4. MAKE IT EASY TO READ
This is where most people freak out about résumé-writing. When you hear people bitch about font choice, font size, margins, bolding, indenting, and capping, all they're worrying about is making the résumé pretty. We have several good tips on how to make your résumé easy to read.Less is more
Take out as many articles (e.g., the, an) as possible. Don't over-explain things. And it's ok to have white space on the résumé. It makes it easier to read. Along the same lines, do not justify the margins of your résumé (they sometimes make sentences look weird, because it forces the spacing). Instead, make the right margin "jagged."
Make sure your name stands out
Make your name in a bigger font, put it in all capitals, bold it, do whatever you have to do to make sure that your interviewer can glance down and easily read your name. If your name happens to sound gender neutral (e.g., Robin Williams, Jamie Gumm), then try adding your middle name if it helps clarify things. If it doesn't (e.g., Soon Yoo Park), then it is acceptable to place a "Mr." or "Ms." In front of your name.
Do not use wacky fonts
Unless the potential job is for advertising, design, or some other creative field, you should stick to the traditional easy-to-read fonts, such as Times, Palatino, Helvetica, or Ariel. There is a very good reason for this: many companies scan received résumés into a computer. If you have crazy fonts, the computer will mis-scan your résumé and all the reader will see is gobbledygook. Along the same line, make sure that you don't fold the résumé along a line of text, or the ink could flake off.
Highlight what you want to be read
The most important items should be bolded, underlined, capped, or highlighted in some way which will draw attention to them. For instance, the name of your college, and the name of each company you worked for should stand out. Look at this sample résumé.
Be consistent
Whatever you do, be it with capitalization, italicizing, bolding, indenting, whatever it is, keep it consistent throughout the résumé. If you don't the reader will think that you either screwed up, or that you don't pay attention to detail.
There are thousands of pieces of advice we could give about formatting your résumé, but the best advice we could give is for you to look through different examples, see which one you like the best, and copy the style. Don't worry, it's not stealing unless you copy all their employment history too. We highly suggest Yana Parker's book Résumé Catalog: 200 Damn Good Examples.
