If you’ve ever spent hours perfecting your resume design by picking the perfect color palette, adding icons, maybe even adding a bar graph to show off your “Excel proficiency,” then you may be shocked to find out this is likely unhelpful. Stylish templates are everywhere right now, especially on sites like Canva and Etsy, and even in TikTok resume tutorials. They look unique and can be fun to create. The problem is that the professionals reading the resumes typically don’t want unique. They want clear and easy to skim so they can find your impressive skills. Guess what? So do those pesky Applicant Tracking Systems.
So sadly, pretty isn’t the same as practical.
This doesn’t mean the Career Center is anti-design. But when it comes to most students’ resumes, usability matters more than aesthetics. Even in creative artistic fields, readability is still more important than the design.
Here are 5 tips to make your resume readable and professional
- Stick to standard fonts
Choose clean, professional fonts like Aptos, Calibri, or Arial. - Use bold and italics, no color
Bold content you want to stand out such as your job titles and section headers. - Don’t use columns
Keep the resume structure left to right and top to bottom to use all the space on a page. Sidebars and columns often get jumbled by ATS and even make it harder for human readers to find key information. - Use consistent formatting
Did this tip look out of place because it’s in italics? If one job title is bold, they all should be. Dates aligned on the right? Do that for every entry. These little things collectively create a sense of polish and professionalism. - Do not include your photo
Aside from very specific industries, such as theatre, it is not appropriate to include your photo on your resume. Not only can it confuse ATS, but it can also cause your application to be dismissed by humans to avoid any possible discrimination concerns.
You’re not doing anything “wrong” if you used a stylish template, as most people don’t know these things until they’re told.
That’s why the PennWest Career Center is here: to help you stand out for the right reasons. And that usually starts with a resume that’s clean, clear, and quietly confident.
