Applying to US jobs from India: what to change on your resume

Change the page itself

• •US Letter, not A4. Letter is wider and shorter, and it is the paper a US reader's printer holds. Many resumes are never printed, but the setting is one click and the convention there is universal.
• •Dates as month and year — “Aug 2023 – Present” — with the month written as a word. “03/08/2023” is the third of August in India and the eighth of March in the US; a written month reads the same everywhere.
• •American spelling, applied consistently: organization, program, center, analyze. A mix of the two looks careless; either one alone does not.
• •One page under about ten years of experience, two beyond that. The habit of listing every school and every training programme costs more on a US page, not less.

Take off what a US employer avoids

A US resume carries no photo, no date of birth or age, no marital status, no religion, no father's name, no nationality and no declaration. US employment law bars employers from basing hiring decisions on race, colour, religion, sex, national origin, age or disability, and a resume that states them hands the employer information it must not use. Many employers disregard it, some set aside resumes with a photo altogether, and the space is better spent on anything else.

Your address shrinks to a city and country. Your phone number keeps its country code, written in full — “+91 98450 12345” — so a US recruiter can dial it without guessing.

Say where you can work

The first question a US recruiter has about an applicant in India is whether they can work in the US. If you are already authorised — a green card, or an employment authorisation document — say so in one line under your contact details: “Authorized to work in the US (permanent resident).” If you will need sponsorship, as most people applying from India do, the application form will ask; answer it truthfully there. The resume does not need to volunteer it.

Read the posting for the line about sponsorship before you apply. Many US postings say plainly that they do not sponsor visas, and that is a filter no resume changes. Location works the same way: “Bengaluru, India — relocating to Austin, TX in March 2027” is worth writing only when the plan is real.

Translate the Indian parts

• •Degrees: write them out once — “Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech), Computer Science” — because a US reader outside tech may not know the abbreviation. B.Com becomes Bachelor of Commerce; an MBA needs no help.
• •Professional qualifications: name the awarding body — “Chartered Accountant, ICAI (India)” — and let the reader look it up. Do not claim an equivalence, such as CPA, that nobody has granted you.
• •Marks: keep the CGPA with its scale — “8.4/10” — and do not convert it to a 4.0 GPA yourself. There is no official formula, and a figure you made up is one you cannot defend. If a posting asks for a US-equivalent GPA, a credential evaluation service such as WES produces one formally. Class 10 and 12 marks come off entirely.
• •Money: lakh and crore mean nothing to most US readers. Convert to US dollars at the rate of the time and mark it approximate — “about $280,000” rather than “₹2.4 crore” — or use a proportion instead: “cut vendor spend by 18%”.
• •Employers: a US recruiter in tech knows Infosys and TCS, but not most Indian companies. Add a few words of context after the name — “(card-payments platform, 1,500 employees)” — and name the US client when you worked for one and are allowed to say so.

What stays the same

Everything that makes a resume good anywhere: bullets that start with what you did and end with what changed, a number wherever an honest one exists, a summary that says what you are, and a single column of real text. A US reader is looking for the same evidence as an Indian one; the conventions above only make sure nothing gets in the way of it.

In the builder, the Design panel switches the page to US Letter. Every example on this site is marked with the market it follows, and the notes on the Indian ones say what to change for an application abroad.

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