Designing Your Resume

Designing Your Resume

Did you know that after you’ve spent so much time worrying about writing the perfect resume, agonizing about every detail, you have about five seconds to grab an employer’s attention?

Five Seconds – Recruiters spend their days reviewing hundreds of resumes, and within five seconds of scanning your resume they can decide if your resume ends up in the yes pile or the no pile. It’s important to make those five seconds count!

Design – It starts with selecting the right template. The resumes that will gain a recruiter’s attention are those with simple layouts including clearly marked sections, title headers, and an easy-to-read font. Clearly, the content of your resume is important, but the design is just as important as it draws attention to the things you want to highlight. Keep your design simple and avoid the busy background and borders, or unprofessional fonts and definitely no clip art or emojis.  These can be highly distracting and those five seconds will be reduced to less than that. Your resume is bound to be tossed into the NO pile.

Using one of our clean and simple resume templates to create your resume will help you take the guesswork out of designing your resume. You have options of professionally designed templates along with expert writing tips and suggestions.

Resume Design Tips

Font Matters. Select fonts that are clean and easy to read. Some of the more frequently used fonts include Times New Roman, in black and 12 point size, as well as Arial, Tahoma, Garamond and Calibri. Keep it consistent by using the same font throughout your resume.

Margin Matters. Set consistent resume margins on all sides. The expert recommendation is setting margins at 1 inch which can be slightly reduced as needed for extra space. However, you should make sure that there’s adequate white space on your resume and never go below a margin of .5 inches.

Being Bold Matters. You have specific information on your resume that you want to highlight or call the recruiter’s attention to? The Recruiter’s eye is automatically going to be drawn to items on your resume that are in bold. For example, bold your current or past employer’s name. You can also bold your titles, but don’t go crazy with bolding everything. The purpose is to bold what you want to highlight.

Color Matters. Selecting some subtle color or shading on your resume is another way to draw the recruiter’s attention to your resume and also to make your resume stand out. It goes without saying that subtle is the key, so avoid bold, neon colors which could be distracting to the reader and there goes your five seconds. You are in the NO pile.

Charts and Graphs Matter -Maybe. If you want to illustrate an important accomplishment with figures, or numbers you can use charts and graphs sparingly if it will help you better illustrate your point. Avoid complicated graphs and charts and keep it simple. Just know that Applicant Tracking Systems will not pick up this information. 

As you layout the design of your resume, make sure you’re also including the relevant sections critical to all resumes. Read on to understand what they are.

Five Key Sections of a Resume

CONTACT INFORMATION: A resume is not complete without the contact information. Obviously, you want the employer to know who you are and how to contact you, so this is where you will include your contact information which should include at least your first and last name, phone number, and professional email. You may also include your city, state and zip code (optional). It is not necessary to include your full mailing address due to privacy and potential discrimination concerns. You should ensure that your email is a professional email, and list only your main contact number. Recruiters would prefer to not have to determine which number to call.

SUMMARY STATEMENT: Think of your summary statement as your elevator pitch. Provide a high-level preview of your overall skills and qualifications that encourages the reader to want to read on to know more about you. It should demonstrate your value and key assets to the potential employer. This should also be customized to align with each job application.

SKILLS: Use this section to highlight your relevant skills. Hiring managers and Recruiters will quickly scan your resume to identify if your skills align with the position. Read the job description to ensure your skills align.

WORK EXPERIENCE: This is the most critical part of your resume. This is where you really get to showcase your experience and provide the potential employer a view of your career path and relevant experience. This section should include the names of the companies you have worked for, job title, location, and employment dates, along with job responsibilities and accomplishments. Using a chronological format; starting with your most recent job and working backwards works best for most.

EDUCATION: List your most advanced credentials in reverse chronological order including degree earned, name of college or institution where you earned the degree. Do not include your GPA unless you’re a recent graduate. Do not include your high school information if you have an advanced degree.

CREATE YOUR RESUME THE EASY WAY WITH A TEMPLATE FROM EASY RESUME TEMPLATES

Easy Resume Templates is committed to helping job seekers receive as much assistance as possible as they navigate the job search process.  With our Team of Certified Resume Writers, Recruiters, and other HR professionals, we aim to provide expert knowledge, tips, and tools to help job seekers optimize their resumes and cover letters to not only get the interview, but land that job. Our team has significant years of experience within their specific fields and share their wisdom and knowledge to make the resume writing process easy and seamless. Let us help you land that job.

Our resumes are designed to make the resume writing process easy. With our wide selection of resume templates for just about anyone in any industry, at any career level, you will find a resume that makes sense for you.

When you use one of our templates, you are confident that you’re using a template that was created by experts to perform well with any ATS system. The templates are customizable and easy to use, and will allow you to create your resume in no time. You’ll be one step closer to getting your dream job.

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