Applying for a Job: The Anatomy of an Awesome Résumé

Developing an effective résumé should be a strategic, artistic process, a creative endeavor where you become problem-solver with a flair for engaging an audience.

Really? you ask. The résumé—a creative process? Me…an artist?

Yes. Absolutely.

Designing an effective résumé requires more of you than simply listing your experience in reverse chronological order. Anybody can do that.

If you want your résumé to stand out—if you want your résumé to clearly articulate what makes your experience worthy of review—a generic list of positions isn’t usually enough. You have to be strategic about your design and hierarchy and, when writing the actual content, you must be thinking consciously about every. single. word. Of course, if you find the writing aspect difficult, it is possible to engage a writing service for resumes to help with the process.

There isn’t a single, perfect way to design a résumé. There are, however, several best practices you’ll want to consider when developing your résumé.

Click on the “Anatomy of a Traditional Résumé” graphic below to view the key elements you’ll want to consider when revising your next résumé. Read below for more detailed description.

So…what is a “traditional” résumé?

A traditional résumé is the type you’ll create most often—a one-page document that emphasizes your job experiences, either in chronological order or in order of relevance. Other types of skills and experiences are included, of course, but the real focus is on your work history and experience.

Technically, you could say there are six types of résumés—the chronological, the functional, the combination, the scannable, the creative, and the curriculum vita. The first three, however, are all traditional types—just the order of the content changes. The scannable résumé is written to only be read by a computer (as opposed to humans), and is thus not typically formatted—it’s just text. The creative résumé is usually developed for design-related positions where it becomes an artistic expression of your talent, usually in some kind of infographic. The curriculum vita (CV) is a more extensive résumé, often filling three to twenty pages or more. CVs are primarily used for academic, scientific, or medical positions where you are asked to not only list your work experience, but your journal publications, conference appearances, committee work, courses taught, and so forth.

A video résumé may be considered a seventh type, as well.

The content below describes best practices for creating a traditional résumé.

Start with a Hierarchy.

When you create a résumé, you need to be thinking about layered messaging. In advertising, this is often called “A-B-C” messaging. Web designers sometimes call it the “bite-snack-meal” approach. Either way, the idea is that you need to give employers layers of concepts that their eyes will be drawn to. You need to create a visual hierarchy of information.

To create a hierarchy, there are several visual techniques to consider:

• Put your name in the top left or middle. Western cultures read top-to-bottom, left-to-right. This means that the most important thing you put on your résumé (usually your name) should be in the top left or top middle. Try not to stray from that.
• Format in an ‘F’ pattern. People typically read in the shape of an ‘F.’ This means they’ll look to the left column first, the push their attention to the right. It’s the natural way they’re used to reading and you should, generally, follow this pattern in your hierarchy.
• Create Visual Contrast. You can intentionally break the ‘F’ pattern, if you wish, by creating contrast. Bold, dark backgrounds or large, heavy text will draw attention to something different. You can see in the example image above how some shading draws a little visual attention to other areas.
• Use headings and subheadings. Headings and subheadings are really important. Often, you’ll create about three levels of headings, plus your body text, for four different hierarchical levels of text: 1) section headings (like “Experience” or “Education”), 2) job titles and dates, 3) name and location of employer, and 4) body content (like specific tasks, skills, or activities).

Recognize that many employers, especially when hiring for a position that has a lot of applicants, won’t read a résumé for more than about six seconds. As depressing as that thought sounds, creating a hierarchy tremendously improves your odds. Hierarchies that visually draw attention to key elements help employers find what matters most, quickly. If everything looks the same, all piled under long paragraphs, it’s too cumbersome to read. Even if you have tremendous experience, you may get overlooked without a strong hierarchical structure.

Be Strategic about Design.

We live in a design-centric, visually saturated world. More and more, employers, even subconsciously, expect documents to be well-designed. Long gone are the days when you can simply get away with creating a bunch of paragraphs in Times New Roman or Calibri font and send it in as a résumé. Fact is, if your document isn’t well designed, it makes it look like you don’t care about your work right from the get-go.

Now, the thought of design may instill a bit of panic in you. Try not to let it. You can make good, professional designs with some simple techniques. Consider a few design tactics and best practices:

