft Excel
Download this sample as a PDF (two pages or fewer, US Letter, 0.5 inch margins, Helvetica, 10 point text, 14 point name)
Every person, phone number (555-01xx) and email address here is invented. Do not copy these lines into your own resume: the duties have to be yours.
Free checker
Built your own version? Check it before you upload.
Drop your resume PDF into the ProSyllabus federal resume checker. Your browser reads the file; nothing is uploaded or stored. It tells you the page count, the file size, whether the PDF carries attachments, the font, font sizes and margins it finds, and, for each job it identifies, whether it finds the header details OPM and USAJOBS ask for: title and employer, start and end dates with month and year, hours per week, and series and grade for federal jobs. “Not found” means the checker could not find it, so check those lines yourself. It does not judge your descriptions: the bullets still have to show you can do the announcement’s tasks at the required level.
A planning aid by ProSyllabus, not affiliated with OPM or USAJOBS. The hiring agency decides whether you qualify.
How the bullets are written
The USAJOBS writing article gives one pattern for describing experience: “Accomplished [X] as measured by [Y], by doing [Z].” It also asks for “concise, results-focused language” using “numbers, percentages, dollars or descriptions”. In the samples that becomes lines like these:
| Part of the pattern | In the GS-11 sample | Why it is there |
|---|---|---|
| Accomplished [X] | Reduced open high-severity findings | The result the reviewer looks for |
| as measured by [Y] | from 61 to 18 in nine months | A number the reviewer can see |
| by doing [Z] | by sending owners a weekly list sorted by age and agreeing fix dates with each one | The work you did, at the level asked for |
Not every line needs a number. Several bullets in the samples simply state a duty with its scale (“for 14 staff”, “across 420 servers”), because scale adds context; the duties and responsibilities are what show the level. What the samples avoid, as our advice, is the line that could appear on anyone’s resume, such as “responsible for various administrative duties”: it costs a line of the two pages and does not show the qualifications the announcement asks for.
- Paste one USAJOBS announcement and your work history
- Pulls out the specialized-experience lines and the grade
- Shows which words of each line your history already uses
- Lists the job details USAJOBS asks for that we could not find
- Writes each relevant job against the specialized experience
- Writes from the facts you give; a check removes lines with a number, acronym or known tool name not in your text
What to cut first when you are over two pages
OPM’s helpful hints are the official guide to cutting: prioritize the most relevant and recent experience, use concise language, align language with the announcement, focus on skills and competencies, and remove outdated or unrelated experience. In practice, in our experience of writing the samples, the space comes from these places, in this order:
| Cut | How | Official basis |
|---|---|---|
| Jobs that do not relate to the announcement | Remove them, or keep one line if they fill a gap in your dates | OPM: “Remove outdated or unrelated experience.” |
| Duty lists copied from position descriptions | Replace with three to six lines that show the tasks the announcement names | OPM: brief descriptions that demonstrate the tasks at the required level |
| Personal details USAJOBS says to leave out | No SSN, photo, age, sex or religious affiliation | USAJOBS: what to leave out |
| Optional sections that are not relevant | Our advice: keep training, publications or affiliations when they are relevant to the job | OPM: optional details “when relevant” |
| Repeated lines across jobs | Say a skill once, under the job where you did it at the highest level | Our advice; not on an official page |
What not to cut: dates with months and hours per week for every relevant job, and the pay plan, series and grade for federal jobs. Dates, hours, series and grade are on OPM’s and USAJOBS’s lists, the pay plan is in the USAJOBS documents article, and they are how an agency checks the year of specialized experience. A resume that fits on two pages by dropping them has saved space in the wrong place.
Questions the samples do not answer
Read your own announcement for these
- Whether the job asks for a CV or a longer document through “other documents” (some medical, research, non-Title 5, judicial and legislative jobs).
- Whether essay questions are part of the application. The Merit Hiring Plan memo said announcements graded GS-05 or above would include four short essay questions; answers are certified as your own words without a consultant or AI, so we do not write or grade them.
- Whether education can stand in for experience at your grade: USAJOBS says a master’s degree can qualify for GS-9 and a doctoral degree for GS-11, where directly related to the work.
- The exact specialized experience wording. Each announcement defines its own; the samples answer fictional ones.
Pages read on 25 October 2026: OPM applicant and agency guidance, the Merit Hiring Plan memo, the USAJOBS Help Center articles on writing a resume, years of experience and application documents, and the OPM 1102 qualification standard.
Frequently asked questions
Frequently asked questions
What does a two-page federal resume look like?
Contact details at the top, then each relevant job with title, employer, pay plan, series and grade if federal, start and end month and year, hours per week and a few lines showing the work at the level the announcement asks for, then education. The three samples on this page each fit within two US Letter pages.
Can I copy these federal resume examples?
Use them for the layout and the level of detail, not the words. They are fictional, and OPM asks for descriptions aligned with the announcement you apply to and with your own work.
Do federal resumes still need hours per week?
Yes. OPM’s applicant guidance and the USAJOBS writing article both list the number of hours worked per week for each relevant job.
Should a federal resume have a summary?
None of the official pages we read asks for one. The samples use a short summary because it lets a reviewer see the main credentials quickly, which the USAJOBS article asks you to check: can a hiring agency see your main credentials within 10 to 15 seconds?
How do I show specialized experience on a two-page resume?
Our advice: put the job that holds the qualifying year first and give it the most lines. Show its dates and hours, plus the pay plan, series and grade if it is a federal job, and describe the tasks using the announcement’s own terms.
What font and margins should a federal resume use?
USAJOBS recommends a sans-serif font such as Lato, Calibri, Helvetica or Arial, 0.5 inch margins, 14 point titles and 10 point text. They are recommendations; the two-page limit and the 5 MB file size are the rules.
Does a contract specialist resume need a degree?
OPM’s 1102 standard asks for a bachelor’s degree in any field or 24 semester hours in listed business-related fields for GS-5 through GS-12, and says it does not apply to Department of Defense positions. Employees who were in GS-1102 positions on 1 January 2000 have exceptions: they meet the standard for the positions they held then and, at grades 5 to 12, the basic requirements for other 1102 positions up to GS-12, but still need the specialized experience. Check the announcement for the job you want.
Sources
- official — USAJOBS Help Center: How do I write a resume for a federal job? (edited 21 October 2026), read 25 October 2026
- official — OPM: Applicant Guidance on the Two-Page Resume Limit (Merit Hiring Plan resources), read 25 October 2026
- official — OPM: Agency Guidance on the Two-Page Limit on Resume Length (Merit Hiring Plan resources), read 25 October 2026
- official — USAJOBS Help Center: How many years of experience do I need to qualify for a job? (edited 10 July 2026), read 25 October 2026
- official — USAJOBS Help Center: What documents do I need to provide when I apply? (edited 10 July 2026), read 25 October 2026
- official — OPM: General Schedule qualification standard, Contracting Series 1102, read 25 October 2026
- official — USAJOBS Help Center: How to add a resume to your profile (edited 9 October 2026), read 25 October 2026
- official — Merit Hiring Plan, memorandum from the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy and the Acting Director of OPM (29 May 2025)
official = a document published by the conducting body. reported = a news or coaching site we could not check against an original. Where sources disagree this page says so rather than picking one.
