How to email a resume (subject line, body, attachment)

Subject line: job title + your name

Recruiters triage by subject. Use the posting’s exact title plus your name, and the requisition ID if there is one: “Application: Senior Accountant — Maya Chen (Req 4821)”. Never “Resume”, “Job application”, or an empty subject.

The 5-sentence body

Sentence 1: which role you are applying for and where you saw it. Sentences 2–3: your strongest one or two qualifications, mirrored to the posting’s language, with a number if you have one. Sentence 4: the attachment note (“My resume is attached as a PDF”). Sentence 5: availability and thanks. Recruiters skim — anything longer gets skipped.

PDF unless they ask for DOCX

PDF preserves your layout on every device and is the safe default. Send DOCX only when the posting explicitly requests it (some agencies and government portals do). Whatever you send, make sure the text is selectable — image-based PDFs fail both ATS parsing and quick skims.

Name the file like a professional

“Maya-Chen-Resume.pdf” — your name, the word resume, no version numbers, no “final_v3 (2)”, no dates. The file name shows up in the recruiter’s download folder and in the ATS; make it identify you.

Address a human if you can

A named greeting (“Dear Ms. Alvarez”) measurably outperforms “To whom it may concern”. Check the posting, the team page, or LinkedIn for the recruiter or hiring manager. If you genuinely cannot find a name, “Dear Hiring Team” is fine.

Mistakes that get emails deleted

Forgetting the attachment (re-read before sending), a generic body reused verbatim across companies, emailing from an unprofessional address, attaching an editable file full of tracked changes, and following up within 24 hours. Wait about a week before a single polite follow-up.