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Format Your Resume for Success

No matter how impressive the content of your resume, poor formatting can deter a hiring team from considering an applicant. So what changes can you make to ensure that you format your resume for success?

  • Include the most important information first: your name, contact information, and desired position.
  • Be careful about the fonts you choose. Choose a readable, common, and professional font. Avoid fonts that are too large (“This applicant is unqualified and wastes paper.”) and fonts that are way too small (“This applicant is causing me serious eye strain.”). Resumes are professional documents, and the font should reflect this.
  • Keep your formatting consistent. If the name of former position is bolded, make sure that all others are as well. Choose a single style for bullets (either circles or squares, for instance) and major headings (either bold or italics, initial caps or full caps, and so on)—and keep to it.
  • Avoid random changes in alignment and punctuation. Make sure that every heading, for example, has the same alignment (the choices are centered, ragged right, or justified) and every sentence ends with a period. Make sure dashes and hyphens are a consistent length.
  • Keep the spacing between words, paragraphs, and bullets consistent. Search for double spaces between sentences and words; replace with a single space.
  • Watch out for excessive capitalization. There is no need to capitalize every noun. (For example, “Collaborated with Sales Teams to improve Revenue year-over-year.”) The more capitals you use, the less power they have.
  • Shy away from graphics and show restraint in the use of color, bolding, italics, highlighting, font changes, and other effects. A little goes a long way.
  • Make sure your formatting works as well in print as on the screen, especially if you have used color or shading.

Formatting enhances your resume. At Robin’s Resumes®, we are prepared to format your resume to highlight your experience, skills, and potential.

Catch These Resume Mistakes before They Happen

Today I’m focusing on three resume mistakes that are easily avoided—and all too common.

Resume Mistake 1: Too much capitalization

I often see this problem on technical resumes, where every noun from Customer to Technology is capitalized. Save capitals for proper names—official names and titles, like ABC Company versus “the company” or Southwest Regional Manager versus “the manager.”

Professional resume writers know that, if you capitalize every noun, pretty soon capitalization loses its power and also becomes very difficult to read. For example, consider how capitalizing every noun detracts from this sentence: “Directed Finance Functions for several Companies, including Cash Flow Management, by working closely with each Company’s CFO or SVP of Finance.” Moreover, you quickly lose track of which words you have capitalized, leading to inconsistency from one job description to the next.

Resume Mistake 2: Too many acronyms

You may have used an acronym for years (for example, HIPAA or APICS or VMS); but never known or forgotten what the initials stand for. You may have exchanged them inside your company for years, but never wondered if anyone outside your company uses the same acronyms in the same way. You may think that the National Organization of Antelope Habitats is abbreviated NOAH, but it is actually NOOAH.

When it comes to acronyms—in fact, when it comes to the entire resume—professional resume writers question everything and ask you to question everything. We always research and we never assume.

Resume Mistake 3. Depending too much on the computer

Whether you are depending on the computer for formatting, spell-checking or grammar-checking—take charge.

Professional resume writers know that computers get confused. You may have told the computer that every main heading should be bold, centered, in 10 point Ariel font; but then you will find one heading in 10.5 font or without bolding or with no centering. You may have run the spell-checker a dozen times, but the computer will still okay “revue” when you meant “revenue.” As for online grammar-checkers, any professional resume writer will tell you that they are worthless. Proof, re-proof and proof again manually and ask at least one other person to proof your resume for you.

One advantage of hiring a professional resume writer is that you are hiring someone who anticipates resume mistakes and knows how to correct them. I will work side-by-side with you, on the way to an error-free resume. Call me today.

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