Job biodata formats, for the post you are applying for

A job biodata is the document people are asked for when a company is too small to run an applicant tracking system, when a school or a college office wants something for a file, or when a form says “attach biodata” and means a page with your father’s name, your date of birth and your qualifications set out in order. It is not a marriage biodata — nobody applying for a post is asked for a gotra or a rashi — and it is not a resume, because it leads with personal details rather than with what you have achieved. Confusing the three is the single most common reason a page gets handed back.

The shape is stable and the content is not. Every job biodata carries a photograph, a personal details block, an education list, whatever work there is to show, and a signed declaration. What changes is the order and the emphasis: a fresher’s document puts education above experience because there is nothing else to put there yet, and someone with eight years on a shop floor puts the work first because that is what a supervisor reads. These guides are written one situation at a time for that reason.

Each guide walks the document block by block, shows a finished example — the same one the maker opens on, so what you read is what you will edit — and covers what to do about the things that actually cause trouble: a gap year, a percentage against a CGPA, a qualification still in progress, and whether the Category row belongs on your form at all. All of them end in the same place: a free maker that opens on a complete document you type over, and downloads a one-page PDF with real selectable text. No account, no watermark, nothing held back at the download.

Four things that are true of every job biodata, whichever one you need

• A photograph, and a rectangular one

  A job biodata is handed over or emailed with a passport photograph on it — 35×45mm, plain background, face square to the camera. This is the one document where the photo is not a design flourish: a form that asks for a biodata is usually a form that expects a photo affixed to it. A cropped selfie reads as carelessness on a page whose whole job is to look orderly.

• Every qualification carries a year

  The most common defect, and the one that makes a page unusable to whoever is screening it. A degree with no year tells a reader nothing about whether you finished last month or eight years ago, and it is the first thing they look for. Give the year for every line — school, board exams, degree, diploma, certificate — even where the marks are not worth stating.

• A signed declaration, with a place and a date

  The declaration is the sentence that makes the page a statement rather than a list: that the information above is true to the best of your knowledge, followed by the place, the date and your signature. It is conventional rather than compulsory, but a government-adjacent form will look for it, and a page without one looks unfinished next to a page that has it.

• Short, and a PDF with real text

  One page is the target and two is common once the education, the work and a signed declaration are all filled in — a declaration cannot be split across a break, so it usually moves to the second page whole. What is not acceptable is a third page, or padding to reach a second. Whatever the length, it needs to be a PDF whose text can be selected and searched: a photograph of a printed page is unreadable after two forwards and cannot be found again by searching for a name.