Free Vs Premium Fonts: What Font To Use For A Resume
Its true,you dont need to buy a premium font to write a resume. Resumes that use apremium font thats submitted using a word processor or an online jobapplication form may not render correctly, especially if the recipient doesnthave the resume font in their system. This is why most of the resume templateson Envato Elements use free fonts.
That said, dontdismiss premium fonts just yet. You can use them if youre submitting yourresume on PDF or on the print version of the resume youll carry to an interview.A readable yet unique looking premium font will catch the recruiters attentionwhen they read your resume.
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Whos Going To Read Yourresume
The firstquestion you should answer is who will read your resume?
For mostentry-level and experienced professionals, your resumewill be read by a recruiter who scans hundreds of applications a week. Thesepeople dont have time to go over your resume line by line.
Senior-managementand executive-level applicants, however, have a bit of leeway but perhaps notso much. Fewer candidates qualify for senior level roles, plus the experiencerequired for such roles are often very specific and stringent, so the executiverecruiter handling their application is more likely to read their resumescarefully.
Either way,the font you use should be legible enough to read without squinting.
You’ll find some good examples of professional resumes in this article:
What Are The Best Fonts For Your Resume
Calibri is first on the list as the best resume font because it’s more professional and modern looking than most of the other choices, which makes it ideal for a resume. It’s spaced well, clean, and easy to read.;
More importantly, it can be readily deciphered by Applicant Tracking Systems , which means the software will see text and not little boxes or symbols on your uploaded document.;
On this same note, your resume may be printed out on paper before it’s reviewed. Again, Calibri, Arial, or even Tahoma is the best resume font and looks the most professional and are easiest to read when printed.
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A Word On Creativity Andstyle When Using Good Resume Fonts
Applicantsin creative fields dont use wacky and cursive fonts just because theyresupposed to be creative. You can add style and creativity in your resume withstandard yet beautiful looking fonts. You can even use colors, and emphasis to make your resume stand out.
For bestresults, pick two to three good resume fonts. Use the same resume font type for allyour headings to give your resume an easy to understand structure as well.Consistent style makes your resume look professional and easy to read.
The resumetemplate below uses the color red for contrast and bold formatting to emphasizekey information.;
What Is The Best Font For A Resume
As a vital visual aspect of a resumeResumeFollow industry guidelines & best practices when submitting your cover letter & resume to a corporate finance job. Download resumes and cover letter templates to be prepared for your job application. These resumes are designed to give you the best shot of being selected for an interview, the chosen font plays an important role in landing an individuals much-coveted job. The best font for a resume is one that is easily legible and pleasant for the reader to view. They can be determined by certain characteristics, such as whether a font is serif or sans serif.
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Use A Professional Easy
Readability is the most important factor to consider when choosing the best fonts for a resume. While this may seem obvious, many job seekers still get this wrong.
To ensure the best possible legibility, aim for any sans-serif, professional fonts. It is crucial to avoid the unprofessional and childish-looking fonts mentioned below.
You can determine the legibility of your resume font yourself rather easily. Later in this article, we will go into further detail on this topic.
What Is The Best Font For Resume
The best font for a resume is one that is basic and legible at a glance, making it easy to scan your resume in just seven seconds, the average amount of time that hiring managers initially scan a resume before deciding whether to take a closer look. It should be large enough to read easily but small enough that you can still fit all of the information on one page.
Learn more: The Perfect Resume Looks Like This
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Does Your Resume Font Really Matter
Imagine an ad for a sleek, ultra-thin cell phone. What kind of design and font do you picture in the marketing materials?
You probably dreamed up something as slender and condensed as the phone itself. You wouldnt expect a marketing team to use anything flowery, ornate, or thick and bold if theyre trying to get customers to think thin:
Image courtesy of Apple.com
Now imagine an ad for a fantasy novel. How would the words pop on the page?
You probably didnt imagine something traditional and straightforward, right? If youre going to dive into a fairy tale universe packed with dragon-slayers and towering castles, youll probably expect to see a font with a few flourishes and curlicues.
When you craft your resume, think of yourself as a marketing team of one. Youre designing for the recruiters or employers first impression of you with your cover letter and resume. Youre selling yourself in every aspect of your self-branding, from content to timeliness and format.
