The content of your resume might play the most powerful role in your capability to get the job, but the design of your resume plays a pivotal role in whether or not your resume gets a glance in the first place. Resumes that are developed on boring, terrible, or overused templates blend in with the crowd. The template and design that you utilize do affect how well your resume is received and how much of your content gets a look by the hiring manager.
Resume Design Tips
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Clean is Better In Contrast to Cluttered
One of the keys to a great resume design is that there is not much of a design at all. If you look right now at your Microsoft Word templates, you’ll see a variety of templates that have many boxes and colors and lines, and you’re hoped to put your information within all of those boxes. These templates are too fancy. You need the focus to be just on your words. A simple, clean template is always a better decision.
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Fonts Should Be Professional
The best fonts are going to be sans serif professional fonts. Calibri and Ariel, for instance, are convenient to read fonts that don’t look weird or computerized. Times New Roman is “okay,” but it’s not as clean as sans serif fonts. Comic Sans is a terrible, terrible option.
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Use Bullets
It can’t be compelled enough. Bullet points draw the eye far better than paragraphs. Paragraphs might be tempting, but bullet points are generally a better option and might also assist you save space. Use bullet points.
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Look At the Affect of Your Layout
Bullet points are just the first step towards drawing the eye of the employer. You also require making certain that your bullet points look clean. In other words, you’ve to make sure that the way you have written your bullet points still draws the eye of the employer. Look at the following 2 examples:
– This is actually short bullet point.
– This is a much longer bullet point that is arguably too long but if you actually have something to say then it is okay.
– This is a really short bullet point.
Now compare that layout to this:
– This is a really short bullet point.
– This is a really short bullet point.
– This is a much longer bullet point that is arguably too long but if you actually have something to say than it is okay.
Because you’ve moved the long sentence last, the bullet points look much, much cleaner. All of the bullets are together, without spacing, and the end of the long sentence doesn’t cause the 3rd bullet point to blend in. The employer’s eye will go to all 3 bullet points.
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Look At Your Resume Just like an Art Piece
Once you’ve completed your resume, print it out and look at it from far away. Does it look clean and professional? Or does it look like everything is weird? Stepping back and looking at your resume as though it was a design and not a resume is a great way to make certain that your resume will be well received by the employer. If your resume printed on 2 pages, where the second page was just the last part of the “skills” section, then as an art piece it would not look very strong would it?
Resume design might not be the most significant part of your resume, but it surely plays a role, and you require taking that role seriously.