How should you present your resume?
The way your resume looks tells an employer a lot about you:
- how well you organise information
- how much attention you pay to detail
- how good you are at written communication
- how much care you take with your work.
An organised, complete, up-to-date and well presented resume
makes a great impression on an employer.
Keep it simple
Use A4 sized paper. It should be white or off-white—don't
use coloured paper.
The paper should be clean and new, as if it has just been
taken from a freshly opened packet.
Don’t send a resume that is photocopied, faded, crookedly
printed, stained, discoloured or marked with pencil, pen
or correction fluid or tape.
Print your resume in black ink using a common font such
as:
- Times New Roman
- Palatino
- Garamond
- Arial
- Verdana
- Tahoma
- Lucida Sans.
Font size should be no smaller than 10 and no bigger than
14.
Set out the text with plenty of white space at the top
and bottom and on either side (an ideal margin width is
2.5cm), and with a clear line space between each
paragraph or section.
Use consistent formatting and writing style throughout
the resume.
Make it easy for the person at the other end
Use your resume to make a good impression on both the
person who opens the mail and the person who might end up
hiring you:
- Don’t put a title page or cover sheet on the front of
the resume. If the recruiter gets a lot of applications,
the less they have to page through to get to your
information, the better.
- Don’t use binders or presentation folders. Neatly
staple the pages of your resume together, using a single
staple at the top left corner.
- Don’t staple the covering letter to the resume. At
most, use a paper clip to keep them together; it’s quite
acceptable not to attach the covering letter in any way.
- Fold your resume as little as possible. If you can’t
fit it into a DL size envelope (one-third the size of an A4
page) use an A4 envelope.
If you’ve folded it and then you discover that it won’t fit
into the DL, print it out afresh rather than sending a
creased copy or forcing it into the too-small envelope.