When your name lands on an employers desk or in their inbox, you want them to come away with a great impression of you! They arent seeing you in person, and there are no other context clues to give them any other ideas than what you present them witheven something as seemingly small as format or font. Because everything they see about you will be written in your chosen font, it will make a much bigger difference than you might imagine!
Does Font Matter On A Resume
A common belief is that fonts like Times New Roman or Calibri are so common that they dont add much to an otherwise rather simple resume. The truth is, the font of your resume does make a difference. This doesnt mean that if you have the latest version of your favorite Superhero costume you absolutely need to wear it to the interview, but if youre trying to impress an employer you should consider using one that will help him/her remember who you are.
Times New Roman and its cousins are great for resumes because theyre very legible at small sizes on most screen resolutions . Theyre easy on the eyes, and they dont distract the reader from the content.
Calibri is a font that just screams Im a 21st-century job seeker with its curves and angles. Its smooth and clean on the screen and its great for resumes because it looks fancy without being overly flashy. Its a perfect font for business professionals because it doesnt scream Im looking for my first job in my moms basement.
Keep in mind that you shouldnt use too many different fonts on your resume because your readers wont know what to think. Your resume should be clean, simple, yet grab the attention of your reader enough to get him/her to call you for an interview.
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How Do You Choose A Font Size
When choosing font sizes, you want to find a balance: Too large a size and your resume is likely to be more than one page without necessarily having the years of experience to back up that resume length, Yurovsky says. But if you go too small, Lucas says, the recruiter will be squinting to read your resume. This is the last thing you want and will likely land you in the no pile.
Your font size doesnt need to be uniform across your resume. You can change it up to help make your important informationlike section headingsstand out. Just be sure to use the same font size for each type of information across your resume and make sure the relative sizes are logical. For example, if youre using Calibri, Boggs recommends 10.5 point font for bullets and 12 or 14 for company names, dates, and past job titles.
I always say to build your resume with the sizes you want and see where you land. Yurovsky says. If youre spilling onto the second page, consider decreasing one or more of the font sizes while still keeping it readable. But be careful, Muse career coach Leto Papadopoulos says: I see a lot of people trying to cram in their info with a small font size. Youre better off looking for other ways to get your resume down to one page.
On the other hand, if you have a lot of white space at the end, you might consider making your fonts a bit bigger. But dont go overboard and set your bullets to size 16 just to take up more of the page. Recruiters will see right through that.
But What If Im Uploading My Resume As A Pdf
Good point font compatibility only matters if youre uploading your resume as a .docx. However, be careful with PDF if youre applying through an online application portal. While most Applicant Tracking Systems can handle PDFs, its a safer bet that your document will parse correctly if its a Word document. Applying via email or otherwise sending your resume directly to a single person? Go ahead and use PDF!
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Which Fonts Are Best For Resumes
The best fonts to use for resumes are clear and simple. Not only to make it easy-to-read for prospective employers, but also for ATS . ATS are the systems employers use to filter out candidates. They narrow down the selection until there is a more manageable number to be manually read. They, like people, favor readable resumes.
The worst resume fonts are the ones that try to be fun, wacky, weird, or silly. Not only do they give entirely the wrong impression of being unprofessional and sometimes childish, they also tend to be unclear. You may feel like fonts such as Comic Sans, Courier, and Gothic fonts may give your;resume a touch of personality. Dont do it.
The three best resume fonts according to job site Monster.com, are Calibri, Arial, and Times New Roman. They are all clear, readable, perfectly good choices which are better than the vast majority.
An employer is unlikely to judge you harshly for using them. However, they will make your resume look similar to other peoples.
There are a number of alternative resume fonts that are just as readable as the top choices but that show you have put thought into choosing your resume font. Fonts such as Avenir, Gill Sans, Verdana, and Cambria are all great options that will give your resume a fresher feel.
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Ultimately, you’ll want to consider the position for which you’re applying when you’re choosing a font. To Glory’s point, certain more creative roles might benefit from a more unique font than Times New Roman.;
Paulina Valdez Franco, a Senior Recruiter at HubSpot, also supports fonts other than Times New Roman. She mentioned, “My two favorite fonts for 2019 are Helvetica, if you’re looking for a clean and classic look, and Georgia, if you’re going after a more modern and fun look. The latter is also designed to read well on screens.”
Additionally, Paulina added, “Arial and Calibri are great choices if you want to play it safe.”
