Format & Design
Pay close attention to the design of your resume. Although there isn’t a best format, some resumes are more aesthetically appealing than others. Follow these formatting do's and don'ts to help ensure your resume stands out by being easy to read, consistent, and well-organized.
Formatting do's:
Use reverse chronological order (from most to least recent) when listing employment and education history.
Be consistent with font/typeface, spacing, grammar, and punctuation.
Leave room for the eye to “breathe” when scanning the resume by balancing content with white space. Margins can be as narrow as 0.5" on all sides.
Communicate using correct verb tense based on the position. If the job is in the past, use past tense verbs in the descriptive bullet points. If you are presently in the position, use present tense.
Be strategic about how you use bold and italics. These are one of your tools to guide an employers eye around your resume in a way that highlights the breadth of your experiences.
Consider using the tables function of your word processing application to make organizing your resume fast and easy. Conversely, though, we recommend avoiding a preset template as they can be hard to rearrange to fit your needs.
Formatting don'ts:
Use fonts that are difficult to read. Stick to standard or system fonts such as Arial, Georgia, Impact, Courier, Lucinda, Palatino, Tahoma, Trebuchet, Verdana, Sans Serif. Additionally, ensure the font is not too small. OSCAS recommends no smaller than 11.
Use special characters in place of bullets. These can be problematic for online resume review systems.
Use borders, shading, symbols, and graphics.