Resume Design Tips & Templates to Help Polish Your Resume

Resumes allow recruiters to evaluate a job seeker’s skills and qualifications and determine if they’re a good match for the job title and their company. Therefore, the first objective for your resume should be to focus on utilizing your resume’s design to catch the attention of potential employers. At the same time, your resume must showcase your relevant skills and work experience in a convincing, easy-to-follow way.

A resume design is your resume’s first opportunity to leave a remarkable first impression. Recruiters and hiring managers usually take less than ten seconds to review a resume, so a resume design that’s easily scannable, aesthetically pleasing and in the correct format is crucial.

1. Match your resume design and format.

There are three standard resume formats: chronological format, combination format and functional format. They each organize your information differently so it’s important to choose a resume design that properly complements each format. For example, if you’re using a functional resume, you should consider a design that gives you the space to display different skills sections.

2. Consider the job you’re applying to.

Some jobs, like bank teller and operations manager, will appreciate a more traditional look while jobs in creative industries, such as social media or interior design, are more open to creative resume templates.

3. Keep your headings straightforward.

You might be tempted to get creative in your headings but it’s best to stick to the standard titles for headings, like “skills”, “work history” and “professional summary” or “resume objective”. Using standard headings will help your resume with applicant tracking systems (ATS), the software companies use to filter out irrelevant job applications and resumes. ATSautomatically reviews and filters all job applications and their resumes so hiring managers can focus on the most relevant resumes and candidates, so having easily identifiable headings will help your resume pass ATS.

4. Choose the right fonts.

You’ll have the option to choose between serif and sans-serif fonts. A serif font is one that has small, decorative strokes at the end of each letter, like Times New Roman and Georgia, whereas , sans serif fonts, like Arial, Helvetica and Calibri, don’t have decorative strokes.

When choosing fonts for your resume, opt for something professional, easy to read, and fits the overall style of your layout. Set the font size to 10 to 12 pt. so that it is easy to read for hiring managers. Finally, always be consistent with the font you use throughout your resume.

5. Give it some space.

Use white space correctly in your resume to keep it readable. Make sure there’s appropriate spacing between sections, use proper margins (at least 1 inch on all sides) across the document, and use short phrases and utilize bullet points rather than long chunks of text. This will allow your overall layout to “breathe.”

6. Get creative with your header.

Your contact information should be at the top of your resume in the header. You can make your contact section visually appealing by using colors, but you should make sure that the colors you choose aren’t over-the-top. You can also implement reverse type by making your contact section a dark color and the text a light color. Graphic designers often implement reverse type to improve the design of a printed page.

Finally, you can include icons in your contact section, such as a telephone icon next to your telephone number, or an email icon, for example. Depending on if it’s applicable and acceptable in your industry, you can even include your social media links with corresponding icons for each social media platform, such as a LinkedIn logo icon.

7. Use a design that looks good over 1-2 pages.

While the standard length for a resume is one page, job seekers with a longer career might require two pages to appropriately accommodate all of their professional history. Make sure to use a resume design that looks good and is seamless across two pages.

• Resume Formats: Read our expert guide on the most popular resume formats and find the one that suits you best.
• Resume Examples: ResumeHelp has over a thousand resume examples for different jobs and industries you can use as a base to create your resume.
• Best Fonts for a Resume: Not sure whether to go for Cambria or Verdana? Here are other professional fonts appropriate for your resume.
• Simple Resume Templates: Simple doesn’t have to be boring. Check out our clean resume designs.
• Modern Resume Templates: Searching for a modern resume design? Look no further! We have the best resume templates for modern jobs.
• Infographic Resumes: Learn all the tips and tricks for creating an eye-catching infographic resume in Adobe Photoshop or InDesign.
• Minimalist Resume Templates: Sometimes less is more and our minimalist resume designs really speak for themselves.
• The Best Resume Templates: We’ve rounded up our favorite ResumeHelp resume templates so you can choose from the best.
• How to Write a Resume: Once you have nailed the resume design, it’s time to put together the resume contents to land that dream job. Here’s our expert resume writing guide.