• Think in terms of real estate (be a landscape architect). You only have so much room for your content. Unless you’re applying for an academic or scientific position (which often require a multiple-page curriculum vita, not a traditional résumé), you have just one page to work with. Still, you want to fill that entire page. If there are large areas of white space, it can feel like your résumé is thin–which doesn’t generally help.
• Consider using a 1/3 – 2/3 column approach. In other words, use one-third of your page for a column of information and 2/3 of the page for another column. Visually, this is good as research has shown that the Rule of Thirds makes designs look more attractive. But it’s also good for organizing, separating, and chunking information. If you look at the example above, you can use a column on the left to pull out key skills, education, and accomplishments, separate from your work history.
• Be selective with your fonts. Fonts, almost more than any other design element, make a tremendous difference in terms of professionalism and attractiveness. You want to use contemporary, modern fonts that are easy to read and not overused. This means to avoid the defaults—Times New Roman, Calibri, Arial, and Myriad Pro—but stick to similar fonts. Good, simple, contemporary fonts you might consider include Acumin Pro Wide, Lato, Raleway, Century Gothic, Californian FB, Helvetica, Baskerville, Bidoni, and Didot (though there are many others you could use).
• Consider using two fonts. Don’t use more than two, but it can be nice visually to use one font for your headings and another for your body text. Just make sure the two fonts look nice together (that they show good harmony) and that they are obviously different from each other (don’t use two similar fonts, as it looks like a mistake).
• Make use of highlighting techniques. When one type of information is different from another type, it should be visually different. For example, your job titles and dates should, in most cases, look different visually than your former employers and their locations. Section headings should look visually different than subheadings. You make things look different with highlighting techniques—boldface, font size, italics, all caps, underlining, even color (though underlining usually makes a document look busy and color should be used very sparingly). The big rule with highlighting is that you need to be consistent. If you make one job title italics and bold, then ALL job titles should be italics and bold. If one top-level heading is purple and 16-point font, then ALL top-level headings need to be purple and 16-point font.
• Use color sparingly. In most cases, black and white is still best for résumés. First off, if your employer needs to print your CV, you can probably plan that they won’t print it in color. Also, black and white makes for the strongest of all contrasts, making it the easiest to read. Also, too much color can feel overwhelming. Unless you’re a trained graphic designer and you’re creating a creative résumé as described at top, avoid toying around too much with color. If you have a personal brand that matches a business card, letterhead, etc. and color is a part of that, go ahead and use color, but just pick one outside of black and white and make it an accent, not a dominating color.
• Match your other documents. Often, résumés are coupled with other documents, especially letters of intent or statements of purpose. You might even have a business card or a website. The more these documents match in style, the more professional you will appear. Keep to the same fonts, colors, logos, and general aesthetic as best you can.

Remember that we live in a very visually conscious world. Employers expect well-designed résumés, even when they don’t realize they expect it. It’s just a function of the society in which we live—we like it when things are designed well. And we have visceral reactions to both good and bad design. If you make yours good, you will show that you care about the work you produce and the audiences you produce it for.

Write awesome content.

Last, but not least, pay close attention to your content. Yes, this means being thoughtful about every word, triple-checking for typos and errors, and making sure all your grammar and punctuation is correct. If writing isn’t your strength, get some help. Nothing reflects more poorly on you than a résumé that is poorly written. In addition to avoiding glaring errors, though, there are a few things to consider:

• Be specific. Very specific. Generic phrases on résumés don’t really help all that much. If you say, “successfully managed teams through various projects,” or “used industry-standard code to complete tasks,” you’ll probably get nothing more than a shrug from an employer. Why? Because that doesn’t really mean anything and it can apply to just about anyone in your field. Rather, say exactly what you did. Use numbers, name projects, through in programs and terms that will resonate with your employer. Try this: “Managed team of 30 developers to successfully implement agile/scrum methodology to deliver 17 successful web apps per year.”
• Avoid redundancies. As best you can, avoid repeating the same kinds of information. If you worked at two different places but you had similar jobs, still emphasize the differences. The more you add to the descriptions, the more your breadth of experience will stand out.
• Use action verbs and stay parallel. Action verbs for bulleted lists communicate direct action and experience. Start every list item or description with an action verb (don’t use the word “I” before it). Good action verbs for résumés include terms like “created,” “developed,” “produced,” “designed,” “managed,” “oversaw,” “directed,” “led,” “trained,” etc. Use as many different action verbs as possible, again trying to avoid redundancy and showing your breadth. Also…keep it parallel. This means that all list items should match and start the same way in the same verb tense. If you’re currently working somewhere, use present tense (manage, design, create); if it’s a description of a job where you worked in the past, use past tense (managed, designed, created).
• Avoid personal information. The résumé should be about your professional experience and qualifications, not your personal life or beliefs. In the United States—and in many other countries—it is illegal to discriminate based on age, sex, familial status, sexual orientation, religion, race, ethnicity, and so forth. Still, unfortunately, many employers make biased judgments about you before they’ve even met you. Without you knowing, adding information that hint at your personal life and beliefs may cause you to be discriminated against. Obviously, it’s hard to avoid it entirely—you have to put your name (which can often point to ethnic or cultural heritage) and you’ll likely have dates on there, which could point to your age. But, as much as you can avoid it, it’s best if you stick to information that is directly relevant to the job.
• Get rid of hobbies and photos—unless they’re relevant. As much as you may be proud of being the team captain on your college sports team, unless you’re applying for a coaching position, that experience doesn’t usually translate as well to an employer as you think it might. The same is true for other hobbies—the résumé isn’t typically the place to note that you love flyfishing, golf, needlework, or exotic travel. That may come up in an interview, as you get to know your employer, but if it’s not relevant to your job, it’s only a distraction (and it often seems goofy) on a résumé.
• Move beyond high school (and, in some cases, college). Determine where you’re at in your profession and what is really going to matter to an employer. If you’ve been in college at all or you have a year or two of job experience behind you, your high school experiences are most likely not applicable to your career anymore. While your college degrees are always relevant and important to include, if you’re 10 years beyond college and you’ve already built a professional career, it may not matter anymore that you were a research assistant to a professor. Be sure to include what is relevant and what no longer matters to your employers.

As you review this list, you may think, “sheesh. That’s a lot to think about.” Well, you’re right. Good résumés take time. But, of course, the return on investment, once you land that job, is well worth it.