Bridget LeMon, a Technical Campus Recruiter at HubSpot, agrees that “it’s totally acceptable for candidates to stray away from the resume-norms of Times New Roman and Calibri. Avenir Next and Muna are two great options if you are looking to break the status quo.”
However, it’s important to note most recruiters I spoke with were hesitant to even offer a font at all.
For instance, Heta Patel, a HubSpot recruiter, said, “I typically don’t pay too much attention to font. I’m more concerned about whether the resume is formatted in a clean way — submitting a PDF is helpful with this, so your formatting doesn’t shift.”
Ultimately, and as expected, your content still matters most — however, a clean, clear font will help avoid any irritability you might cause a recruiter with a distracting, messy design.
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The Differences Between Font Families
Every font belongs to a family of fonts, which have similar characteristics and leave similar impressions. The first decision you have to make in terms of selecting a resume font is which font family is best for your goals.
These are the five broad categories that fonts fall into:
Serif: Serif fonts, like Times New Roman, belong to one of the largest and most common font families. Letters in serif fonts have decorative serifs, or little tails, on certain character strokes.
Sans Serif: Sans serif literally means without serif, so you can guess these typefaces dont havetails! Examples of sans serif typefaces include Arial and Helvetica. Sans serif typefaces have become highly popular in the digital marketplace, partly because of their less formal, more straightforward and minimalist look.
Monospace: Commonly associated with newspapers and typewriters, monospace fonts like Courier and Courier New were designed so that each letter would take up the same amount of space on a given line. Each letter is the same width. This allows for clean, consistent graphic design, as theres no size variability between the characters. Monospace fonts have also become a popular design choice in recent years because theyre a bit nostalgic, calling back to the days of typewriters and telegrams.
Whats The Best Font Option For Your Resume In 2021?
What Font To Use For A Resume
Most of the time, when you sit down to get started on your resume, using a good resume font doesnt take priority over what you write down. Especially if youre looking to write a resume with no experience, presentation is important.;
According to recent statistics, a recruiter will only look at your resume for a maximum of seven seconds. That is when you have to get them interested in your resume and, ultimately, you!;
Thats what the purpose of a resume is right? To get you hired?
To many people, what kind of font they use and the font format holds no significance. We can assure you that theres much more to it than that. Even Forbes thinks the font for your resume is crucial.
Now, when a recruiter looks at your resume, a professionally presented yet easy-to-read font will make all the difference in the world in increasing your chances of landing that job interview.;
Although there is no hard and fast rule of what fonts are better than the others, statistics have shown that some font styles have had higher conversion rates when it comes to resumes being viewed and applicants being invited to an interview.
This is why we have designed this list, in no ranking order, of the best fonts for resumes to help you out with increasing your chances of landing a job, even if by a small amount!
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Resume Fonts To Avoid
Theres noone specific answer to the question, what is a good font for a resume?
But itsabsolutely true that not all fonts are created equal so it goes without sayingthat there are fonts you must absolutely avoid. You probably have an idea ofwhat some of these fonts are, but heres a list just in case.
How To Select A Font
Select a font from the dropdown list at the top of your document before you start writing your resume.
- Type your resume.
- Highlight the resume.
- Either select the font from the pop-up window or select the font from the list at the top of the document.
- Select the font size you want to use the same way.
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Use Italics And Bolding Strategically
Bolding text is a great strategy if you want to call attention to specific parts of your resume. In fact, you can save space on your resume by bolding headers without increasing the size of the font. You can also use italics with supporting text, such as for highlighting the city and state of the university you attended. These small stylistic elements can help the recruiter scan your resume without creating a distraction. Do avoid underlining any of the text, though, since it can make a resume feel cluttered.
More Resume Style Tips
- Be consistent. Your resume, cover letter, and other application materials should look like theyre part of the same package. Choose the same font throughout, and make consistent choices about font size, margin width, and formatting.
- Dont get fancy. With a few exceptions its best to keep your resume simple. Creative resumes may put off the hiring manager or get stuck in the applicant tracking system and never reach a HR person.
Remember: the goal is to impress the reader with your skills and experience, not your resume style choices.
- Aiming for one page? Dont tweak your font size to meet your goal. Writing a resume isnt like writing an essay in school. You cant squeak in under the wire by making your font larger or smaller. Plus, resume length is less important than resume content. You can always develop a one-page version to hand out at networking events and job fairs, and keep the longer version for other job searching purposes.;
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