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How to Format Your Resumé
When preparing your resumé, it is critical to consider the formatting. Proper formatting can be as important as your actual qualifications. Especially in a bad economy, employers receive huge stacks of resumés from highly qualified candidates. With such an overwhelming response to every significant job posting, most hiring managers just skim over all those resumés to winnow out the few they will actually read in depth. As a result, it is absolutely critical that your resumé be laid out in a way that is easy to read and has eye appeal, no matter whether it is printed and sent by postal mail, e-mailed, or entered into a database online.
There are a number of rules you should keep in mind when formatting your resumé. First, start with a blank page. Avoid using the collection of resumé templates that come with Microsoft Word. These templates do not represent the current trends in resumé formatting, and they will make your resumé look like most of the other resumés that are coming across the hiring manager's desk when you most need it to stand out. Additionally, these templates are optimized to work in Microsoft Word, and may not not translate well when emailed or uploaded to job databases such as monster.com. Your best bet for choosing a resumé format that reflects current practices is to find sample resumés on the Internet. Search for resumés in your industry to find the templates that make the most sense for the job you are seeking. Then replicate that resumé format on a blank page.
Ideally, your resumé should fit on one page, but this is not an iron-clad rule. If you have extensive experience, you may need to go beyond a single page. However, limit your resumé to two pages, and only list experiences and skills relevant to your career objective. Even if you are applying for a job in a creative field, do not insert images or pictures into your resumé. If you need to demonstrate your creative skills, for instance, when applying for a graphics design position, you can do so in a separate portfolio of your work.
Your resumé should have one inch margins, top and bottom, right and left. Use left justification only. As a rule, do not center the content of your resumé, although some experts suggest you should center your name and contact information at the top.
The font and font size should be consistent throughout your resumé. Your name, and any headlines in your resume should be displayed in the same manner. Typically, the headlines will be in all caps, and in bold. Try not to underline any of the information in your resumé. As more and more resumés are read online, underlining in a document implies a web link, and readers will feel frustrated when they cannot click on it. This means using underlining for emphasis is not appropriate. You may want to italicize or bold emphasized text instead.
The font size for headlines should not exceed 14 points; the remainder of the text in the resume should not exceed 12 points. Nor should you go to the other extreme of using a very small font -- 10 point or even 8 point -- in hopes of squeezing an enormous amount of information into a single page.
When trying to align your resumé, be aware of spacing and tabbing. Stay consistent in the way that you are laying out the information on the page. Use tabs rather than spaces to align elements visually. You always have to anticipate that the person receiving your resumé may have a different version of the software and thus may not see exactly the same resumé you are sending. Margins will reset, paragraphs will shift, bullet points will change shape, etc., and can destroy the effect you worked so hard to create. This is why you must keep the spacing consistent by using tabs rather than the spacebar, as well as try to keep the font and the bullet points as basic as possible.
As a final formatting check point, ask your friends or your family for help in reviewing your resumé. Send your resumé file via email to a few of your friends and ask them to review the resumé to make sure nothing seems out of place. Print out your resumé on paper and review it to make sure that margins are accurately set, and that the content doesn't appear crowded on the page.
By carefully preparing the formatting of your resumé and double-checking that your hard work stays consistent across multiple platforms, you can make sure that you will be putting your best foot forward for potential employers.
