Results tagged “Microsoft Word” from Quintessential Resumes and Cover Letters Tips Blog

The most important design elements for a resume?

• Use a mix of bold type, italics, bold italics, varying font sizes, small caps, and upper-case lettering for emphasis and to control the reader’s eye — but don’t go overboard with typographic variations.
• Type should be between 10 and 12 point. 11-point type is ideal.
• Balance the material on your page.
• Allow sufficient white space with margins of .75” to 1”. Note that Microsoft Word’s default margins of 1.25” are generally wider than needed.
• Bulleted lists are extremely reader-friendly.
• Be consistent with headings so the eye can follow a pattern.
• Do not use justified text blocks. Type should be flush left with occasional centering.
• Do NOT italicize your entire resume or large blocks of type as italics are hard on the eye.
• Don’t use more than two fonts.
• Underlining tends to add clutter.

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If you’ve never created a resume before, here are some suggestions for resources to get you started:

• Use our Quintessential Careers Resume Worksheets, especially our Resume Components Worksheet.
• Try the Inexpensive Resume Workbooks from the late Yana Parker
• A resume wizard or template in Microsoft Word can be a useful starting point because it will prompt you to fill in appropriate information. Once you’ve used a Word template to start your resume, it’s best to customize the layout and design. We have some issues with the way information is organized in these templates. Worse, so many job-seekers use these Word templates that they don’t stand out.
• Use our Fundamentals of a Good Chronological Resume as a basic template.
• Get inspiration from our collection of more than 100 Free Sample Professional Resumes.
• If you’re really stuck, consider hiring a professional resume writer.

Need help with your resume, cover letter, or other career-marketing document? Order today from Quintessential Resumes and Cover Letters, powered by About Jobs Resume Writing Service.

See table below for the most common delivery formats.

One additional delivery format to consider is a Portable Document Format (PDF) resume, which offers the advantages of being completely invulnerable to viruses and totally compatible across computer systems (requires software such as Adobe Acrobat Reader, a free download, to be opened and read). A resume converted to PDF, which carries a .pdf file extension, looks virtually identical to the original document from which it was created, thus preserving the resume’s visual appeal, and it also appears consistently from computer to computer. A few employers specifically request PDF resume files. The downsides include the fact that it can be more difficult to perform keyword searches on PDF resumes unless they are scanned first or the text is extracted from them.

For more about delivery methods, see our articles:

• Your E-resume’s File Format Aligns With its Delivery Method
• The Top 10 Things You Need to Know about E-Resumes and Posting Your Resume Online

Need help with your resume, cover letter, or other career-marketing document? Order today from Quintessential Resumes and Cover Letters, powered by About Jobs Resume Writing Service.