How To Format A Resume

Take it from the trash to an

interview in a few easy steps

John Doe ResumeAs you can see I’m using the resume of the famous “John Doe” for this example.

 

I showed this resume to a few people and several of them said, “What’s wrong with that resume? It looks okay to me.”

 

And that response makes my point. This resume looks, “Okay.”

In other words, it’s not great and it’s not even good—it’s just okay. I have news for you, “okay” resumes end up in the trash. They don’t earn you interviews.

 

I’m going to show you how to transform this okay resume into a damn good one, and we’ll do it without changing any words.

Part One

1. The very first step is to fix the margins. This resume had margins set at 1” on top and bottom and 1.25” on right and left. I set them to 1” all the way around.

2. I also changed the font from Verdana to Times New Roman. There is nothing wrong with Verdana, but I suggest sticking to Times New Roman or Arial for fonts. They are easy to read, they print well, and almost every computer on earth has them installed so you won’t run into issues with fonts not displaying properly.

3. This resume was also formatted with 10-point font. I adjusted that to 12. (An 11-point font would also be fine.)

Part Two1. In this slide, I adjusted the size of

certain sections for better readability. The information under a person’s name doesn’t need to be as large, so I reduced it to a 9-point font. I also increased the name to a 14-point.

2. The Education, Language Skills, and Work History headers, I also increased to 14-point.

3. And I reduced the company description paragraphs to 10-point. (I also like to keep them in italics.)

4. Notice that the resume still looks cramped. Many people do this to reduce page count and to fit the resume onto one or two pages. It’s much better to have white space and improve the readability factor than to save a few lines. The best way to adjust white space is to use the “line spacing” options.

Part Three

In this part I fixed the dates. Notice how the dates were not aligned from one company to another. I right-aligned the dates for each company to the far right, and also aligned the dates for each position, but not as far to the right. This makes it easy to glance through the resume and see a person’s work history. (Also note that the dates for the company are in bold, and the dates for each position are regular font.)

 

Bottom Line

I don’t know about you, but I think the final product is much easier to read than the original. It looks cleaner. It’s not cramped. And the dates of employment are easy to pick out.

Most important of all, the accomplishments stand out more and are easier to read. That’s what really matters.