Top 12 design tips for perfect CV formatting every time

1. Use a resume template to make sure your CV looks as good as it reads.

An attractive resume communicates that you are a professional and serious candidate before the hiring manager even reads a word on the page. (And in case you’re wondering, in most cases a “resume” is the exact same thing as a “CV,” although the word resume is more common in North America and the word CV is more common elsewhere.)

Resume templates serve as frameworks, blueprints or skeletons with sample text that you can modify to your own experience. The resume builder will automatically take care of the formatting for you.

Resume.io offers dozens of resume templates to choose from, as well as 300+ occupation-specific resume writing guides and examples . Find a resume example you like, click on it, and you’ll be guided through the simple steps to make it your own. By doing so, you can save yourself a lot of time and also sidestep some common design errors.

2. Except in rare cases, hold your resume to one page.

As mentioned earlier, a two-page resume is sometimes considered appropriate for a job applicant with lots of work experience. But the golden standard is one page, and no job recruiter has ever complained that a one-page resume was too short.

However, if you do decide to write a two-page resume, you need to have enough material to fill most of the second page. It is never appropriate to have just one to three lines that spill over onto a second page. If that happens, you need to trim your text. We’ll discuss some strategies for doing that below.

3. Use an appropriate font.

Fonts matter, so use one that’s professional and easy to read. See our blog on best fonts to use in a resume . We’ll show you the good, the bad and the ugly, and you can make an informed decision from there.

There are several factors to consider in choosing the best font for your resume, but you want hiring managers to focus on the content of your resume, not the unusual font you’ve chosen.

4. Use an appropriate font size.

Use a font size between 10 and 12 points. Any smaller, and the hiring manager will have to reach for a magnifying glass; any larger, and it looks like you’re writing a children’s book.

But if your resume won’t fit on one page and you’re tempted to force it by using a tiny font size, don’t even think about it. Trim your text by taking out every word that isn’t essential.

5. Use one-inch margins on all sides.

Have you ever noticed that paintings look better with frames? Frame your resume in white by leaving one-inch margins on the left, right, top and bottom. Do not force your resume to fit on one page by using tiny margins.

6. Leave space between sections.

Leave a space between your header and summary, between your summary and your employment history and between every other two sections. Do the same between the jobs listed under the work history and the schools listed under education. (If necessary, you might be able to get away with a half-space within subsections like these.)

7. Align text left.

Text should be aligned left, not justified from margin to margin. This style, known as “flush left” or “ragged right,” makes each line of text end in a slightly different place (like the text you’re reading now). This gives the eye a break and makes the text easier to read.

8. Don’t put periods after bullet points unless they are complete sentences.

This is an obscure rule, and one that’s often broken, but the text that follows bullet points does not need a period at the end unless it’s a complete sentence. And in a resume, the text that follows bullet points will almost never be complete sentences.

So plan out leaving out the periods, and in addition to pleasing style purists, you will give your resume a cleaner, less cluttered look.

9. Cut the length of your resume by trimming widows.

Normally you should be nice to widows, but not when it comes to typography. In typesetting, widows are defined as very short lines of text – typically a single word – that appear in the last line of a paragraph (or a bullet point).

A widow leaves too much white space between paragraphs, and more importantly for resume writers, it eats up too much vertical space in a document where vertical space is precious. For example, a journalist might write in a bullet point:

• Covered the crime beat, delivering breaking news on deadline every day

10. Cut the length of your resume by running bullet lists in columns.

Bullet lists can also be problematic if they contain a short amount of text but each text takes up a full line. For example, a journalist’s skills section might say:

• Expert crime reporting

• Investigative journalism

• Proactive development of sources

• Experienced assigning editor

• Excellent copy-editing skills

• Fluent in Spanish

But this takes up six lines and leaves big spaces on the right side of the page. Solve this problem by breaking the bullet points into two columns:

• Expert crime reporting

• Investigative journalism

• Proactive development of sources

• Experienced assigning editor

• Excellent copy-editing skills

• Fluent in Spanish

Now this list takes up only three lines, and it gives this section a more balanced look because the text is distributed evenly and is not crowded to the left.

11. Leave a judicious amount of white space.

“White space” is a term used to describe the parts of a page that contain nothing at all, and it’s vitally important to good design. Every once in a while, the eye and the brain need a break, and that’s what white space is for.

Good page designers will tell you not to “trap” white space but to “push it to the outside.” This means you don’t want big white holes in the middle of your document, but you do want them toward the outside. This is why you want to leave one space between resume sections, but not three – because those three would create trapped white space.

So if your resume should end up being a little short, do not space it out internally by adding extra returns between sections. You’re better off putting an extra return or two at the top and bottom – or using slightly larger margins.

12. Create a page with visual balance.

In line with the above advice, you want a resume where all the elements are balanced and evenly distributed on the page. You don’t want a bunch of text at the top and nothing at the bottom. You don’t want the bulk of your text to be on the left with very little on the right.

Your resume should look great at arm’s length, before anyone reads the first word, and this is achieved by striving for a balanced look.