Formatting A Resume, Part II

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Original Resume of Jane Doe

This is a resume that I received not too long ago. I changed the wording to Latin and removed recognizable names, like companies etc. but the format is almost identical to what I received. In case you’re wondering, yes, I was tempted to toss this in the trash.

The sad part is that the resume wasn’t that bad—content wise.

What I’m going to do here is show you what this resume looks like with a little attention paid to it and the proper formatting.

Formatting Step One✴ The first thing we’ll do is increase the font from 11

point to 12 point.

✴ Next we’ll fix the personal section. We’re going to center the text and increase the font on the name to 14 point and make it bold, and decrease the font on the rest to 10 point.

✴ Next we’ll get rid of the objective and summary. I know that many people like those sections, but trust me, they’re not needed. Read my book and you’ll see why.

✴ Now we’ll attack the Work History which this person has labeled Experience. First we’ll increase the title to 14 point. Then we’ll fix the rest.

✴ For each company, you should have the name of the company, location, and date on one line, with the date aligned to the far right. All of it should be bold. We’ll do that for each company first and get it over with.

✴ Then we’ll change all of the company description text to 10 point, and keep it in italics.

✴ Now we’ll make sure line spacing is set at “single line.” This person had it set at .9.

✴ Already you can see a big difference, but we’re only getting started.

Formatting Step Two✴First, we’ll put all job titles in

bold. The “director of sales” wasn’t.

✴Then we’ll make sure that the text isn’t crammed together. Let’s separate the responsibilities and accomplishments and display them in a bullet list.

✴I think you can see the difference that makes. Readability factor just went up by magnitudes.

Formatting Step ThreeFrom here on out it’s tweaking, but very important tweaking.

We’ll start with aligning the dates (strictly for aesthetics). You can see how to do this here.

Formatting Step Four

❖For the final tweak, we’re going to adjust white space to give the resume better readability. This is done not by hitting return and inserting lines but by using the line spacing menu. It gives you all the options you need.

❖I’ll be doing a video on how to do that in the next few weeks.

Now Compare the Two

The one on the right is a resume I would actually read.

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